Traditional lecture-based learning never inspired me as a student or as a lecturer. After 10 years in the computer industry I found the academic approach to learning divorced from reality. My aspiration was to Wenger’s Community of Practice and that hadn’t been my experience.
Problem-based learning was a breath of fresh air being student-centred aligned with constructivist pedagogy and it used authentic problems. I found this highly motivational and I hoped my students would too. Computing is a discipline that is fundamentally about problem-solving so it was a natural fit to PBL. Furthermore PBL had excellent side-effects of developing many of the soft skills that now ride under the banner of ‘employability’.
This article explains the pedagogy of PBL with examples of its use (both successful and unsuccessful) in Computing. It isn’t for the faint- hearted as we give students control and responsibility but when it works it embodies (in my view) everything that higher education is about: empowerment systematic research critically selecting and applying knowledge to an important problem. I urge you to explore adapt and improve these ideas!
