Problem-based learning

Abstract

Problem-based learning (PBL) was created at McMaster University almost 40 years ago. It has changed medical education in ways that would not have been foreseen. It has supplanted the traditional lecture-based learning model in many medical schools and has expanded around the world and beyond medical education into a host of other disciplines. It has also galvanized the push to get students out of the lecture hall and into more interactive learning settings. This chapter is designed with two purposes in mind: to help a medical teacher decide whether to use PBL in either their course or broader medical curriculum and, having decided to use PBL, help them prepare for their role as a teacher in a PBL course. Teaching in a PBL course is a much different experience than in almost any other teaching format.