The globalization of education has increased large-scale education reforms worldwide. Over the past 15 years, Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC) have invested significant resources in reforming their education systems. This has led to extensive borrowing of pedagogical approaches to initiate and implement educational change. This article…

Innovative teaching concepts such as problem-based learning (PBL) can make a difference in an academic setting, particularly when dealing with diversity, and support the successful completion of students' studies. Introducing new approaches to teaching requires the professionalization of the teaching staff and the development of new tools. As a…

The aim of this paper is to raise awareness of problem-based learning (PBL) and more specifically the problem analysis as a set of learning principles and practices offering the potential to bridge higher education to the complexities and uncertainties of science and society. Literature on PBL often argues that PBL supports education aimed at…

Variations in PBL [problem-based learning] implementation need to be seen as the norm rather than the exception, since local PBL practice will always diverge from the "original model". In order to understand this phenomenon, this conceptional paper first systematizes variations in PBL implementation at the inter-institutional,…

Video and co-design can be powerful tools to enrich problem-based learning experiences. We explore how a teacher and researcher engaged in co-design of a PBL experience focused on human-centered robotics as well as the resulting design. They explored the question "How can we design a robot that serves a need in our local community?" We…

This conceptual article begins with a general definition of reflection and the soft skills of PBL: collaboration, agency, and metacognition. Then it presents theoretical frameworks for reflection from second language teacher education (SLTE) (Farrell, 2015; Pennington & Richards, 2016) and illustrates six types of reflection with examples from…

Project/problem-based learning (PBL) can provide an effective model for school reform when implemented with fidelity. In the report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," it was recommended that if the U.S. is to remain competitive in the 21st-century economy, there must be a serious effort to "enlarge the pipeline of students who are…

Practitioners in the field of pharmacy are often confronted with ill-structured problems. Specifically, pharmacists are tasked with making patient-specific recommendations that are both safe and effective, which requires combining knowledge from the biomedical, behavioral, and pharmaceutical sciences. Given the dynamic nature of pharmacy as a…

Assessment validity, reliability, and constructive alignment to planned learning outcomes are less understood in the context of integrated, problem-based curricula. This conceptual paper examines a Triple Jump Assessment (TJA) employed as a formative and summative assessment system in the first year of an undergraduate dental program.…

In this paper, we provide insight into the PBL project called PoLiMINT (Problem-oriented Learning in MINT). The project is located at the Bremen University of Applied Sciences and aims to introduce and foster PBL in the introductory phase of a physics study program. Concerning our general conditions, we will present our incremental implementation…

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the introduction, implementation, evolution, hybridization, and initial research into the constructivist instructional models deployed within a secondary (high) school in Australia. A concomitant aim is to relate some of the consequences of whole school pedagogical change, which have included the…

Current theories and models of education often argue that instruction is best administered when knowledge is situated within a context. Problem-based learning (PBL) provides an approach to education that has particularly powerful affordances for learning disciplinary content and practices by solving authentic problems within a discipline. However,…

Higher education faces the challenges of bridging education and authentic work. In addition, it needs to respond to the highly multimodal and participatory communication and content creation practices, preferences, and cultures of present and future students. The aim of our article is to discuss how the use of video triggers and video production…

Empathy and interdisciplinarity are both concepts that are current and relevant--across professions, in research, and in academia. This paper describes a large, interdisciplinary, project-based assignment, the Empathy Project, which allows students to delve into and increase comfort and skill with interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative…

There has been much recent discussion about student engagement in higher education, and in the last few years a number of authors have undertaken extensive international research on the topic, which has been summarized in a number of literature reviews. However, to date, there has been relatively little in-depth exploration of student engagement…