Designing and Conducting a Liberal Arts Course with Problem-Based Learning : A Case Study of ‘Great Speeches That Changed World History,’ an Open Class of S University

Abstract

This paper describes a case study of ‘Great Speeches That Changed World History,’ a liberal arts course offered in the second semester of 2022 at S University. It aims to design and conduct the course as student-centered with Problem-Based Learning (PBL). The four steps of PBL, ‘meeting the problem → exploring the solution → resolving the problem → presenting and evaluating the solution’ were adapted for those of ‘planning a speech → lectures, discussions, and research → writing a speech and making PowerPoint slides → speech presentations and peer reviews.’ First, students were introduced to the problem of a ‘speech,’ which was designed as an ‘ill-structured, complex, real, and related-to-the-curriculum’ PBL problem. Then they decided on the purpose, topic, audience, and place of their speeches. The second step of exploring the solution consisted of the teacher’s lectures and the students’ subsequent discussions where they explored the topics of their mock speeches. For the third and fourth steps of PBL, students participated in a team project activity where they practiced and presented their mock speeches. Peer reviews helped students concentrate on other teams’ presentations and elicited integrative understanding and secondary learning from them. A survey on PBL’s effectiveness, conducted after 15 weeks of the course, showed that students understood the class materials better when engaging in a team project and responded positively to peer reviews. They also thought their team project helped them achieve the course objectives. In conclusion, PBL was an effective method to plan a student-centered course. Students got engaged in class actively and positively with PBL, which ultimately helped them achieve the course objectives.