Problem-based learning and adaptive expertise

Abstract

In problem-based learning and related approaches, a faculty member organizes course content around posing several situations to students and presenting them questions, challenges, problems, or projects drawn from the situation. A faculty member presents the problem and asks for student solution fragments before lecturing on relevant course content. Then, the faculty member facilitates student teams as they work through a process to answer the question. Content is selected, organized, and presented to help students address each posed challenge. Many studies have offered results that faculty members can use to evaluate the efficacy of a problem-based learning approach to teaching and decide whether to apply the approach for their courses. However, the proposed manuscript offers a different line of reasoning to advocate problem-based learning. Reasoning begins with a two-by-two, process-content matrix, which is very similar to the two-by-two, innovation-efficiency matrix used to characterize adaptive expertise. If student development were characterized as a trajectory in a two-dimensional, innovation-efficiency space, then questions such as the following could be raised: What characterizes more time-efficient trajectories to reach adaptive expertise? The proposed manuscript will use this line of reasoning to explore how problem-based learning may offer a time-efficient approach to developing adaptive expertise.