Paper prensetations
Clancy, Alison: University College Dublin, Ireland
The Design, Development and Implementation of a PBL Curriculum within Nurse Education
Educationalists have recognised the importance of the role of the student as an active participant in their learning. PBL is an effective tool to foster this; it allows students to develop critical and creative thinking skills as well as enhancing students’ innovation capabilities through the process of problem solving. Problem-based learning is an alternative pedagogical model that differs considerably from the traditional chalk and talk didactic approach. It can be considered one of the most significant educational innovations in the last thirty years. However with the considerable advantages of this approach, it is to be wondered why then is it not used within every educational institution around the world. The literature discusses the advantages and some of the disadvantages of PBL, it looks at the new role of the student, the role of the facilitator and also the issues surrounding the assessment process, but the literature fails to shed light on how exactly to design and implement a PBL curriculum. Therefore this is an area that warrants further exploration.
This paper attempts to discuss the issues that might exist when attempting to design and potentially implement this type of curriculum. Issues of resistance to change, fitting PBL into an existing traditional programme, identifying core people within the organisation who have an interest in PBL and any social and political constraints will be explored. This paper is a prelude to a PhD, which hopes to explore the issues amongst educationalists who have implemented PBL and the difficulties if any that they faced. By doing this, it might provide some practical information and advice to those educationalists that have an interest in PBL but do not know where to begin.
KEYWORDS: curriculum design, PBL, nurse education
