Architecture education may be able teach students more about real-life problem-solving than traditional subjects.

Field experiences are a fundamental and well-loved tool for teaching in the natural sciences. However, a number of concerns threaten continued incorporation of field experiences into courses, including increased class sizes, strained finances, legal liability, accessibility concerns, and the effects of COVID-19. Because of these barriers, it is…

This chapter considers problem-based learning, where engaging students in the application of knowledge to real-world, ill-structured problems can foster learning, improve communities, and inspire instructors.

Transforming curriculum by implementing Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in the college-level classroom helps students internalize the concepts of a course, improve their critical and reflective thinking skills, learn to problem-solve using questioning, and ultimately construct a better understanding of course concepts in a personally relevant way.…

This paper will present the argument that while Problem Based Learning (PBL) (or its variant Project Based Learning, PjBL) provides significant benefits and advantages to student learning in of itself, the full benefit of PBL is only completely realised as part of an "integrated" curriculum that provides a variety of learning…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an innovative educational approach that dates back to the 1960s. However, the twenty-first century goal of sustainable education poses a challenge to PBL, especially as it relates to isolation. Here we discuss the underlying issue of isolation in three respects. First, the information-processing model of PBL depends…

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unanticipated event that has exposed human fragility in an interconnected and interdependent world. While impacts are of a global magnitude, they have been felt at the most local of levels. Across the world pupils' daily lives and experiences have been directly impacted by government-imposed measures and restrictions…

Land use and development are complex issues rooted in ecology and environmental science as well as in politics and economics. This complexity lends itself to a problem-based learning (PBL) lesson for environmental science students. In the lesson described in this article, students investigated developing a city-owned, 13-acre site where a shopping…

We report on five-year professional development collaboration with a group of middle-school mathematics teachers during which their views of what constitutes a productive classroom statistical activity changed. The teachers' statistics instruction was initially typical in the US context and focused on producing calculations and following…

For some elementary science teachers, a unit on land and water brings nightmares of dirt and water all over the room. Several Earth science "kits" contain hands-on exercises that allow the students to "get messy" as they manipulate materials; however, these lessons may lack the necessary opportunities for students to ask unique…

A Sonogashira experiment was transformed into a problem-based learning platform for third-year undergraduate students. Given a target that could be synthesized in a single step, students worked in groups to investigate which method was the best for large-scale production. Through this practical scenario, students learn to conduct a literature…

Building sets, video games, and scatterplots may seem unrelated, but when they are combined into a problem-based learning (PBL) lesson, these elements join to create a unique learning experience. PBL lessons drive instruction by focusing learning and activities around a central challenge or question while providing a relevant, captivating, and…

Educators usually mean different constructs when they speak of open tasks: some may refer to pure-mathematics investigative tasks while others may have authentic real-life tasks in mind; some may think of the answer being open while others may refer to an open method. On the other hand, some educators use different terms, e.g. open and open-ended,…

The purpose of this article is to provide an example of using real world issues as tools for science teaching and learning. Using real world issues provides students with experiences in learning in problem-based environments and encourages them to apply their content knowledge to solving current and local problems.

This article examines the influence of context on student writing and discusses how the author used one methodology, problem-based learning, to foster more contextualized writing practice in ninth-grade English classes. Both research and practical experience suggest that students can benefit from writing practice contextualized within specific,…