What is Problem
Based Learning?
Problem-based learning (PBL) is a curriculum development and instructional approach
which simultaneously develops problem solving strategies, disciplinary knowledge
bases, and skills. Students learn in the active role of problem-solvers confronted
with an ill-structured problem which mirrors real-world problems. The curriculum
design is an ill-structured problem, based on desired curriculum outcomes, learner
characteristics, and compelling, problematic situations from the real world.
Teachers develop a sketch or template of teaching and learning events in anticipation
of students' learning needs, investigate the range of resources essential to
the problem, and arrange for their availability. Students actively define problems
and construct potential solutions, while teachers
model, coach, and provide support, making explicit the students' learning processes.
(from the Center for Problem
Based Learning at IMSA.)
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What is Critical Thinking?
[Critical thinking is]...the examination
and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order
to find out whether they correspond to reality or not. The critical faculty
is a product of education and training. It is a mental habit and power. It is
a prime condition of human welfare that men and women should be trained in it.
It is our only guarantee against delusion, deception, superstition, and misapprehension
of ourselves and our earthly circumstances. Education is good just so far
as it produces well-developed critical faculty....A teacher of any subject who
insists on accuracy and a rational control of all processes and methods, and
who holds everything open to unlimited verification and revision is cultivating
that method as a habit in the pupils. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded...They
are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees,
without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence...They
can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices. Education in the critical faculty
is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens.
William Graham Sumner (1906, pp632, 633 Folkways)
(from Center for Critical Thinking)
What is a WebQuest?
According to Dodge (1997), a WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented
activity in which
students interact with information gleaned primarily from resources on the Internet...WebQuests
may be labeled inquiry-centered or problem-centered learning by some, while
others may view them simply as activities that provide students the freedom
to learn by accessing multiple resources. However they are characterized,
WebQuests are reflective, fluid, and dynamic. They provide teachers with the
opportunity to integrate Internet technology into the course
curriculum by allowing
students to experience learning as they construct their perceptions, beliefs,
and values out of their experiences (Beane, 1997).
Kenneth Lee Watson , WebQuests in the Middle School Curriculum
What do any
of these things have to do with
Evaluating Web Site Information on the World Wide Web?
The World Wide Web, which is part of the Internet, has grown as a favored source
of information for almost anyone who has access to a computer and a connection
to the Internet. The information that is available on the the Internet is likewise
not restricted or restrained. Anyone can put anything on a Web site. Anyone
can create a Web site as a repository of information. Therefore, the problem,
for anyone using the Internet or Web as a source of information, is to be able
to ascertain the accuracy and reliability of the information that is available.
If there is a wide sprectrum of truth and fiction delivered by search engines,
how does one decide which information is correct and useful and which is not?
The searcher must apply some standards or criteria to the garnered data in order
to be able to decide whether or not it should be accepted, or to what degree
it can be accepted. These criteria are readily available through the intermediary
process of critical thinking. Critical thinking requires the judicious application
of standards, or criteria, or values to the information in question in order
to decide its merit. Through the filter of critical questions, the searcher
can decide to believe the information or not and can then act according to this
best available information.
WebQuests are problem based inquiries which use the Internet as their primary
source of information. The participants have problems presented to them which
they must employ deductive and inductive reasoning strategies to solve. They
gather information, organize and critique it, propose solutions, test the solutions,
and arrive at reasoned and documented conclusions.
A pragmatic exercise in learning to evaluate information on the Internet
would require the student to use problem based learning strategies and critical
thinking techniques in order complete a WebQuest to find accurate and useful
information on the Internet on a particular topic. A structured WebQuest would
provide the guided discovery for the initial phases of the project. Having used
PBL strategies to focus on a specific issue within the general quandry of Internet
information, the student would apply critical thinking techniques and questions
to evaluate the information gathered from various searches. The student could
then construct their own WebQuest for a particular topic, either discipline
specific or interdisciplinary, and use the PBL strategies and critical thinking
techniques to inculcate the principles of skeptical appraisal of information
on the Internet.
This professional development tutorial attempts to do just that. The person
who completes the tutorial will be learning how to use the Problem
Based Learning Model and how to ask questions for critical
analysis of evidence or information. A convenient vehicle for these endeavors
is the WebQuest method which subsumes both
critical thinking and problem solving within its attributes. As a bonus, the
topic for the demostration of the utility of PBL and critical thinking is practice
in evaluating various sources of information on the Internet. The person who
completes the tutorial will have rehearsed the components of these three methods
of teaching and thinking.
The best place to start would be, as usual, at the beginning.