Comment by zipy124
11 hours ago
That's exactly quoted at the start of the article?
"Problem-based learning tends to do worse than traditional schooling in medical education. An influential meta-analysis by Albanese and Mitchell, for instance, found that students required more time studying, had worse exam scores and ordered more unnecessary tests compared to traditionally taught students. "
Problem-based learning is exactly the "figure it out" method.
> students required more time studying, had worse exam scores and ordered more unnecessary tests compared to traditionally taught students.
While I didn't do any additional looking into it -- this is often my biggest gripe. Is the _goal_ to have better exam scores and require less time studying or is the goal to be a better problem-solver holistically?
When faced with a novel problem that neither the problem-based learning group nor the traditional schooling group - which performed better and by what metrics?
---
It seems silly to say "This group who was instructed to rote memorize material could indeed perform better on a direct memory recall examination." and then close the door on problem-based learning.
I feel like many of the more alternative teaching methodologies have unclear learning goals. What is "holistic problem-solving"? How can we measure it? Do we know that conventionally taught students lack it? Is it hard to acquire? Is it even important?
When I first went into the workplace, it took me a bit of time to adjust to the non-academic setting. You think differently, you work differently. I discovered and learned problem-solving skills that I was not taught in school. Frankly, though, I'm glad I was not taught those skills in school, because they are easy to learn in the workplace, especially if you have a solid theoretical grounding (something which is a lot harder to pick up on the job).
To the extent that generalized problem-solving is a real thing, I think it probably boils down to the ability to quickly internalize information and draw connections, which conventional schooling already focuses on anyway.
I think one claim is that the pile of rote memorized info is a required basis for novel solutions.
It seems to me that exam scores are a better metric of the underlying thing we care about, the ability to accomplish things in the world, than solution skill when faced with novel problems. Even if you're a very innovative person leading a project to do something entirely unprecedented, most of the tasks you need to do, text you need to read, etc. will not be novel.