Problem-Based Learning Case Applications

Instructor: Christie Burton

Strategy:   Case Study

Course:     TECH3101

Case: 

The corporate executive group of Dollar Mania has been reviewing the performance of its stores. Dollar Mania is a discount retailer that is located in every major part of the country, in every economic sphere. Its employees, like its customers, represent a wide range of the U.S. population.

The executive group has noticed differences among its stores in several areas such as turnover, absenteeism and promotion rates, and in other store performance indicators like revenue, store cleanliness, and customer satisfaction surveys. Dollar Mania’s CEO practices a hands-off management approach and pushes down authority to the store managers (SMs) to make decisions about incentives and reward systems for their employees.

Prior to being hired as a store manager, SMs are required to complete a comprehensive training program.  During training a profile is created on each SM, including age, gender, and personality characteristics. The profile also contains information detailing strengths and weaknesses of the SMs as documented by their 360-degree performance evaluations. The executive group is considering which of these factors could be the cause of the differences among their stores.

Questions

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Instructor: Susan A. Walsh

Strategy:   Case Study

Course:     3201 Pathophysiology

Case: 

The case study introduces a previously uncovered topic in class. The case study is a problem the students must solve, explaining why a patient with a liver transplant is dying 3 years after the transplant. The case study states that hepatitis lead to the transplant.

There are 5 types of hepatitis, each with it's own set transmission modes, time to illness and recovery, severity of illness, and presence or lack of chronic and carrier states. The cause study makes several types and mutilple infections plausible, leading to 3 possible correct solutions to the scenario.

The students are grouped with limited time (therefore divide and conquer the material) to solve the problem. A planned quiz is given at the end to assess learning

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Instructor: Antoinette Miller

Strategy:   PBL in Physiological Psychology

Course:     PSYC 4120

Case: 

As groups, students are given case studies drawn from the literature (mostly exhibiting some memory, language, or perceptual disorder) and are required to identify the condition, which brain area or areas may be malfunctioning (and how they should function normally).  We have informal report-out sessions the following class period, students submit writeups of the group's findings, and at the end of the term we are having a class presentation session where each group presents 2 of their cases.

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Instructor: Susan A. Walsh

Strategy:   Case Study

Course:     Pathophysiology

Case:

A case study used a fictitious scenario which presented a problem. The students were asked to read the related chapters the night before, and then asked to solve the problem. There were 3 possible correct answers.

Students worked in conveniently assigned groups and could use any resource available (books, internet, teacher, other students) to solve the case study. A representative from each group stood at the end and gave each group's solution.

An individual quiz was given at the end of the class.

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Instructor: Catherine Matos

Strategy:   Floating Facilitator

Course:     Math 1231

Case:

Students had been given snack-sized packets of M&Ms early in the semester and given a group project to determine the distribution of colors of M&Ms. For the second part of the project, students were asked to consider why the color distribution had changed from mostly brown, to a fairly even assortment of red, blue, green, yellow, etc. The groups were given a short scene where the characters from the first project considered the same question, and thought that it might be to get people to eat more candy (and thus purchase more). The groups were asked to come up with a study to test this hypothesis. Included in their project packet was an article from the Web summarizing a Business and Marketing Journal article that had conducted an experiment similar to the study they were being asked to design. The link to the complete article was also given to the groups.

    While the instructor had not formally lectured or otherwise covered Experiments, she had talked about surveys and how they cannot establish cause and effect. She was a little dismayed at the number of groups who initially thought that a survey would be a good way to investigate this particular project. She was also surprised at the number of students who didn't remember/realize that the color distribution had ever been different. While the groups were discussing the problem, the instructor circulated around the classroom, listening to their approaches, and asking guiding questions. Many of the groups really ran with the problem, thinking of very creative ways of blinding the participants, and many different combinations of colors to try. Some considered the differences between children and adult groups, something the instructor had not considered.

    The class following the initial group discussions was spent partially as a whole class discussion, hitting a few main points to make sure all groups were generally on the same page (primarily that it was an experiment that they had to design, and not an observational study), and to briefly talk about a few of the finer points on experimental design that the project did not directly address.When the written designs for the projects were turned in the next week, the instructor had mixed results. The project had asked for the groups to design the study, and instructions had been given out to write it up as a proposal for a study, with details about how to select the participants, how to carry out the study, etc., as well as the objective of the study. While several groups did a fine job, there were several where the writeup had obviously been divided up among the students, and they had not been in complete agreement, so parts of the study did not agree with each other.  Several groups designed their study as an observational study, resulting in many confounding variables, in spite of the instructor's pointed questions. In the future, asking for a rough draft before the final report is turned in will be done.  In general, however, the instructor was pleased with the outcome- most groups successfully understood the basics of experimental design. She found that very few students had read the journal article that they had been pointed to- a second revision for the future might be to ask them to write a brief commentary on the paper before handing in their group projects.

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Instructor: C.R. Narayanaswamy

Strategy:   Problem-Based Learning

Course:     Finance

Case: 

For Problem-Based Learning, the problem should be interesting and relate to the real world. It should require students to identify relevant information and obtain it from the instructor or independent research. The problem should also be complex enough. Further, the content objectives of the course should be embedded in the problem. 

Keeping the above in mind, I wrote the problem entitled, The Carlsons’ Dilemma. The problem was written for undergraduate business students in an introductory core course in finance. The problem covered capital budgeting concepts. The problem was about a couple who was considering starting a small business or work part-time and at the same time get a college education. The problem required students to estimate cash flows for different alternatives. All the required information to analyze the problem could be obtained on the internet.  

After writing the problem, I sent it to the Problem-Based Learning Clearing House at the University of Delaware for publication. The submission was blind-reviewed and published after revision. 

Before submitting the problem for publication, I tested it in the undergraduate core finance course. There were about 56 students in the class. These students were assigned to twelve groups. Each group was asked to discuss the problem independently first and then participate in a class discussion. There were several such rounds of group discussions and class discussions of the problem. At the end of the class period, I obtained feedback from the students on the Problem-Based Learning method. A summary of the feedback is as follows:   

Main Results of the survey 

1. 40% of the class liked the PBL method

2. 53% of the class wanted more PBL type instruction

3. Students found discussions by the entire class very beneficial after they had a chance to analyze the problem in smaller groups.

4. The students who did not like PBL method also did not like working in the groups they were assigned to.