Teaching

PBL cases come in parts, with the students receiving them piecemeal over several class periods. This has become known as "progressive disclosure." When they receive the first part of the case, the groups read it over and decide what they know about the unfolding problem and what they need to research. They divide up the jobs among the group members and everyone heads off to the library, the lab, or the Internet to search out the answers. The next time the class gets together, the students in their groups share their findings with their teammates. The process is repeated as the case unfolds and the denouement is reached.

One of the big knocks against the use of PBL is the question of coverage. Critics lament that using cooperative methods limits the amount of material that can be covered by an instructor. True enough. But let us recall that "covering the material is not the same thing as learning." Surely we have enough Fs and Ds in our classrooms to remind us of this fact! Also, it is well to remind ourselves that we faculty are survivors of the lecture system. No wonder we love it. Do students with different learning styles always have to head off to the social sciences and humanities to find a home?

Evaluating class discussion. Business school case teachers do it all the time. It's not uncommon for them to base the final course grade on 50 percent class participation. And this with 50-70 students in a class! This sends shudders up the spines of most science teachers. Yet, what's so tough about the concept? We are constantly making judgments about the verbal statements of our colleagues, politicians, and even administrators. Why can't we do it for classroom contributions?

Most of our discomfort comes from the subjective nature of the act, something that we scientists work hard to avoid in our work-a-day world. It may be that we are even predisposed to become scientists because we are looking for a structured and quantifiable world. Flowing from this subjective quandary is the fact that we feel we must be able to justify our grades to the students. We are decidedly uncomfortable if we can't show them the numbers. This is one of the reasons that multiple-choice questions have such appeal for some faculty.

Webster's defines evaluation as follows: To determine the significance, worth, or condition of usually by careful appraisal and study. The words "careful appraisal and study" serve to remind us that evaluation is a complex process requiring mental effort in order to establish worth or value.

Evaluation of scholarly writing has always been a central activity in the academic enterprise.