The lived experience of problem-based learning: Food, Friendship and PBL

Since 2021, I have collaborated with students to create four blog posts.  Collaborative blogging with students has since informed my Students as Partners research direction as part of the Centre’s Research and Publication project, led by Deputy Director, Kevin Haines. The first blog was titled ‘Gen Z,  Post-95ers/95后  satori generation さとり世代 and teachers’ use of emojis’ (2021).  It was written during lockdown in collaboration with Pre-sessional students, and identified that the connotation of the 🙂 emoji was no longer a positive one.  The second blog ‘Co-Creation of a Blog with CALD Pre-sessional Students’ (2022), was an opportunity for Pre-sessional students to interview an IFP student about her approach to a summative reflection task which the PS students had to complete themselves.  This resulted in a poster style ‘artefact’ which has since been incorporated into teaching materials at CALD.   

 

The creation of artefacts is an important feature of Pre-sessional courses at CALD, and is the focus of this third blog.  Artefacts are made by students to communicate to each other and their tutors the findings of their research and discussions in Academic Reading/Listening Circles and Problem Based Learning group tasks.  Students choose the forms the artefacts will take.  These can be varied and are often very creative.  For example, PPT presentations, both recorded and in person, posters, Infographics, quizzes, Pecha Kucha and websites have all been produced.  Students have also filmed themselves in TV panel debates, Newsnight style, to discuss and evaluate their topic.  Students in my group this year role-played a hypothetical funding bid to secure financing for improving sustainable transport in London.  Their student audience judged whether their bid was rigorous enough to be awarded the cash and a ‘green’, or high score, for their PBL work.  On the Pre-sessional, PBL artefacts are part of formative assessment and given a weekly RAG rating, or a red, amber or green score.  A green score indicates that students have gone beyond expectations and their artefact shows critical engagement with the content, concepts and differing perspectives on their chosen topic.  

 

In discussion with PS 10 students last year, it became apparent that what goes on behind the scenes of artefact creation was a promising topic for a collaborative blog, and for further research.  The lived experience of PBL artefact creation became the focus of a discussion group and revealed that PS students often spend many hours each week discussing, preparing and refining their artefact outside of class.  Far more hours, it seemed, than tutors and course designers may have intended the task to take.  Time spent on artefact creation involved a smorgasbord of tasks and skills.  Students grappled in their groups with understanding the task instructions, complex academic discourse, and how to use new academic databases to research.  Artefact creation often involved learning how to use new platforms, apps, and software.  Navigating group work and different personalities was an additional skill to acquire. The list is not exhaustive. All of this while they were adapting to the stresses and excitements of living and studying in Bristol, in a different language, far from home.  I recalled the image of a swan sailing effortlessly by, while the onlooker is unaware of strenuous paddling below the surface of the water.   

 

It was clear from listening to the students that during the time spent on PBL artefact creation, friendships were formed, and a familial level of support generated.  Their PBL group provided a familial social structure and a ready-formed social safety net during the short, intense, high-stakes course.  Other tutors have also noticed students describe their PBL groups as having familial qualities.  The PS 10 students combined their PBL discussions and artefact preparation with a weekly meal.  This seemed to stand in for a weekly family meal.  It was a weekly ritual, grounding, and a way to explore Bristol together through its different restaurants.  The students were able to chart Bristol through PBL artefact creation and their restaurant choices.  They described how their PBL discussions became less formal and stilted as they became more familiar with each other, and how this familiarity supported deeper critical thinking, and even improved their academic achievement in the task. 

 

Their account vividly brought to life several themes in the related literature.  In particular, the importance of “the affective dimensions of critical thinking and the idea that critical thinking is embedded in social, embodied and relational contexts, rather than being a decontextualized and individualized set of skills and competences” (Danvers, 2016, cited in Zembylas, 2022: 2).  The social and relational aspects of critical thinking were evident in the friendships, familial structures, and rituals of the PBL group.  Affective and emotional exchanges and events peppered how the students recounted the process of artefact creation and critical thinking, recalling Jasper’s (2018) framing of ‘feeling-thinking’ and Massumi’s (2015) blending of  ‘thinking-feeling’.  Both investigate how thinking and feeling cannot be picked clean into a Cartesian dichotomy, and how this might liberate concepts of critical thinking. To these, the students added a ‘feeding-thinking’ twist, the process of artefact creation being quite literally embodied as they ate together; thought processes immersed in dipping sauces, physically mapped to Bristol’s restaurants. 

 

The students’ insights have implications for how PBL and group work is approached on both IFP and Pre-sessional courses.  For example, course designers can factor in the time students are spending outside of class on creating group work artefacts and avoid group work bottlenecks in units and across programmes. In-class training on group work skills and managing the affective and emotional nature of group work and critical thinking could benefit many IFP students.     

 

Below is the discussion with the PS 10 students about their experience of PBL artefact creation, in the form, fittingly, of an artefact. 

 

 


Danvers, E. C. 2016. “Criticality’s Affective Entanglements: Rethinking Emotion and Critical Thinking in Higher Education.” Gender and Education 28 (2): 282–297. 

 

Jasper, J. 2018. The Emotions of Protest. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.  

 

Massumi, B. 2015. Politics of Affect. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. 

 

Zembylas, M. 2022. Revisiting the notion of critical thinking in higher education: Theorizing the thinking-feeling entanglement using affect theory. Teaching in Higher Education, 1–15. 

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