What is PBL?

Traditional learning most often consists of what we know, among other things, as ‘ass-to-the-bench teaching’ or ‘tank passer pedagogy’, which covers the teacher’s view that you can fill students with knowledge in the same way as you
fill up the tank on your car.

Today, it has become more widespread to focus on student -activating or application-oriented teaching
with the student as producer .

There are many names!

A methodical approach to student-centered and student-activating work is what is called PBL .
PBL is an abbreviation of several methodological approaches:

P rocess- B ased L earning
P roject- B ased L earning
P roblem- B ased L earning.

To make it as uncomplicated as possible, you can say that Process-based learning is the general umbrella term under which Problem- and Project-based learning belong.

Process-based learning

– is a holistic approach where the focus, as the name also suggests, is on the work process itself and not the product itself.

This is also what we work with through our learning process, which you can read much more about in another post.

When working with Process-based learning , it is therefore about the work process itself and the learning the students acquire through the structured work process.

Problem-based learning

In Problem-based learning , students are presented with a given problem from the real world. After this, the students must find a lot of knowledge about the subject themselves. Finally, they must put that knowledge into play when working with possible solutions.

So students must:

Investigate a problem and apply critical thinking and source criticism.
Brainstorm over possible solutions.
Analyze the situation and possibly clarify other problems that need to be solved in order for their solution to be realistic.

Project-based learning

In Project-based learning , students are presented with complex problems that have many possible solutions and opportunities for immersion and exploration.

After the students acquire knowledge about the problem or topic they have to work on, they have to create a product or artifact,
that addresses the problem.

Through this process, students work with critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity as well as personal and social responsibility for their own learning.

When students are engaged in project-based learning , they get to work with real problems, solution-oriented group work, as responsible for their own knowledge production
– all things that end up with a product that the students create themselves.

Does that sound familiar?

I think all teachers know this process?

It is called group work, subject weeks, focus areas or anything else that has always been used in school to create this work process – more or less consciously.

As students research the topic, plan and produce their products, they will find gaps in their knowledge level that will require them to delve deeper into the topic to again gain more knowledge.

It is an iterative learning process where students constantly move back and forth between the stages explore , invent and create .

We have already talked about 2 other student-centered approaches,
who work with student activation and with the student as producer: Problem -based learning and Project -based learning. To add to the confusion, all 3 things have the same abbreviation – PBL .

So you can say that PBL stands for both Problem – Project- and Process -based learning.

As a common denominator, they have 3 approaches that consist of the students being presented with a problem, then the students themselves find a lot of knowledge about the subject and finally they have to put that knowledge into play for possible solutions.