pbl

Thursday, February 08, 2007

So as most of you know this is my last year, last semester of nursing school.
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... less than two months to go!
The McMaster program thinks it is brilliant, for many reasons, but one specfic reason is a class called PBL. Short for 'problem-based learning'. This is one class that you can't get away from. It's in every semester of every year. And it's at least 3 hours long! It's no wonder why most students call it 'pb-hell'.
The idea of the class is that students can learn in small environments what they feel is important.
Sidebar-why the heck am I paying McMaster thousands of dollars to teach myself?
Anyway, as critical as I am of PBL in my final year of nursing, this semester is different...
My professor is so passionate about nursing education you can't help but care. Not necesarily about what he cares about, but his passion is so contagious I'm beginning to truly find out the things I am passionate about too.
In a 'normal' PBL class we have a problem, obviously, and then we discuss discuss discuss, support our points with the most current, up to date research and bore the heck out of ourselves coming to a solution and ultimately resolving the issue. It helps if this problem relates to clinical or some health care experience...
In my neo-PBL group this semester we debate controversial topics concering humankind. We are talking about AIDS in Africa, global warming, the doomsday clock, the health care system, bureaucracy and politics, the apathy of young people today, spirituality/religion and oh yeah, nursing. I'm constantly challenged to think on my feet. YES, think.
It's a crazy concept that I might actually think at University.
I feel like the last four years of school have been spent memorizing textbooks or quoting journal articles. In fact, I don't think I've had a unique thought, or at least expressed it, in PBL.
This new PBL is quite refreshing.
I'm critically thinking to my heart's content.
I love it. I love the challenge. I love figuring out what I believe in and the person I want to be, the nurse I want to be.
I love that I have a professor who cares what I think and wants to challenge me to my very core.
It's my last semester of nursing school and I'm thinking for the first time. So I'll say something I'd never thought I'd say: thank you PBL.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. -Soren Kierkegaard

posted by Rachel Pede @ 9:06 AM   2 comments