Kurt Burch
Political Science
University of Delaware

Kurt Burch was a new professor when he signed up for a workshop at the University of Delaware on Problem-Based Learning. "I was the only social scientist in the group and little did I know that this was Delaware's first foray into PBL," he remembers. Problem-Based Learning attracted him immediately, but not for the usual reasons.

The Political Dimension

"My reaction to PBL was really 'political,' " he says. "PBL increases participation by minority groups, by women, by shy people. It makes class very democratic."

"In a typical class the professor is speaking or is in a one to one conversation (i.e. only two people actively participating)," he continues, "whereas in groups, everybody can and does participate, not just the men or the talkers."

"Also, the groups aren't competitive; they're trying to coordinate themselves which is to say socialize themselves."

Big and Small--'Pure' and Less Pure

Burch practices a "pure" form of PBL in his upper division courses, courses such as "Contemporary Global Problems," or "International Relations." In both courses on day one, he forms the students into working groups whose membership will continue unchanged throughout the term. "I do that so that those who just hate it, just hate the idea of working in groups, can drop," says Burch. "I tell them up front: 'This is how the course is going to be run.' "

With his freshman level courses (which are on the large side at 80 or so), he uses a more modified approach. "I break things up with active learning activities and some problems, but there I keep everything very focused, very directed toward ready answers."

How a Problem Goes

What how does a typical problem in one of Burch's upper division classes unfold?

"Here's a problem," Burch explains: "A retired auto worker is arrested in his home in Illinois and a request to have him deported to Israel is filed on the grounds that he was a guard in a Nazi concentration camp. What to do? Extradition: that's a global pattern, but is it the law that really governs here? I mean, the man said he came from Poland when he entered the U.S., but it turns out he's from Russia, but the Russians don't want to extradite him, Israel does. But Israel didn't exist when he entered the U.S. Why do they get to extradite him?"

"So you see how this goes: we start with what appears to be a simple situation, a simple case of resisted extradition and it quickly evolves into something much bigger, a problem that begins to touch on many aspects of global politics, history and economics, not to mention the place of the UN and several other important dimensions of international relations."

Assessment

Burch tells his students to "have no fear." There are no tests, he says. All grades come from written work and group work where the quality of work counts more than "correct" answers . Participation counts, he reminds them and that peer evaluation of their efforts will be part of their grade. This arrangement seems to work well for Burch, he says.

"One of the things that's especially good about PBL is that tolerance for and respect for alternative ways of thinking about a problem which it engenders," says Burch. "You have to think that this tolerance inevitably rubs off, that it spills over into a more generalized tolerance for the people behind the points of view and those people may be black, Asian, Hispanic, blonde women, acne-affected tall guys with glasses--all kinds of people."

Roles and Problems

Burch acknowledges that the different role PBL teachers must play--the facilitator versus the sage--can be difficult. "It's easier to go into discourse mode and just tell them the answers, or so it seems," says Burch. "It seems so simple and quick, but you don't know if they're learning the material that way."

A long-standing personal goal has helped Burch face the challenge of the new role. "One of the things I've always wanted to improve in my teaching is the ability to ask good questions--questions that were not too leading and yet not too narrow, too specific. So I say to myself, 'Okay, if I can fight the urge to give them the answers, I'm working on learning to develop the ability to ask good questions!"

Practical mind tricks may offer a good entrée into the whole problem-based attitude. For example, Burch says when he was faced with the challenge of converting lectures into "problems," he remembered a lesson from his English grammar class in school about how easy it is to shift a few words in a declarative sentence around in order to turn it into an interrogative. "It's the same paradigm for shifting lectures to problems," he says.

Contact:
Kurt Burch
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science and International Relations
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716-2574
Telephone: (302) 831-1936
Fax: (302) 831-4452
E-mail: kurt@udel.edu