Chandra Reedy
Art History
University of Delaware

"I'm always the only humanities person in these workshops on problem-based learning," Chandra Reedy says laughing. While it's true that PBL has made greater in-roads in the sciences and professional schools, it is beginning to find welcome in the teaching of the humanities. Reedy's enthusiasm for PBL is a good example. For her, PBL stimulates "integration" of information and for her that essential component of learning makes a tremendous difference.

Integration and Retention

"I was teaching courses with lots of information, and students weren't remembering about three-fourths of it and I was discouraged," says Reedy. She attended a workshop led by Barbara Duch on Problem-Based Learning and decided to give the approach a try. "When the students apply information, they remember it," she says. "Working in groups, figuring it out for themselves, helps."

In a sense it was perhaps easier for Reedy to try PBL than it might be for other art history instructors. She tried it first in a course called "Science and the detection of art forgeries." Her biggest success, her most famous problem, centers on the "Kourous" recently purchased by the Getty Museum of Art in California. Is this marble sculpture of a youth a fake or the real thing? Students considered the available evidence--which included matters of style and art history as well as scientific evidence. Their assignment was to come to a conclusion and be prepared to defend it.

In-Class PBL Modules

Reedy does not use PBL for the whole course and unlike most PBL instructors she does not organize her students into groups with consistent and continuing membership. "I've sat in on courses where it's all done PBL, and I don't particularly like it," says Reedy. I still wonder if you're going to learn as much. It's not easy picking up a new teaching method when you've got your courses all set," she says.

At the moment, Reedy defines the learning issues, gives her students all the information and resources they'll need and has them do the work in class rather than outside of class. She hopes to make more scientific material available with the advent of new technologies like CD-ROMs and live Internet access.

Despite her caution, despite her reluctance to turn loose of frequent lectures, Reedy reports enthusiasm for PBL and it's influence on her students. "Students now do feel they are getting more out of the course," she says. And she says, "the more I do with it, the more I see how you could do it in courses where how to use it is less obvious, but I've had to do it gradually."

Learning to Facilitate

For Reedy, fundamentally the biggest challenge in PBL lies in the new role demands it places on faculty. In PBL when students are working on a problem, the faculty member acts more as a facilitator of learning than a source of information. "That's a harder role," says Reedy, "because it involves not only facilitating learning, assisting students in the framing of questions and approaches, but also facilitating interpersonal and group dynamics. As with knowing what to put together for a problem, what to give and so on, that's a bit of a challenge."