Volunteer as a PBL Tutor
The first round of the new School of Medicine Integrated Curriculum has now been completed. One of the curricular formats added regularly was problem-based learning (PBL) in which eight or nine students met with a faculty tutor to discuss real patient cases. In these sessions, students with their faculty tutor, work through clinical cases and apply basic science concepts learned throughout the curriculum. The PBL sessions were highly successful with the students and faculty. Students gave high evaluation marks to PBL as a learning experience and to the facilitators for their teaching. We have only a few slots open for PBL in the upcoming academic year since almost all of the tutors from the past two years will continue to teach this coming year.

Example student comments about 2006-2007 PBL tutors

• Dr. XX is a fantastic leader!!! She ensures that everyone feels comfortable in sharing their opinions and ideas, while stimulating independent thought and analysis. She really encourages us to think through problems, rather than just feeding us answers. She is very nice and caring, and really takes a genuine interest in her students to ensure we get the most out of PBL. She makes PBL fun, and something that we all look forward to each week.
• Dr. YY is the prototype perfect facilitator. She encourages without being pushy. She shares knowledge without giving away the answer. She educates and fosters a love for education. She is comfortable in her intelligence and has nothing to prove. She will allow us to ramble on about something wrong and steer us in the right direction just as we are about to fall off the cliff. I truly feel as if she not only cares about our educational pursuits but she also cares about our emotional well being. If I was told she would not be my facilitator next year I would quit school and never come back. (O.K that's extreme but I might have to see a psychiatrist for unending sadness, a new clinical diagnosis.)If I won 30 million in the lotto I would give her 2 million. I absolutely adore her and want to be just like her when I grow up. She could bring some snacks once in a while though. ;)
• He made us work hard--when we posted he really made sure that we thoroughly researched our learning topic--which was great because we learned more and how to give better data. He has amazing insight, and really pushed us to justify EVERY test we wanted to run (sometimes he pushed too much and we started to doubt ourselves), but he made the point: why order a test if it's not totally going to change your course of care or help you better treat the patient?

Please complete the PBL Volunteer Teaching form (pdf)

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