Problem-based learning meets case-based reasoning

Abstract

The modern education community agrees that deep and effective learning is best promoted by situating learning in authentic activity. Many in the education community have put in place constructivist classroom practices that put students into situations where they must make hypotheses, collect data, and determine which data to use in the process of solving a problem or participating in some kind of realistic analysis or investigation. Research in case-based reasoning (CBR), which provides a plausible model of learning from problem solving situations, makes suggestions about education that are consistent with these educational theories and methodologies and which can provide added concreteness and detail. In this paper, we show how CBR's suggestions can enhance problem-based learning (PBL), which is already a well-worked-out and successful approach to education. The computational accounts CBR provides of reasoning activities, especially of knowledge access, access to old experiences (cases), and use of old experiences in reasoning, suggest guidelines about materials that should be made available as resources, the kinds of reflection that will promote transfer, qualities of good problems, qualities of the environment in which problems are solved (e.g., affordances for feedback), and sequencing a curriculum. The two approaches complement each other well, and together, we believe they provide a powerful foundation for educational practice in the constructivist tradition, one that at once combines lessons learned from classroom practice with sound cognitive theory.