Over the past few weeks I have been speaking with students in passing about problem based learning (PBL), and group projects. I have found that students do not like these assignments just as I did not as an undergraduate. Two students at VT told me about their hectic final semester that included group projects in the majority of their classes. Some of these projects work better than others, but they agreed that it is necessary to have meeting time in class in order for these tasks to work.

After watching the video posted to the course scholar site, I believe that PBL is only one of many ways of advancing higher on Bloom’s learning taxonomy.

Not quite the food pyramid

When looking at this list, I know that it was only during challenging individual introspective assignments that I was able to get beyond memorization into creation and critique. Other methods deserve to be explored before heralding PBL as the only way to get students up this ladder. It may save everyone a lot of headache.