Is technical education getting too...technical?

[Loki]

If the faculty and the students aren't committed to the approach then of course it's going to fail. The objections you raise against PBL in this post can be raised against pretty much any approach to teaching and examination. They are challenges, not a knock-down arguments.

Except if you apply this method in average situations, you not only fail to get any of the benefits, but you're also paying all of the costs.

This is true and no doubt much of PBL's popularity comes from a strong selection. Another important aspect of PBL is helping students become proficient at PBL. As for motivation, there are limits to how much faculty can do, but motivation isn't exactly a static, monolithic and untouchable thing!

It also seems to entail having a class of 10 people, whom the instructor can help individually. Good luck doing that when you have 30.

Re. solving problems without the basics, the idea is of course to use the problem to learn and understand the concepts and vice versa. You can have lectures alongside the group-work and self-study. Students who just can't cut it, well, perhaps you'll have to fail them.

That's not how the American university system works. The median grade in the social sciences is a B+ (it's B in the hard sciences). The only consistent method of getting students to do their readings is to quiz them on those readings (or require brief assignments) every week, and the students absolutely loathe doing that. Being incapable of helping your group during group-work doesn't seem to deter people from being lazy.

Btw, iirc you're forced to teach a lot of students things they really don't want (or possibly need?) to learn, aren't you? I imagine this makes your situation a pretty difficult one with few fantastic solutions.

Is there anything that students really need or want to learn? *shrug* It's probably easier to get people interested in war than in difference equations. And we do bring up moral questions, because the median student finds it easier to relate to those. But then those same students are incapable of applying the things they just read or heard to those "interesting" moral questions. I've actually ran some regressions to see if the problem comes from people being unfamiliar with the information or not knowing how to approach the readings, but being a poli sci major or a junior/senior had no effect on test scores.

[Khendraja'aro]

Except if you apply this method in average situations, you not only fail to get any of the benefits, but you're also paying all of the costs.
It also seems to entail having a class of 10 people, whom the instructor can help individually. Good luck doing that when you have 30.

There are several methods to do problem based learning - and the point of PBL is that it creates a "hands off"-approach for the teacher who is relegated to moderator status.

While PBL is not the end-it-all, it has been shown that a change of learning methods is a good thing. A teacher who has four to five different methods under his belt is more efficient than one who does only one or two - it works in the other direction, too, though. Too many methods become detrimental again (for whatever reason).

So, please don't scoff against teaching methods until you've tried them for yourself. And tried them honestly, not with an attitude of "this will never work".