What is your opinion of the PBL learning system at Mac? So, this question is mostly for nursing students, I am a first year nursing student and so far I am loving my clinical class, my clinical placement, I'm even finding anatomy and psych enjoyable. PBL, however, I am not so keen on...that is to say, I can't stand it. It's not so much the content (although that can get pretty dry) and not a problem with my group since I like the majority of its members, I just hate the way it is organized and set up. I feel like I have no idea what is going on in that class, and I never understand what exactly we were supposed to learn from it. I guess what I really want to know is, does this get any better?

I'm in Nursing too (first year)! I too find Anatomy to be very interesting and enjoyable. As for PBL, I have met upper-year nursing students who absolutely love it and others who detest it. However, I have met nurses who graduated from McMaster in the local hospital in the area where I reside, and they said PBL was actually a good learning experience for them. I used to work for a manager of a clinical unit (in the same hospital) and she told me that she completed her BScN here and enjoyed PBL very much. She said that practicing PBL will help you in the long-term because that will allow you to view the situation of your patient's health from different angles. I guess that would be beneficial for us in the future.

I would like to hear the opinions from upper-year students on this too.

I am in my 4th year of nursing- going to graduate in April- so I've done a LOT of PBL- and after a while, you get a liitle sick of it :(

I would say it all really depends on the type of learner you are- if you're very independent and a creative thinker, PBL is great for you- if you like doing tons of research and critical appraisals, also good.

In first and second year you are lucky to have only small classes for PBL- in 3rd and 4th year you have groups of about 20- they're still trying to keep the #'s down but they want larger classes to keep the $ down as well. With the larger groups, it gets a bit disorganized, but still feasible.

You most certainly get used to the format after doing it for a few years- it becomes very repetative- I was a little lost as well when I began, but you get used to it... Nurses who graduate from Mac's PBL style learning are also taught to think outside of the box and not always look for the cut and dry solution to everything- this is one of the benefits of PBL- in the upper years, we get to study what we want and how we want. PBL is also great for learning how to communicate professionally with your peers, how to give peer feedback, as well as learning conflict resolution strategies (I probably sound like your handbook now )

Ask your tutor to clarify the objectives at the beginning of your case scenario if you are not understanding what you are supposed to get out of it- they should be clearly defined for the tutor and she should relay them on to you- or maybe you guys need a better way of synthesizing your information?

It does get better, in that you'll understand it more, but most people don't tend to enjoy it at the end... Also, it depends a LOT on the tutor, some are great, others don't really help

Hope that helped!