Digital Commons Network^™

Creating A Learning Space In Problem-Based Learning, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

An important aspect of PBL problems is the affordances that they hold for engaging students in discussion of important content knowledge. In this paper, I argue that one can analyze a problem in terms of a deep problem space and a broader learning space to identify the conceptual ideas for potential engagement. The problem space refers to the specific ideas and concepts that are part of the goals of the problem at hand. The learning space includes those aspects of the problem space and also includes the broader space of related conceptual ideas such as the anatomy and physiology related …