Issue 1, March 2006

Welcome to the first issue of FACiLiTATE ? A PBLNetwork Newsletter. The Network was launched at the PBL Symposium thatwas held at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth on Friday,November 4th, 2005. The Symposium and the launch of the Network was theresult of collaboration between NUI, Maynooth and NUI, Galway.

Over sixty PBL practitioners attended the Symposium. Our keynotespeakers were Professor Esa Poikela and Dr. Sari Poikela, organisers ofthe Finnish Problem-Based Learning Network PROBEL and Karen O?Rourke, Associate Director of the Centre for Excellence in Enquiry Based Learning at the University of Manchester.

Workshops were conducted during the morning session to discuss andrecommend areas of interest that the PBL Network could address. Theafternoon session was divided between feedback from the workshops andthe keynote addresses.

We also used the forum of the Symposium to launch the Handbook of Enquiry and Problem-based Learning: Irish case Studies and International Perspectives, an initiative of Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT).

FEEDBACK FROM THE SYMPOSIUM

Feedback forms were returned by 58% of the attending delegates. Table 1gives a breakdown of your views of the symposium and Figure 1 shows theaspects that were found to be most useful about the symposium.

Table 1: Participant ratings for the Symposium

Feedback from Groups at the Symposium

The objective of the group sessions was to provide recommendations forthe type(s) of activities the network should investigate. The mostcommon were training which was identified by 75% of the groups as an area that needed to be addressed. 75% of groups also identified resourcesas a key component; this ranged from sharing experiences and knowledgeto a space to pool subscribers? experience in the form of publishedresearch, problems and strategies. Research was listed by 62.5% of groups as being an area of interest, particularly, opportunities for shared research.

NETWORK COORDINATOR

The role of the network co-ordinator is to manage the network activitynecessary for the achievement of the proposed outcomes as submitted tothe funding body. Jackie O?Kelly was appointed as Network Coordinatorin February 2006.

NETWORK STEERING COMMITTEE

The purpose of the steeringcommittee is to represent PBL practitioners in Ireland on the PBLNetwork and to support the development of the network. The steeringcommittee is comprised of representatives of the five partnershipinstitutions in conjunction with members of other institutions aroundthe country.

Partnership Institution Members

Institution Members

WEB PRESENCE

We are in the process of setting up a webpresence for the network. In order to inform each other and demonstratethe range of PBL activities in Ireland we would like to have a link offthe National site to your PBL site. If you do not have a PBL webpage/site for your course or module we would encourage you to developone and email the url to jackie.okelly@gmail.com

The PBL Directory

The PBL Directory is a central,open-access, international, searchable database from which people /institutions can ascertain the ways in which practitioners around theworld are using PBL. The search facilities incorporated within the siteallow users to search the site according to a number of criteria. Thefour main criteria that you can search by are country, institution,subject and practitioner. Once you have chosen, you can move throughthe directory by clicking on subsequent links. On reaching practitionerdetails, you can return information on a specific PBL practitioner byclicking on the ?Details? link next to their name. As of the date ofthis newsletter the directory contains the details of 97 courses at 83institutions across 27 countries. We encourage you to add your name anddetails to the directory. This will once again highlight the broadrange of PBL activity currently being used in Ireland. The address forthe PBL Directory site is located here .

TRAINING

In response to your feedback at the symposium on the topic of training,we will shortly be conducting a training needs analysis to ascertainthe type of training needed to assist you as a PBL practitioner. Inorder for any of this to be effective we need your participation, themore feedback we receive the more informed we can be in the decisionmaking process. As soon as our website is active we will conduct thissurvey.

In the immediate future, we are running the following sessions:-

Scheduled Training Course

We are running a Getting Started with PBL training course on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006.

Scheduled PBL Workshops

The following two workshops are scheduled to run on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 and are free to PBL Network Members.

Workshop 1: PBL and Library Resources

This workshop is targeted at librarians who are currently working withPBL participants. If you are interested in collaboration, research orbest practice of library resources within a PBL environment weencourage you to register for this workshop.

Workshop 2: Assessment in PBL

This workshop is targeted at PBL practitioners who are interested incollaborating, sharing and developing assessment strategies in PBL.