Problem-Based Learning Quotes

Learning results from what the student does and thinks, and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing the student to learn.

Learning by doing is the only way I know how to learn.

Well, part of it is a longstanding belief - it's been in our education establishment at least since the 1930s - that somehow children should be allowed to discover knowledge for themselves, that they should construct their own knowledge. This has surfaced most recently in connection with mathematics instruction, where the idea is that they need to discover how to add for themselves. Rather than being taught how to add, they should construct this knowledge on their own.

People learn more if they're learning in directly engaging ways.

I see no reason why there still are large lectures in universities throughout the world. When people gather, they should be interactive, problem-solving, and experimenting; not passively listening.

I now know that I learn by solving problems as they arise. Rarely do we learn significant lessons, or significantly improve, any other way.

That education is not an affair of "telling" and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it is written about.

Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just 'virtual reality.'

...methods are more important than facts. The educational value of a problem given to a student depends mostly on how often the thought processes that are invoked to solve it will be helpful in later situations. It has little to do with how useful the answer to the problem may be. On the other hand, a good problem must also motivate the students; they should be interested in seeing the answer. Since students differ so greatly, I cannot expect everyone to like the problems that please me.

My strong feeling is that we must learn more about how we learn. I'm convinced that we learn by struggling to find the solution to a problem on our own with some guidance, but getting in and getting our hands dirty and working it.

The drills we do, where you're telling kids to memorize things, don't actually work. What works is engaging them and letting them do things and discover things.

I think the only value of being in school is that everything you do should be a problem that needs to be solved. Everything should be a challenge.

It is part of the educator's responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.

A practical part of my teaching is to provide demonstrative, hands-on experiences.

If you improve education by teaching for competence, eliminating schooling, and connecting with students, the test scores will improve.

I'm a craftsman type of teacher. I don't like the thematic type of teaching that takes place in a lot of colleges.

The potential for engaged learning is inversely proportionate to the knowability of the outcome.