Encourage testing ideas against alternative views and alternate contexts. Provide opportunity for, and support reflection on both the content learned and the learning process. Focusing and commenting on critical design features, the authors illustrate how these constructivist instructional principles can be applied to a PBL environment. These design features include learning goals, problem generation, problem presentation, and the role of the facilitator. From the principles and PBL's critical design features we find that PBL actively engages the learners in authentic tasks, activities, and environments.
Learners are the constructors of their own contextualized knowledge.
They are expected to think critically and creatively, and to monitor their own understanding. The learners also take part in a team where social negotiation of meaning is an important part of the problem-solving structure. This article provides a basis for understanding constructivist instructional principles and how they can be successfully incorporated into a problem-based Learning instructional design. The article further illustrates the point that PBL is a superior design over other problem or case based approaches because of its emphasis on authentic tasks, problem solving, contextual learning, and the application of thinking and metacognitive skills. Back to Annotated Bibliographies .