Transcript

DAVID WRIGHT

I'm David Wright. I'm a lecturer in motor control and sport psychology here at MMU. Sort of arrived at MMU last September, and Damian said this was the style of teaching that we were going to go for. I didn't know a huge amount about what problem-based learning was at that particular moment in time, so it took me a while to sort of get my head around how it worked, sort of sat at the back of a few of Damian's sessions and kind of watched what he was doing, how he was interacting with the students.

It was definitely a bit of an eye opener. Like I said, it was something I didn't really know too much about what problem-based learning was. As a relatively new lecturer, definitely, I had the view that it was my role to be the information provider. And of course, with problem-based learning, that's not the case. It's much more the emphasis on the students finding out the information for themselves.

So every time you sort of speak to the students, you ask them a question. They give you an answer, and then they immediately want to know, is that right or is it wrong? And that's not what we want to be getting across. We want them to be working out for themselves whether it's right or wrong. So trying to develop that effective questioning style to guide them to where they needed to get to without specifically telling them was something I found a little bit of a challenge. It definitely took me a good couple of months' practise before I got comfortable doing it.

I think it's definitely a beneficial way for the students to learn. In problem-based learning, the emphasis is much more on them going to find out the information that they need. And I think that process of actually finding the information for themselves rather than just being told it is very beneficial. Because, in addition to learning about the content, they're getting quite a lot of other valuable skills. You know, how to find the research that they need, how to interpret it, that kind of thing, as well as the content of the-- the specific motor control content that we're focusing on.

WOMAN

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