Mistakes in Duisburg

Important annotation:

Unfortunately, I misinterpreted the purpose of the PBL checklist in the first place. When I had to fill it in week 2, I thought I was asked to evaluate the work / functioning of the tutorial group as a whole.

Since I was highly satisfied with the group, I evaluated the work as excellent in almost every category. However, when learned that we have to evaluate ourselves, I corrected my PBL checklist quickly after.

All statements in the following essay refer to the corrected version which had not been given to the tutor yet.

The words of the essay have been counted excluding this annotation.

Part I: Comparison of the PBL checklists of week 2 and week 6

a) Point out the differences and similarities between the two checklists.

The first similarity between the two checklists can be found in the category “self-study“. I rated myself “sufficient“ here both times.

I did not have big struggles in school with learning so I already anticipated in week two that this will not be the biggest problem.

While the workload is much bigger in university than it was in high school, you also have way more time to do study. I discovered that time management and discipline are the keys to success. If you split up your work in a smart way, it is definitely doable and I feel well prepared when I enter the classroom.

The second similarity is the post discussion. I rated myself “sufficient“ in both reports here as well.

Like in week two, I still very much enjoy the exchange between my fellow students about the learned material and I think I do a good job overall. As explained in part a), I feel well prepared and think I have a good understanding of the topic. I also find opportunities to add my own ideas and views on the discussed material. This part of the tutorial meeting really helps me to find out which learning goals I had covered sufficiently previous to the meeting and which ones might require a second approach.

The first difference appears in the category “preliminary discussion“. I saw an increase from “sufficient“ to “moderate“.

My problem with the preliminary discussion appeared to me after a while. I have struggles in finding the balance between working towards the (more or less determined) learning goals and actual discussing.

I believe that if I were able to focus more on the given material and if I really tried to grasp the main aspects of the content, finding good learning goals would definitely be possible without any help given by the tutor. Here you can clearly see the lack of experience I have with PBL. In high school, finding the question had never been part of the exercise.