Identifying learning, sharing knowledge and continuously transforming are crucial to the survival of an organisation (Sambrook and Stewart 2000). Learning is no longer regarded as a classroom activity. Instead it is increasingly seen as a continuous work based activity, necessary to cope with the changing demands of the organisational environment (Sambrook & Stewart). The rationale for the change in industry and business is that learning provides a competitive edge for organisations and institutions (Hosley, Lau et al. 1994) . As a consequence, organisations are striving to create more opportunities for learning; that is, to become learning organisations through strategies such as broader job structures, teamwork and re-engineering of communication structures. Managers are expected to manage the workplace as a place fit for learning. These changes present considerable challenges for managers as they grapple with an unfamiliar role.
Education has had to contend with similar challenges although these are driven by different motivations. Knowledge is expanding at an exponential rate in all disciplines and higher education is responding by encouraging the development of generalisable problem solving skills and active participation in learning (Boud 1985; Bourner 1996). This shift is not yet fully achieved.
Learner centred methods of teaching shift the educational focus from the teacher’s expectations to the individual student’s needs, while aiming to produce generic skills. Consequently such methods can help students understand work related problems and also offer the opportunity to test a range of solutions in the classroom before implementing them in the work place (Smith 2000; Hosely et al). As well as being relevant for the individual learner, according to Smith (2000), the processes required to transform information into useful knowledge are the same for learning organisations. Some of these processes are generic to good teaching. For example:
Ø Linking learning goals with assessment; occurs in education when assessment and appraisal are valid and reliable indicators of the learning objectives There are direct parallels in organisations when learning is measured by a tangible outcome.
Ø Communication; clear descriptive terms for key concepts in learning objectives are important for the classroom and at work. Dialogue, meetings and other interactive processes increase the use of knowledge in organisations.
Ø Quality; this is increased by learning and teaching experiences that focus on continuous improvement.
Other processes are more particular to learner centred methods, such as:
Ø Individualising teaching and learning experiences; this occurs by focussing on the specific educational needs of learners.
Ø Flexibility and innovation; critical thinking skills improve when students are encouraged and rewarded for thinking in divergent, non-traditional ways. Creativity, flexibility and innovation are rapidly becoming competitive advantages for organisations.
Ø Knowledge sharing; this is promoted by a supportive, group learning environment that stimulates creativity. Corporate cultures that openly share data and foster knowledge generation internally often produce innovative products and services
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Pbl is one of the educational innovations implemented in Higher Education over the past decades and it proves a useful comparison to organisational learning. Pbl differs from traditional forms of teaching in several fundamental ways. It is not confined to subject disciplines , which results in a more realistic context for learning. It is undertaken in small groups which has the advantage of providing a wider range of ideas than one student working alone can bring to a problem and, at the same time, participants are developing a broader repertoire of communication skills. Pbl also enables the individual to have a much greater control over their own learning than traditional didactic teaching. Instead of the “expert” devising the depth and breadth of content, which is the familiar situation, the individual develops their own questions; uses their own selection of resources to determine the answers; reflects on the quality of the information they research and presents this to the group. Ideally, after being involved in pbl, the student will have increased their understanding of their own style, they will have enhanced abilities to critique ideas, will be able to apply the new information to a realistic situation and will have a deeper understanding of group communication. A successful pbl experience will increase the participants self confidence in dealing with new situations and they will develop a holistic and professionally relevant response. It is clear from this description that the skills pbl encourages are generic.
Pbl was introduced in the fifth year of the Osteopathic Medicine course at Victoria University in 1999 as an attempt to meet several goals. This is the final year of the course and the introduction of pbl was aimed at providing a means of reviewing and contextualising as well as developing skills of independent learning.
The students worked in small groups ranging in size from six to ten students with a facilitator available for some time at each meeting. The facilitator provides limited guidance about the scope of the discussion but does not act as a source of factual information. The process of pbl in this course entails the provision of a loosely-structured patient history to each small group of students with the ultimate goal of collectively devising a comprehensive response after four group meetings. At the initial meeting the learners brain storm about all aspects of the material in the problem and they eventually develop a list of issues that require further research. In the following meetings they present the new information to each other and consider implications for the case.
With its learner-centred and peer group focus, it was hoped that pbl would foster individual responsibility for determining learning needs, self-confidence in dealing with new situations an understanding of the breadth and quality of available resources, a holistic management strategy and a better understanding of interpersonal communication. In other words, assist in the development of some aspects of life-long learning skills.
This pbl experience was assessed in two ways. Each student was asked to write a reflective essay about aspects of their pbl experience and in addition a three hour open book examination was held at the end of each semester. The essay was devised so that some of the assessment focused on the learning process while the examination fulfilled the usual educational goals of determining acquisition of new content.
Students and staff participated in an evaluation of this program. The evaluation used several methodologies, focus groups and the reflective student essays, and was aimed at determining whether the course had met its goals.
A thematic analysis was undertaken of the both the reflective essays and focus group transcript. Three main themes were identified; these were the group dynamic, the individual learning experience and an overall reaction to the innovation of pbl.
Learning involves making full use of experiences from cognitive, intuitive and emotional perspectives at the individual, group and institutional level (Long and Newton 1997). The outcome of learning is a “qualitative shift in perception” (Bowden and Marton 1998). In order to better understand the link between individual and workplace learning, let us first explore processes in learning that lead to change.
Three types of learning can be identified; single, double and deutero (Argyris and Schon 1974). Single loop learning is concerned with detection and correction of errors in the current operating system. Double loop learning involves the detection of errors with correction that involves finding solutions outside the current operating system. Therefore double loop learning involves changes and improvements to the system itself. Deutero learning involves changing the ways of thinking about error detection and correction, so that what results is greater reflecting on the learning itself and improving learning capabilities (Romme and Witteloostuijn 1999; Kay and Bawden 1996). This multi-levelled analysis of organisational learning has parallels in individual learning theory. Students are described by Marton and Saljo (1976) as being either superficial or deep learners. Superficial learners direct their attention to the surface information and adopt a rote-learning response; deep learners (analogous to deutero learning, and to a lesser extent double loop learning) search for the underlying meaning and develop an understanding of the connections between pieces of information.
The concept of the learning organisation was popularised in the writing of Senge (1990). The writer suggests that while individuals may learn by themselves, unless that learning is shared and acted upon, and unless the organisation itself has a capacity to change as a result, then there is no such entity as the learning organisation. The building blocks of learning organisations are initially individuals and subsequently teams who create, share and act on collective learning (Sambrook and Stewart 2000). The articulation of learning capabilities in organisations involves building genuinely shared visions (based on an understanding of shared values), fostering the ability of people to see larger patterns and understand interdependencies across systems, and increasing and developing capabilities of individuals to better enable them to become more aware of their own assumptions, i.e. develop critical thinking competencies. It is possible to draw a comparison between this form of learning and the osteopathy course if the profession of Osteopathy is regarded as the organisation into which the students are being gradually trained. Sambrook and Stewart (2000) investigated factors that inhibit and support organisational learning, and found that the factors could be grouped along similar dimensions. Factors that both enabled and inhibited organisational learning were clustered along the dimensions interpreted as culture, these included management (commitment and skills); employees attitudes; organisation of work and work practices and support of human resource development. These dimensions will be investigated further with corresponding evidence from our evaluation of problem based learning in the Osteopathy course.
Factors that supported organisational learning, according to work achieved by (Sambrook and Stewart 2000), were evident in an organisational culture that was dynamic and invested in its people. Factors that inhibit learning were evident in an organisational culture that was bureaucratic and task oriented. This was reinforced by a lack of senior management commitment to managing people.
New learning skills include building shared visions, seeing larger patterns and systems, and increasing reflective abilities (Senge 1999). The learning environment, however, is a major factor that determines these outcomes. Dealing with and understanding the “irrational” cognitions of individuals are also important factors , which are not adequately dealt with in the learning organisation model. Change involves uncertainty and risk (Senge 1999).
All students described the pbl experience as vastly different from any of their previous learning opportunities and while most were relieved that it was not more demanding of their time or energy than familiar learning experiences, this did not entirely allay their suspicions. This indicates another aspect of change introduction namely that the new situation not appear to be more labour-demanding than the system it replaces.
In both the focus group and the essays the students discussed their anxieties about undertaking change, and the need for safety. “ One of the greatest challenges of pbl is trying to work out how to deal with the group dynamics and the problems which arose from personality clashes”. “The thought of changing the whole process of our learning was quite a daunting task”.
The students took quite a while to become confident that they were the sole arbiters of their own learning as comments like “we were unsure of Dr. Carter’s expectations of what we were to get out of the problem” This initial wariness of the reliability of the new rules is not unexpected with such a radical change and reinforces the need for clear expression of the reasons for implementing the change and the anticipated advantages. Another assumption made by some of these students was that learning is something controlled by forces external to them, “one problem…where some members of the group thought some things were more important to discuss than other issues …was resolved by asking Dr Carter what she thought”. As the students are not familiar with actively determining their own learning due to their long experience of studying in a teacher-centred environment this comment is another manifestation of their lack of confidence about the changes in learning behaviour that pbl elicits. This is probably the first opportunity for these students to develop a clear idea about their own learning needs. This required a significant shift in attitude.
In the focus group students were asked, what changes were needed to adapt to the pbl learning style?
Their responses included “Need to change your attitude”
“A deal of compromise is required to find a common pathway”.
“It is easy to fall back into old patterns”
“All the study is group focused and all of a sudden you have to deal with what other people want to learn and make compromises. Sometimes you’re interested and sometimes you have no interest at all. The whole focus is that you have to help each other through to get what you all want to out of it. Sometimes you have to put your needs aside”.
These comments illustrate the importance that the group experience assumes in this new form of learning, and the difficulties encountered as learners learn from their mistakes together.
Another issue for students was level of trust and integrity within the learning environment, as embodied in their peers and the facilitator. This was manifest in their concern over assessment, and how their facilitator would deal with the assessment outcomes. The group had mixed feelings about commenting on their peers. There was a real reluctance to comment openly on peers, facilitators and the process as part of the assessment. Although there was a deal of confidence that Dr Carter operated ethically, the point was made that this might not always be the case with another facilitator. It was observed that pbl worked because Dr Carter is an “ethical person”, but that if an unethical person were in the same position it would be different.
It takes place at an individual level, as people are required to engage with new ways of learning and working collectively, and at the organisational level, where structural change is required to better enhance and support learning. There is a need to foster environments that encourage experiments, learning from mistakes and questioning ideas, action and attitudes (Senge 1999; Hosley, Lau et al. 1994).
Factors that supported organisational learning, according to work by (Sambrook and Stewart 2000), resulted in employees reporting increasing confidence and involvement in their learning. Employees expressed factors that inhibited learning in organisational cultures as a lack of confidence, lack of motivation, fear of exposure and resistance to change. The negative effects were also apparent when employees lacked information, or were provided with ambiguous ideas, about their new roles.
Senge (1990) highlights barriers to learning that result in defensive responses (irrational or unconscious thinking) in intelligent professional people. Argyris (1995) shows that individuals use defensive routines to deal with threatening situations and these have the unintentional outcome of inhibiting learning. Defensive reasoning may occur when the high aspirations of professional in organisations are juxtaposed against a fear of failure and a fear of embarrassment. Defensive routines may include diverting blame, outwards, upwards, downwards and de-personaling (blaming the system).
Several of these elements are identified by the osteopathic medicine students in their reflection about the pbl process. In particular they spoke of their own resistance to new learning styles and some expressed the belief that it was too late in their educational life to make such a change.
Defensiveness was demonstrated by one group was particularly troubled that the information presented in the problem did not correspond well with the amount of detail they usually have when they take their own clinical histories. This “artificial situation” was a stumbling block for further discussion and although some of the group members could devise successful strategies for dealing with the limited information apparently some of their colleagues could not and made their lives very awkward with constant criticism of the process. Although the facilitator tried to explain the educational rationale for the dearth of detail opposition was very strong and the resistance to creatively responding endured. There is a strong element of conservatism in this year level that may reflect the mature age of some of the students as well as the above-mentioned long experience of didactic teaching.
The groups who were the most comfortable with the experience devised their own systematic response to pbl and proudly described in detail the components of this response, “it did not take long for our group to develop a system which we basically followed for each new problem”. This suggests that these students after more than twenty years of formal education have developed a very structured notion of education and if an external source of systematisation for their learning is not available than they feel compelled to construct one themselves. This is not necessarily a negative outcome of the learning process, as it demonstrates a creative approach to a new and unfamiliar situation.
Factors that supported organisational learning, according to work by Sambrook and Stewart (2000), were providing work time for the learning to occur, support for necessary human resource development, and generally supportive work practices. Factors that inhibit learning included shift work and a work culture of generally high workloads and business pressures. These inhibitory factors were reinforced by limited resources for human resource development and the extent to which old-fashioned work practices were embedded in daily routines. Routines that have been identified as overcoming defensiveness include accountability meetings, BenchLearning, sharing knowledge and using conflict creatively (Argyris 1995).
Dealing with contradiction between group members provided the greatest force for change for some students. “It was an intense experience. We could not reach consensus about our learning goals. We used very limited range of resources and I feel I could have done better by myself. Like other group members I did not contextualise my research and this was a continuing weakness of our response.”
Overall this student has reflected on his attitude and in the following paragraph expresses what at first glance is an ambiguous reaction. He claims he must learn by himself as that is his preferred way of learning, however, in the next sentence (presented in his reflective essay) he notes how important the ability to work in a group will be when he is a practising osteopath. Furthermore he describes how much he values the skills he has acquired from pbl. This apparent contradiction is a demonstration of the value of reflection. After thinking about pbl this student has decided to change some of his preconceptions and in second semester he is working less autonomously.”
In order to change learning in organisations, it is necessary to change individual learning (Argyris 1995, (Tranfield, Duberley et al. 2000). As noted above one of the paramount goals of pbl is learning through experiencing a new process of thinking not through accumulating factual content. This does seem to have been realised for some students.
“PBL is knowledge, not solution based learning. It’s more about the process. It is the journey that is important, not the answer”. Another pbl goal is to stimulate deeper engagement with the information and there is some evidence that this too was experienced by some students.
“Helped you to look further and take you out of the comfort zone. You learn to question things more and become more open minded – to look at the big picture”.
In transformational learning, application is important, however the individual also needs to be ready to learn. Dispositions for learning include, “itch to know” (propositional), “itch to do” (practical), and “itch to be” (experimental) (Kay and Bawden 1996). In addition there is an increasing interest in the interaction between the student’s approach to superficial or deep learning, and the type of engagement provided by the learning experience (Bowden and Marton 1998). Aptitude is not fixed. People who prefer superficial learning may experience deep learning if the environment provides experiences that encourage and constructs those learning opportunities. Without such an environment, however, there would no opportunity for deep learning even for those who favour that approach.
There was a noted development of critical thinking as the students developed confidence and familiarity with the process, “I was used to referring to a textbook and basically regurgitating what it said……however as we progressed…I believe that I learnt to read information and think about it”. Another comments that “I have become more critical of the sources I read”.
During the evaluation discussion, students were asked, how they thought the learning process they had experienced made them different from other graduates.
“PBL is different for everyone. You get given a problem and the way you attack that is completely up to you – so every group probably has a completely different way they approach the problem. In that sense PBL helps refine your own learning skills. It’ll help me because I have a more fluid way of approaching things and I feel more comfortable working in a group.”
“I think it also helps you to be a little more dynamic in the way you approach the work. When faced with a difficult diagnosis you are better able to go down a number of paths for a solution, rather than being rigid.”
“It encourages you not to takes things at face value. I find myself questioning almost everything. It’s difficult to take anything on face value after PBL.”
It is a maxim that the group can learn more than the individual. Knowledge sharing is different to information sharing in that it involves helping one another develop new capacities for action (Senge 1999). Unless learning is shared and acted upon, there is no learning organisation (Sambrook and Stewart 2000). Groups become critical learning systems. The development of the group and awareness of systems (therefore developing systems thinking), leads onto further group learning, and this is best achieved through actual experience (Kay and Bawden 1996). Leaders must recognise that everything is interconnected (Senge 1999). According to Senge, it takes a certain shift in perspective, and a lot of patience, to learn to work together and function as a group. Working in groups in effect spreads the power to lower levels (Romme and Witteloostuijn 1999). “The resulting knowledge cannot be in one person, therefore there is nothing for any one person to possess”
There are fundamental processes involved in establishing effective groups. According to McDougall & Beattie, (1995) these involve preparing participants: briefing on the role and nature of learning groups, and highlighting differences between learner centred and traditional teacher centred approaches. It also includes stressing the need for individuals to take responsibility for their own and their peers’ learning; and reminding participants of group dynamics such as task and process skills and managing conflict. Using an icebreaker exercise to establish rapport; and meeting on a regular basis to undertake a relevant learning task encourages networking so that learners exchange information and ideas Critical to establishing effective groups is providing facilitator support for group learning. Roles played by the facilitator may include those of resource person, mentor, coach, catalyst, reinforcer, and evaluator (Smith 2000).
There were several relevant themes to the above in the students’ responses to the group. There was a unanimously negative initial reaction to working in groups. “I have not always enjoyed working in groups for study purposes”, “I was well aware there were some students who had a reputation for non-attendance …and there were members who were known for being outspoken and taking control… and “my “Nostradamus” like predictions were proved correct”. For some students their initial anxieties about the groups were well founded “In the beginning God created the heavens, but when it came to creating the perfect PBL group, the sign of divine intervention was far from expressive” and “there was generally an adversarial attitude with members attempting to score points of each other”.
Another student describes her experiences thus,
“I was worried about how the group would function due to the inclusion of two argumentative individuals and for a while I adopted the role of peacemaker. I relinquished this role as it was too draining and there were few arguments afterwards. The overall response was that few of our members attended and I tended to adopt their behaviour. ..
The issue of conflict between group members was raised in those groups that did not function well. Lack of commitment to the group, a failure to share the research load equitably and a desire to make the group time as short as possible were described, specified as negative indicators for group function. Lack of individual assertiveness and the desire to maintain peace, wariness about provoking conflict and not feeling confident about how to manage such a reaction were personal reactions which were identified by members of the less well bonded groups It is worth noting though that for some people there was still a positive group reaction even though they expressed considerable reservations.
Students expressed the view that they were aware of the need to learn tolerance to function effectively in the group. An unwillingness to compromise by some group members was frustrating and counterproductive to achieving common outcomes. Students spoke of the need to be “loyal” to common goals. Most students attributed these responses to other members but some described it as their own attitude “even from a young age I hated working in groups as people did things as they saw best and often that did not conform to what I had in mind”. It is worth noting that this student concluded his overall negative response to pbl by remarking that he felt the experience of group work had increased his awareness of the need for individual commitment to ensure a “successful completion”.
“I learnt how to tolerate some of my colleagues’ different values and this is possibly my greatest learning experience from pbl although I was always aware of the compromises I was making. I am not comfortable using many resources and I should change this situation. I could not attend as many sessions as I would have liked due to personal reasons and my absence sometimes was poorly tolerated.”
There were five groups. In only one of the five was there unanimous agreement that the group worked well. The factors that were identified by members of this group as contributing to their success were toleration of individual difference;
“everyone contributed fairly equally …according to their individual abilities by taking turns, being the scribe for the case, asking questions, and presenting their researched information and fielding questions”; and a responsibility to the group “we were all driven by our own individual motivation, whatever it may have been, but we all acknowledged our commitment to one another to achieve our goals in resolving each problem”. It is worth noting that the inverse was provided as the reason for the self-proclaimed non-functioning groups.
According to (McDougall and Beattie 1995), a full briefing of groups could help prevent problems arising. This could involve highlighting the potential for conflict and how this could be dealt with when it arose, being generally sensitive to potential problems with group dynamics. The facilitator’s role is to assist in the development of the group, in general to model critical thinking and specifically to model some of the roles that individual group members could adopt eg. the leader, the motivator, the sceptic, the scribe, the challenger. It is not the role of the facilitator to provide information or to limit the depth and breadth of questioning. One of the practical problems with this course was that there is only one facilitator for the five groups and so each group has limited exposure to this person. Although this was far from ideal, it does demonstrate the need to have a creative response to limitations and restraints that are present in the learning environment. Therefore, creativity is not only required of the students adapting to a new method of learning, but also of the facilitator or organisation.
In the study by (McDougall and Beattie 1995), gains in working in learning groups were perceived by participants as being an increase in knowledge and experience of relevant issues, opportunity to share concepts and ideas, opportunities for relating theory to practice, and insight into personal development and self knowledge. Another important outcome was that participants thought that their experiences in working groups would assist their future learning. A number commented on their ability to transfer skills learnt to the workplace. In addition, personal skills helped build confidence and communication skills.
These gains were also evident in students’ reflections:
“We developed a method of brainstorming on the whiteboard which helped keep a track of our thinking. I learnt a lot. We made use of a reasonably wide range of resources and they were selected according to the nature of the problem. I developed a better means of formulating specific questions and I even found I was using this same strategy in other areas. I realised that sometimes the negativity of some of my colleagues was influencing me but I think I became more resistant to this in the later stages of the semester. I am not content that I can apply the information to the specific context but I think this will improve if we brainstorm at the end of the problem time. Although some of my colleagues may resist this as it may indicate a need to undertake more research. I think I adopted a more proactive style in the late stages and this seemed to help the group focus. I think a negative attitude dominated sometimes although at other stages we had some good debates and any differences were left in the room. I plan to adopt a greater leadership role next semester if this feels appropriate.”
“I was initially wary of this new learning experience partly because of its negative press from last year’s students. It was not this bad. It was a new experience to have a group work collectively as previous experiences of groups have really just been individuals banded together but not really working as a team. I developed the ability to focus my research and this had the result of making the case, and the learning, more realistic. It is reassuring to realise that I can find information relevant to my clinical practice. The one person who “spoilt the dynamics” could not be persuaded to work with the group and he only paid lip service to a collective response. I learnt that it is not possible to change some people, from this experience”.
Learning occurs when people share information. Information is key to effectively learning in groups for individual and organisations. Learning in groups requires openness in communication and free access to information (Romme and Witteloostuijn 1999). Information management is the basis of knowledge management in organisations. Communication chains must convey data, informational and specific knowledge. Individuals and groups need to develop effective methods to gather, sort, cull and disseminate data, and then to break it down into meaningful units of knowledge (Smith 2000).
There are two types of knowledge; explicit and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is described in formal language, and consists of technical or empirical knowledge. Tacit knowledge is automatic, oral and resembles intuition (Stewart 1997). Tacit knowledge is often taken for granted and less valued than explicit knowledge, and can only be shared when individuals volunteer information about their beliefs and perceptions, or describe and demonstrate their skills and experience. This type of knowledge, if harnessed effectively in organisations can often lead to significant competitive advantage when for example, subjective intuition and employees’ hunches lead to innovation or creative problem solving.
Hawkins and Winter (1997) describe a model by which such a change process can be activated. Their model is Action, Communication, Reflection, Ownership and Nurture (ACORN). It highlights the complexity inherent in change processes in institutions, and the need to prioritise management of the transformation process itself in order to achieve change associated with educational policy and practice. Dissemination of information needs to be carried out in such a way as to maximise the chance of bringing about improvements in educational policy and practice.
“The first lesson to be learned is that dissemination does not necessarily lead to change. Dissemination means more than simply telling academic colleagues about excellent practice. Dissemination has been successful when educational practice has changed in response to the disseminated excellent practice”.
The issues of relating information was fraught with difficulty in the pbl experience. Relying on others for the reliability of the newly found and self-determined information proved an issue in the groups. There are numerous descriptions of reading from notes which were unselectively transcribed from texts “We seemed to find the information and then accept that it was true” another reaction which is slightly different is “other people’s research did not always cover points I would like it to cover”. “It’s not the information. Sometimes it’s the skill in locating the information.”
A considerable number of responses, however, described a gradual development of increasing confidence in determining the depth of learning. Initially “I had difficulty making my research relevant to the problem…..I was used to referring to a textbook and basically regurgitating what it said…however as we progressed… I believe that I learnt to read information and think about it”. Another comments that “I realise that I have become more critical of the sources I read”.
In the evaluation of the PBL program, students discussed the facilitator’s role in establishing parameters and directing the inquiry into relevant information
“It took a while to work out how to respond and what boundaries to set on our learning. We found it frustrating not having all the information usually available in a case history. I found that my research tended to be non-specific in the early stages and I think I could improve this. I became more aware that my reading was not well prioritised and I am trying to respond constructively to this realisation. The group was not well motivated and this influenced my attendance. I would like to do some more pbl but ideally in a group where people shared similar attitudes to learning.”
One strength of pbl that is identified by several students is the use of a broader range of resources including “outside organisations or other health professionals, rather than texts”. This is regarded as being both more enjoyable and more relevant and there is also an implication that using people as resources is an experience that is more closely aligned to professional practice than solely using textbooks. Although one student did mention using his group members as resources he was describing the sharing of information sources between colleagues.
According to Smith (2000), every person has their own unique set of information that can be activated through a process of self-awareness and reflection. Knowledge sharing and information sharing are different things. Sharing knowledge is not about transferring information from one person to another as in the case of information sharing. It is more a case of genuinely being interested in helping one another to develop new capacities for action, and it is about creating a learning process (Senge 1999).
Institutions are striving to create more opportunities for learning, that is, to become learning organisations, through change strategies such as broader job structures, teamwork and re-engineering of communication structures. Overall it is evident from the student responses that any change is threatening even if this occurs in a supportive environment. This emotional consequence is often insufficiently addressed either in the planning or the implementation of innovative practices. Managers, facilitators and organisations have to accommodate the individual in these transformations. They need to allow for and anticipate negative reactions and dispositions towards this change and recognise it as part of the change process. Interventions should be informed by the dynamics of this process. Initially students displayed a lack of confidence, lack of motivation, fear of exposure and resistance to change during the process of adapting to a new learning environment and method in their pbl course. Out of that process came both negative and positive outcomes, and in addition some of the positive outcomes were only realised much later.
The students expressed a growing understanding that it takes time to work through group issues and establish group norms, and they valued these aspects of the learning. There was also an increasing understanding of the need to relinquish, or adopt roles, at appropriate times, the changing nature of roles and the choices involved in taking leadership responsibilities. Students discussed their learning experiences of change scripts in group members, as they experienced resistance and defensiveness and the irrational played out in group dynamics.
“It may not be the process for everyone but it is a good experience for everyone to undertake. It makes you question a lot of things about yourself. It makes you more tolerant of others.”
Learning at times is not an immediate realisation. Through the process, however, the students themselves gained a better understanding of how others work through change and their defensiveness to change. They witnessed and reflected on the change management process. This type of (deep) learning is analogous to deteuro and can inform learning in organisations and institutions. It is also worth noting that some students responded creatively to the challenge by constructing their own structure, while others were unable to develop a consistent cohesive response. Despite the difficulties in learning in groups, students spoke of gaining “joy in learning”. One students wrote, “I enjoyed PBL. It has been a while since I have said that about a subject. …I am very (her emphasis) surprised to write that comment”.
There is an increased likelihood of a good response to change if the goals of the change are made very clear and if they are effectively reinforced by the experience. It is also vital to the success of any innovation that the participants trust the proponents of the experience and this has important consequences for assessment, in an educational milieu, and for broader outcomes in an organisational situation.
Through the evaluation of a innovative learning methodology, problem based learning, we have shown that as well as being relevant for the individual learner, the processes required to transform information into useful knowledge (i.e. learning that leads to action) are the same for learning organisations.
Factors that contribute to deep learning involve individualising teaching and learning experiences; flexibility, creativity and innovation involving developing critical thinking skills; and knowledge sharing; promoted by a supportive, group learning environment that stimulates creativity. Institutional researchers and planners are pivotal in their contribution to knowledge sharing. There is greater scope for information that is disseminated within institutions to be acted upon, yet currently the focus is on what is shared and reported, rather than on how that knowledge is learnt and used within the organisation. In this groups within the institution must become critical learning systems.
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The authors would like to Merrin Canning of the Workplace Studies Centre for her invaluable assistance during the evaluation of the pbl program and the editing of this paper. We would also like to acknowledge the students in the fifth year Osteopathy course, for their participation and insights during the evaluation.