Lecturers as problem-based learning (PBL) students talked about the PBL process as finding and being in flow

The students in this study (Barrett 2010) were lecturers undertaking a module on problembased learning as part of an education development Postgraduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. They worked in two PBL teams with eight students in each team. The PBL students in this study were all lecturers from a variety of disciplines in higher education in Ireland. At the centre of this study was the research question: “What can we learn about problembased learning (PBL) from how lecturers, as PBL students, talked about the PBL process?” All the PBL tutorials for both teams were video and audio-recorded. Firstly the study identified and explored the different ways each team talked about the PBL process, that is, the interpretive repertoires. There were consistencies and contradictions together with agreements and conflicts in the ways both one student and a team of students talked about the PBL process. Secondly, the study involved deriving the illuminative concept of the PBL process as finding and being in flow by analysing the interpretive repertoires about the PBL process across both teams. Flow is a state where students are working on a challenge and performing at their optimal best with creativity and where one action flows to the next action. Students talked about being in flow in terms of ‘doing something completely different’ and ‘creative’ when faced with a ‘scary’ and ‘different’ challenge. But there were stages of finding flow before experiencing flow. Students also talked about the process being ‘confusing’ and being ‘lost’ and being bored and ‘not interested’ at times. Lecturers experiencing the PBL process as students, is a powerful way for them to understand the potential of PBL for creativity and flow and then to adapt the PBL process to the context of facilitating the learning of their own students.