Last Friday I attended a presentation on Problem Based Learning applied to an undergraduate program. The main goal was to teach students how to find, analyse and report information rather than simply providing them with pre-digested content.

This resulted in a subtantial increase in retention, from around 50% to 80%, but the best outcome has probably been that students graduating from this program had a significant advantage on the labour market. Employers indicated that the graduates from this university were more proactive and overal more efficient than others because they were not limited to the content that they were taught about. The fact that they were taught to build their own knowledge was a real advantage.

In my mind, this is the university of the future, and the future is now. It is time that faculty stop thinking that what they teach is gospel. The role of faculty staff must shift from teacher to tutor. Students must be guided, not taught in order to better prepare them for the reality of the workplace.