New Perspectives in Science Education

For several years, an interesting alternative for science education at university level has been Problem Based Learning. It is an educational vision that promotes open, reflective and critical learning with a holistic approach to knowledge that recognizes its complex and changing nature, and involves a community of people who interact collaboratively to make decisions in relation to different problematic situations they must face.  In this sense, PBL is the mean by which it is possible to establish the conditions conducive to active, contextualized, integrated and comprehension oriented learning, providing opportunities to reflect on the educational experience and to practice applying what have been learned. However, PBL implementation is not an easy task, since it depends on several critical factors, mainly related to the characteristics of institution, teachers and students. Therefore, implementation of hybrid PBL is quite common in universities that maintain a traditional structure and organization. However, this does not constitute a contradiction with the purpose of promoting self-directed, but rather implies that teachers constantly review and adapt their strategies for implementing, adapting to the specific educational learning situation. In this paper the results of the application of a hybrid-PBL strategy in a General Chemistry course from an engineering faculty is reported. The strategy had to be adapted to a rather structured design to facilitate the learning of students with no previous experience in self-learning. The study focused on the achievements in learning concepts, procedures and applications of the subject of Ionic Equilibrium, considered especially difficult for students.