The social work undergraduate degree has been 100% problem-based learning for the last six years and now have two years worth of graduates in the field. The degree is run in flex mode with a number of residential sessions interleaved throughout the Program.

Social workers require a wide skill set to be effective in their profession and it was the belief of the School that the development of these skills would be best served by employing a PBL approach. PBL develops enhanced interpersonal, team work and problem solving skills, when compared with more traditional approaches to teaching and learning. Emotional intelligence also seems to develop more quickly with PBL.

Recently, Scot Aldred (CQU's problem-based learning coordinator) conducted a focus group with fourth year students and asked them what they thought about problem-based learning in the context of their studies at CQU. While all of the students said that they preferred this approach, a few admitted to liking a break from the methodology when they would undertake an elective from another school.
One of the students said: "....I can just sit back and relax. I just need to do what they want and that is it...".
Some students found that other, more traditional focused lecturers, were uncomfortable with the wide range of literature cited in assignments submitted by them.
All of the School's staff are committed to the PBL approach and believe that this approach produces superior social work graduates. To date, anecdotal evidence gathered from the employers of social work graduates suggests that they are very happy with the organisational and interpersonal skills displayed by CQU students and believe that in many areas, they are better than graduates from other institutions that use a more traditional approach in their teaching.

The assessment involved with the social work program includes:

• group presentations
• peer assessment
• self-assessment and
• the maintenance of a reflective journal or problem log.

The assessment is exhaustive and is intertwined with the learning.

The introduction of PBL was not all plain sailing. As with traditional classes, there are times when inter-personal matters can obstruct and hinder the learning.
The flexible learning environment can make it more difficult to pick up on these issues quickly. Sometimes the first time a coach will know of a problem is when there is an inflammatory email, or message board posting; or maybe an emotional phone call from a student asking for help.
This may well be more a function of the medium rather than PBL, however, the need to work together in groups/teams may exacerbate the situation. We will need to work out some strategies for identifying these issues earlier, and providing some intervention/support.

Overall, our students have indicating that they believe the PBL methodology to be superior to traditional educational approaches, although they do acknowledge that PBL means more work for them. The feedback obtained from the Student Evaluation Section supports this.
We believe that the quality of our graduates is correlated to the problem-based learning we employ in the social work program.