Teaching And Organising: The Case Of Problem-Based Learning

Abstract

As far as its teaching method is concerned, an educational institute can choose from several options, e.g., case studies, plenary lectures, distance learning, correspondence courses, work-shops or problem-based learning. The selection of a teaching method can be considered as the choice of the teaching institute’s production technology, and has therefore implications at both the strategic and operational level. The strategic implications include features of the product and structure of the organisation, while the operational implications pertain to the implementation of the teaching process and the quality control of the end product. According to the standard contingency theory in organisation sciences (Daft, 1992), there should be a fit between all the strategic and operational decisions in order to achieve good performance. This paper adopts contingency theory to develop a framework in order to answer the following question: How should an educational institute be organised — at the different levels — in order to facilitate the effectiveness of problem-based learning? So, although the issue of strategy formulation is discussed in passing to set the scene, the focus of the current paper is on the issue of strategy implementation, particularly through a number of elements of organisational design.