arsi123 (Offline)

Sorry, only just saw this message. Hope your interview went well. I don't like PBL much but it would be difficult to find somewhere with no PBL and we do have a lot of lectures as well. I really like the uni and the campus, the union is kind of good too. PBL- you will be given a case on a monday and your group will come up with learning objectives, you will then go through them on a friday. What i love about keele is the people and the atmosphere, its also great that you get hospital placements from your first month Hope you get an offer.

It's something like 50:50 in the first year. You'll get lectures on the majority of the pertinent topics and they're there to give you a guide to the level of detail you need to know and to consolidate what you do in PBL. In the second year it becomes less about the lectures, though you still get several per week, and more about the PBL.

There's plenty of time to do your own thing and have a social life. I wouldn't worry too much about that. You will have to work fairly hard, but it's not an all-consuming black hole of work. It's not overly strenuous to keep on top of. It starts to get dodgy when you let it pile up. My advice would be to not let that happen!

Hi,

Yeah, it did go really well, I wasn't that sure when I came out, but clearly! :L Thank you! I'm so happy!
Erm, basically just go in and try and show them your personality and try and be yourself! Don't prep too much, they don't like practised answers, just show how much you want it and it should be fine.
I'm really sorry but I'm not allowed to tell you what they asked, maybe think about what you would say to the obvious questions though! There is an ethical question, and be prepared to be confused! :L
Good luck, and let me know how it goes. x

That's fair enough.

My advice, though no doubt you'll've seen it many times on here, would be to apply wisely. Don't waste your application slots.

PBL is generally inefficient and slow, but arguably helps information retention. Lectures are quick and you get through more material, but I find them much less memorable. Neither are ideal, but at Keele you get a combination and can tailor your learning towards one or the other if you prefer a certain way of learning.

Also, given that BOD below has answered basically all your questions to me quite comprehensively, I'm curious as to why you asked me some of them.

It really warms my heart to see people researching and thinking about a course before they apply to study it.

There is no such thing as an entirely PBL course. All PBL courses have supplemental lectures.

Whether you'll like it or not is difficult to say before you've experienced it. I don't think it's the best way to deliver preclinical medicine. But I don't think lectures are either.

In my first year I had lots of spare time, when I finished at 5 I would pretty much go to the bar for most of the time. There is plenty of time to do other things, but as long as you do a fair bit of work one night you would be ok. You'll quickly establish how much work you need to do, it's hard to give a figure because everyone is so different I suppose.

Not everyone likes PBL, but I think it's just a more interactive way of learning, so it stimulates me more. Its not like we don't have lectures, PBL just creates a nice frame work. As for ethnic mix, i imagine it's typical, I haven't really noticed anything strange or startling

There are 2 tutor led PBL sessions a week with a student led session on Wednesday.Keele isnt pure PBL, it has a mixed curriculum. To inform and add to the knowledge you find out via your research into the PBL case, there is a pretty full 9 to 5 timetable each day. There is dissection and anatomy one afternoon. There are two lab sessions, one microscope based, the other is usually on a clinical skill (spirometry, urinalysis etc). There are 4-5 leactures per week, on both 'science' topics and on the psychosocial elements of medicine and disease. In amongst all this there are placements to the hospital/GP practises to meet and practise communication skills with real patients. So although PBL itself only takes up 8-9 hours a week, you are pretty busy and rarely bored




Course is pretty good so far, I guess the thing with a PBL case is that it is as intellectually stimulating as you make it. You can cover the bare minimum each week and get by, or you can get lost in your reading about normal sodium excretion, which leads you to wonder what a high sodium level can do to a person, which leads you to look at fluid compartments, and so on and so forth. You get the idea. Medicine as a subject is pretty stimulating, or I think so at least anyway. I am enjoying it.





The chair and scribe are just roles in the CBL group, they change from week to week and mean nothing


Keele is a really nice place, very green and has lots of space. If you are used to a city, it may be a bit quiet when you first get there, but Newcastle and Stoke and so near that really you get the best of both worlds. I don't know if you're the going out type, but we always manage to have fun, be it at the union or one of the pubs on campus


I take paypal or visa debit. Joking, its a pleasure

Hello there. I'll start by going through a typical week.

Monday. Appoint chair and scribe for the week. Get case. Read through case. Make sure we understand all the terms and words. Work through it methodically, picking out issues or interesting points. Scribe frantcially rights down what is being said. The tutor is there to steer you but does not in anyway run the session, we do that. Once we have run out of ideas, we begin to try and put our random thoughts into structured questions.

Wednesday. All meet up sans tutor to see how its all going. This is an optional session, and will literally never happen.

Friday. Meet up again with tutor present. Chair will read the first question and it is discussed, somebody from the group usually takes the lead while others chip in with other facts. We stop talking and look to the tutor for a nod or a shake. They will say whether we need more detail, less detail or whether we somewhat missed the point. We work through all the questions, check there are no outstanding issues for the week, then hit the pub.

It is a misconception that the course is PBL without a 'systems approach' that you mentioned. All the PBL case does is provide a scenario or framework for that week's learning. If the case was the skeleton, it is fleshed out with lectures (of which there are 5ish per week in first year), dissection, labs and skills sessions.

For me the advantage of PBL is it is just much more engaging than being talked at for 8 hours a day. It appeals to my natural desire to answer questions and solve problems.

Now I sound like I'm going for an interview too....

I think you should focus on getting an offer before you worry about subjective in course experiences! Don't think it'll help you at your stage. But yes the course is generally excellent, naturally with its ups and downs but I've generally got a lot of praise for it. Good luck in your interview!