PBL is a bunch of ****e, imo.
And whoever said that about wiki is right. I tell you the truth, the vast majority of our PBLs were done the night before off wikipedia/emedicine/patient.co.uk. If I was really cutting it fine I would skim the relevant page in the OHCM on the tube in the way in and blag it during the debrief. Half the time the facilitator didn't care anyway, such as a psychologist leading an obstetrics and gynaecology session. Couldn't answer any of our questions that were not on his preprinted 'tutor notes' (subsequently ended up on a website with everyone feverishly trying to copy what we were actually supposed to know which was often vastly different from what we actually covered)
I did very well in my first year, got a Merit. Missed a merit by a few marks in my OSCE component (whoever would have thought a second year would be expected to do clinical medicine
) but got the equivalent marks for a merit in my written papers.
The gaps in my knowledge from my 'PBL based' course only came out two years later working for the USMLE Step 1 which was a slap in the face. A friend of mine in the year below, just done an iBSc, is working towards Step 1 now, a good student like me. He is currently at failing standard for Step 1, an exam designed to be taken after the second year of medical school.