Early proponents of didactic approaches which gave rise to Project/Problem/People/Context Based

Learning:
- G. W. F. Hegel’s comments in Philosophy of Right (1821)—“The Owl of Minerva flies only at
dusk.”
- John Dewey, My Pedagogical Creed (1897)— introduction of the idea of “learning by doing,”

Examples of famous university programmes employing PBL / CBL based methods:

- 1960s: McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada—starting in 1960s, medical students learning
through group discussions, during which they tried to diagnose real patients with specific health
problems and propose a suitable therapeutic approach. The method is now widely adapted in
medical universities all over the world.
- 1993: Stanford School for Engineering—the P5BL or P5BL approach (People, Problem, Process,
Product, and Project Based Learning)

Ideas and thinking frameworks closely related to Project/Problem-Based Learning and Context-
Based Learning:
- sudent-centric didactics
- human-centric problem solving
- Design Thinking (courses in Design Thinking are also offered at the Jagiellonian University,
including the JU Doctoral School in Humanities)
- Place-Based Learning (using location-specific possibilities—e.g. historical sites, museums, or
businesses nearby—as learning opportunities; also, learning by solving specific problems of the
local community)
- Strengths-Based Learning (a sub-type of Project / People Based Learning)