Medical schools
Several medical schools have incorporated problem-based learning into their curricula following the lead of McMaster University Medical School, using real patient cases to teach students how to think like a clinician. More than eighty percent of medical schools in the United States now have some form of problem-based learning in their programs. Research of 10 years of data from the University of Missouri School of Medicine indicates that PBL has a positive effect on the students' competency as physicians after graduation.
Monash University was the second institution to adopt PBL within a medical school environment and continues to apply this within the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences for the Bachelor of Medicine / Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) programs delivered in Australia and Malaysia.
Maastricht University offers its whole program in PBL format only, as does St. George's University of London, another pioneer in the PBL format. The University of Limerick graduate entry medical school in Ireland followed by adapting the SGUL program as well as other programs to also provide its program in PBL format only. In 1983 the college of medicine and medical sciences was founded in Bahrain as part of the Arabian Gulf University. It adopts a problem-based learning curriculum from the beginning and offers its MD program in PBL only. In 1998, Western University of Health Sciences opened its College of Veterinary Medicine, with curriculum based completely on PBL.
In 2002, UC Berkeley - UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP), an accredited five year Master of Science/Medical Doctorate Program housed at University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, began offering a 100% case based curriculum to their students in their pre-clerkship years. The curriculum integrates the basic and preclinical sciences while fostering an understanding of the biological, social, and moral contexts of human health and disease. The students spend their last two clerkship years at University of California, San Francisco.
Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (South West England), set up its medical BMBS course based around PBL in 2002. Peninsula offered a fully integrated course that prepared students for life as a doctor, with early exposure to clinical experiences and opportunities to discuss them through their PBL and small-group programme. In 2010 PCMD was divided to create Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry and Exeter Medical School. The PBL courses of each school continues to develop and now uses an 8 step process, which is an evolution of the Maastricht 7 jump process.
Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) offers a PBL pathway at the main campus in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 2004, LECOM founded a branch campus in Bradenton, Florida, using an entirely PBL format. A satellite campus in Greensburg, Pennsylvania is also exclusively PBL.
In 2002, Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta, Indonesia began offering an International Medicine program based on problem-based learning. Gazeira University in Sudan was the first in the country to adopt PBL in its medical college, a trend that was followed by some of the newer medical colleges. In 2008 the famous Faculty of Medicine of the University of Khartoum, which was following a traditional curriculum since its foundation in 1924 made a being change in curriculum structure by adopting a blend curriculum that incorporate problem solving learning strategies.
In 2008 Aljouf University of Sakakah, Saudi Arabia and Alfaisal University Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Sulaiman Al Rajhi Colleges Qassim,Saudi Arabia started using PBL for all of their medical programmes.
The Deakin University School of Medicine, which opened in Waurn Ponds, Victoria in 2008 uses the PBL format as part of its Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery and Bachelor of Vision Science/Master of Optometry courses.
In 2009, Libyan International Medical University of Benghazi, Libya started using PBL for all of its medical programmes.
High schools
In 2008, Parramatta Marist High School, a secondary Catholic school in Australia, employed the methods of PBL in their teaching for year 9 and 10 boys. The learning system was a great success and since has been expanded to lower grades to challenge students to think outside of the box and relate content drive courses to problems in the real world.
North Lawndale College Prep High School (NLCP), on Chicago's west side, continues to refine its very high expectations Interdisciplinary Projects, or I-Projects. As they progress freshman through senior year, these vertically aligned projects involve increasingly rigorous Common Core State Standards in research, close reading, quantitative reasoning, argumentation, writing, and presentation skills. Each NLCP Junior and Senior Project derives itself from the student's own driving question (examples of driving questions include "How can genocide be stopped globally?" and "Does making obesity a disease help or harm obese people?"). Additionally and starting in 2014, all NLCP Senior Project Presentations will include the senior's creation of an artistic element that somehow expresses his/her argument, e.g., a documentary film, a website, a business proposal, a literary portfolio, a visual art portfolio, a unique oratory, or performative debate. Noodletools, "a powerful, integrated platform for research and literacy", is the assistive technology for North Lawndale's endeavor.
Sir John Deane's College, a sixth form college in England, in 2013 offered an extracurricular PBL Course in Medicine positioned towards students studying A-Level Biology and Chemistry who are aspiring to medicine, dentistry, veterinary science degrees or biological sciences at Oxford or Cambridge. The course (developed by Dr. Vimalan Jesudason) successfully served 85 students, before being offered independently in late 2014, PBL Cheshire.
In Canada, North Peace Secondary School's Energetic Learning Campus (ELC) is based on this philosophy. It takes grade 10 and 11 students, and work through the core courses based on the Prescribed Learning Outcomes for the province of British Columbia. The ELC is a sub-campus of the secondary school and is located inside the Pomeroy Sports Centre. Students are guided through English, Math, Sciences, and Social Studies, along with physical activity.
Ecological economics
The transdisciplinary field of ecological economics has embraced problem-based learning as a core pedagogy. A workbook developed by Joshua Farley, Jon Erickson, and Herman Daly organizes the problem-solving process into (1) building the problem base, (2) analyzing the problem, (3) synthesizing the findings, and (4) communicating the results. Building the problem base includes choosing, defining, and structuring an ecological economic problem. Analysis is breaking down of a problem into understandable components. Synthesis is the re-integration of the parts in a way that helps better understand the whole. Communication is the translation of results into a form relevant to stakeholders, broadly defined as the extended peer community