Dear colleagues
Along with colleagues who completed the Pilot Systematic review of the Effectiveness of Problem Based Learning I am planning to submit an application for funding for a full systematic review in response to the recent call for proposals by the English Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/researchprojects.htm.
We have only just found out about this call and the deadline for expressions of interest is 21/01/05. As a group we are keen to expand the number of people in the field interested and involved in a systematic reviews of this kind and in particular to involve people from disciplines other than the health sciences where quite a few of us teach and research at present. We will be working on the expression of interest over the next few days but as things stand the parameters that are pretty much set so far are
1) proposal will be full review of the effectiveness of PBL in HE/ professional Education
2) protocol will basically be that which we used in the pilot review - up dated and modified a) for a full systematic review b) in the light of our experience with review 1 c) to fit the EPPI Centre SR approach
A copy of the protocol for the pilot review can be found in the report at http://www.ltsn-01.ac.uk/resources/features/pbl
3) This will be an EPPI Centre Systematic Review - There are two stages to the review process. First is a descriptive map of all studies which meet the initial inclusion criteria. Second is and 'in-depth review' of subset of these studies focussing on one particular aspect. Given the funding limitations. We may just do a one stage in depth review. The data extraction tools are all in a web based on line system
You can see examples of reviews on the EPPI website. http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx?page=/reel/intro.htm. I would look at the various Reviews of English teaching as these tend to be effectiveness questions.
4) Using the review process as a structure I imagine the workload will be divided along the following lines
1) modification of Protocol - MN lead (EPPI)
2) Searching (EPPI)
3) Screening for inclusion (EPPI plus at least one other)
4) Data Extraction (ALL)
5) Report Writing (EPPI lead)
6) Publication (Copy editing, Editorial, Publication on website - Press release (EPPI)
7) Information management (EPPI)
8) Quality Assurance processes (All -plus EPPI)
5) There is not much money available - the HEA say £25,000 but confusingly say exceptional cases up to £50k would be available. The EPPI centre estimates that a full SR carried out in house should be costed at between 60-80k. Based on the division of labour envisioned above the largest share of the funding would go to the EPPI Centre with other participants receiving perhaps a nominal amount but essentially arguing that they would be making an additional contribution in kind. Participants would however gain experience and training in systematic reviewing, would certainly increase their knowledge of the PBL literature and based on our experience with the pilot review publications will attract a lot of international interest.
If you would be interested in participating in some way with this review please get in touch with me ASAP.
regards
Mark
Mark Newman
Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Coordinating Centre (EPPI- Centre)
Social Science Research Unit (SSRU)
Institute of Education
University of London
18 Woburn Square
London WC1H 0NR
Tel: +44 (0) 207 612 6575
Fax: +44 (0) 207 612 6400
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