Republic Polytechnic is the only polytechnic in Singapore that uses Problem Based Learning (PBL), which uses thoughts to generate learning whereas tutorials and lectures on the other hand feeds you with just information.

What makes us different and special from the other institutions is that we have to solve problems on our own by conducting our own research and also to have meetings to discuss about the problem statement with our fellow classmates in a group of five. In RP, we are not spoon fed by our facilitators unlike lecturers in other polytechnics who give notes and power point slides to their students.

It’s a matter of getting used to it and once you get the hang of it, you might probably find this method of studying more effective as compared to lectures/tutorials because it makes you more independent, you have no one to spoon feed you. I still remembered the first day in class, I was totally lost about PBL during my first meeting but as days went by, I thought that PBL was good in a sense that it didn’t make me lazy because I have no one to depend to do my work for me. However, PBL might make one lazy if they have friends who are nice enough to help them complete their work everyday.

Honestly, I prefer lessons this way because it’s not as dry as compared to tutorials. For a person like me, I can never sit still and listen to a whole lecture that lasts for four hours long because it will make you sleepy and at the same time, you might lose focus. I feel that RP’s way of teaching students have both good and bad points but what matters is that one is able to be independent and on their part, they must be hardworking enough to study on their own. For example, we have to study for our Understanding Tests (UT) especially for UT 3 because it is 50% of our whole grade. So for RP students, please study hard for your UT 3 and not take it for granted! You might never know it will help to pull your grades up ☺