What are our students doing? Workload, time allocation and time management in PBL instruction. A case study in Science Education

What are our students doing: studying, working with classmates, looking for information at the library or Internet? During 2 years, 131 preservice teachers were monitored using a survey, obtaining hours they employed in different tasks. Within the second year, problems found in the first were managed. Results reveal that, in Problem Based Learning, working in groups is the greatest time consumer although is distributed relatively homogeneously. Furthermore, students spend too much time on almost all activities, leading to a general overload properly handled in the second part of the study. Reflections on the consequences of time allocation research offers valuable opportunities to improve the quality of teaching-learning processes.