What is PBL 4.0? Generative epistemic inquiry as a framework for AI-augmented learning
Abstract
Problem-Based Learning remains one of higher education’s most significant pedagogical contributions. Its core premise (that students learn more effectively, particularly for the application, transfer, and retention of knowledge, when actively engaging with problems than passively receiving information) is as valid as ever. What has changed is the environment: organisations restructuring around AI, professional roles shifting from execution to oversight, and civic life requiring disciplined reasoning in information environments that actively resist it. Many implementations of PBL, particularly at large scale, have not kept pace. Neither, in many cases, have the institutions responsible for it (optimising for procedural consistency, satisfaction scores, and completion rates) imperatives that solved real problems of equity and scalability, but that under certain conditions can create incentives that gradually erode exactly the challenge that makes education worth having. This document proposes a response and makes the case that the response is timely, practically feasible, and already taking shape in practice. What PBL 4.0 is. Generative Epistemic Inquiry adds a dimension that earlier PBL stages often did not reach: the collective interrogation of the assumptions and mechanisms underlying knowledge claims, rather than their application or reproduction. Students do not explain what theories say; they examine what those theories assume, and under what conditions they hold. The…
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