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Despite years of primary research on problem-based learning and literature reviews, no systematic effort has been made to analyze the relationship between tutor characteristics and student learning outcomes. In an effort to fill that gap the following meta-analysis coded 223 outcomes from 94 studies with small but positive gains for PBL students (g = 0.24). Specific sub-group analyses indicate randomly controlled designs may be more sensitive to differences that favor PBL students, even while there is no relationship between tutor content expertise and student learning. Perhaps surprisingly, student learning decreases as tutor experience increases. Limitations and future work are discussed within a context of scholarly and practical significance.

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This article presents a quasi-experimental study comparing the impact of two technologyrelated teacher professional development (TTPD) designs, aimed at helping junior high school science and mathematics teachers design online activities using the rapidly growing set of online learning resources available on the Internet. The first TTPD design (tech-only) focused exclusively on enhancing technology knowledge and skills for finding, selecting, and designing classroom activities with online resources, while the second (tech+pbl) coupled technology knowledge with learning to design problem-based learning (PBL) activities for students. Both designs showed large pre-post gains for teacher participants (N=36) in terms of self-reported knowledge, skills, and technology integration. Significant interaction effects show that teachers in the tech+pbl group had larger gains for self-reported knowledge and externally rated use of PBL. Three generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were fit to study the impact on students' (N=1,247) self reported gains in behavior, knowledge, and attitudes. In the resulting models, students of tech+pbl teachers showed significant increases in gain scores for all three outcomes. By contrast, students of tech-only teachers showed improved gains only in attitudes.