At the same time, medical students themselves seemed to be disenchanted and bored with their education because they had to absorb vast amounts of information of which much was perceived to have little relevance to medical practice (Spaulding, 1969, cited in Barrows, 1996). Addressing many of the concerns of traditional instruction, PBL was designed to foster problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration and self-study skills as well as to increase the retention of facts and their recall in clinical situations (Barrows, 1983). The medical schools at the University of Limburg at Maastricht in the Netherlands, the University of Newcastle in Australia, and the University of New Mexico in the United States were among the first that adapted the McMaster model of problem-based learning in the 1970s and 1980s.