Kaohsiung J Med Sci March 2008 • Vol 24 • No 3 Suppl S1 © 2008 Elsevier. All rights reserved. Kaohsiung Medical University was founded as Kaohsiung Medical College in 1954, and has a long- standing and proud history of outstanding achieve- ments in medical science in Taiwan. For decades, teaching has been based on traditional top-down pedagogy with a discipline-based curriculum. Starting from academic year 2003–2004, an extensive integra- tion of basic and clinical sciences into 15 blocks was designed, with a reduction in didactic lecture hours to approximately 50%, averaging 20 hours per week. The new curriculum based on the adult education the- ory (andragogy) was implemented in the medical school in 2005, and approximately one tenth of the curriculum time in each block is on problem-based learning (PBL). In the face of this new challenge, both teaching staff and students have strived to adopt the new way of learning. The university has fully sup- ported this educational reform, and it has become an active center for PBL workshops and medical educa- tion. To enhance PBL teaching and learning skills, we invited Dr Gordon Greene from Hawaii University to host the introduction section of the first PBL work- shop in 2004, then the domestic PBL workshop in 2005, and later an international PBL workshop in 2007 at Kaohsiung Medical University. Most of the participants of these workshops were greatly satisfied with their PBL experience. From the administrative perspective, a successful cross-cultural international PBL workshop should not only provide easy access to facilities and a con- venient living environment, such as boarding and transportation, but also create a friendly learning at- mosphere. We aimed to help participants, both tutors and students from different countries, overcome the language barrier and cultural differences. In order to carry out this mission, an organizing committee com- prising faculty members and students was formed to handle different tasks such as workshop program, fi- nance, accommodation, social events and publications. To reach the goals of the international PBL work- shop, that is, learning, vision, friendship and fun, some practical strategies were implemented [1], which included: ● enhancing learner-to-learner, tutor-to-tutor and learner-to-tutor channels of communication; ● providing an e-learning environment that en- compassed library resources, including wireless Internet; ● using simple and clear English to facilitate better communication; ● using transnational PBL scenarios from local and foreign medical schools; ● encouraging hybrid group presentation and com- petitiveness, i.e. by having groups with students from different countries; ● arranging post workshop social events such as sightseeing tours and a talent-show night to encourage friendship; ● and conducting assessments and surveys to fur- ther collect and understand students’ feedback with regard to the workshop. Therefore, this workshop helped to illustrate that a paradigm shift from didactic teaching towards PBL could potentially contribute to the following educa- tional objectives [2]: ● motivating learning; ● developing clinical reasoning; ● structuring knowledge in clinical contexts; ● and developing self-learning skills. Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Dr Chung-Sheng Lai, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, 100 Shih-Chuan 1 st Road, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan. E-mail: chshla@kmu.edu.tw THE CHALLENGE AND INFLUENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL PBL WORKSHOP FROM AN ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE Chung-Sheng Lai 1 and Hsin-Su Yu 2 1 College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, and 2 College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.