Systematic Literature Review on the adoption of the Problem Based Learning methodology in Distance Education

In the last decades, many studies on the use of active learning methodologies have been presented to the academic community, both for face-to-face and distance learning (distance education). In this sense, this article presents partial results of a systematic review of the literature on the adoption of the active methodology of Problem-based Learning (PBL) in Distance Education. The systematic review defined a research protocol that included the planning, execution, and analysis of the results. Planning phase defined research objectives and questions, search string, choice of search engines, and elaboration of exclusion criteria. In the execution phase, 633 scientific articles were selected from the research using the string in the search engines, followed by the application of the exclusion criteria, to which 90 studies were included, which were analyzed in full to answer the research questions. This paper presents the analysis of the first research question: How can the three main phases of the active PBL methodology (planning, execution, and evaluation) be applied in distance education?