As is typical of distance learning institutions, the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) provides regular face-to-face tutorials to facilitate students' learning in addition to the self-instructional course materials. Attendance is non-compulsory, so there is often little similarity in the group of students attending from one tutorial to the next. The nature of tutorial support is contingent upon the needs of each individual course, but the basic requirement is that students must have the option to seek he from the tutor to resolve any problems being faced in the course. Consequently, although tutors are urged to encourage student involvement and are discouraged from lecturing teacher-centred learning is still dominant in the face-to-face sessions. Whereas, in conventional settings, most PBL activities are conducted in and around tutorials, at OUHK it is less straightforward to do this because of the time constraints and students' expectations of assistance. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore the place of PBL in OUHK tutorials, and the compromises that need to be made to enable it to be used successfully. Many studies have placed emphasis on the roles and responsibilities of PBL tutors in conventional face-to-face learning. However, little research has been done on the tutor's role as facilitator in a distance learning PBL environment, and how this can be balanced with the role of help-giver. As a preliminary investigation of this issue, a group of tutors was asked to introduce some PBL activities into their tutorials. Apart from observations, data about tutors' perceptions of using PBL in this context was gathered from semi-structured interviews. The difficulties that tutors experienced during the PBL tutorials and suggestions for modification have been highlighted in the paper.
