Team-Based Learning E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B TL Single Issue Teaching and Learning
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 204

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Team-Based Learning (TBL) is a unique form of small-group learningdesigned in and for the college classroom. TBL's specialcombination of incentives and corrective feedback quicklytransforms groups into high-performance learning teams, with notime taken from the coverage of course content. In this issue, theauthors describe the practical elements of TBL, how it can look inthe classroom, and what they have learned as it has grown into aninterdisciplinary and international practice. Chapters discuss: * The Essential Elements of Team-Based Learning * The Social Foundation of Team-Based Learning: StudentsAccountable to Students * Knowledge is No Longer Enough: Enhancing Profession Educationwith Team-Based Learning * Teaching Skills for Facilitating Team-Based Learning * Peer Assessment and Evaluation in Team-Based Learning * Technological Alternatives to Paper-Based Components ofTeam-Based Learning * Team-Based Learning in Asynchronous Online Settings Importantly, TBL is not about teaching but about learning. Severalarticles in this volume illustrate this emphasis by using TBLstudents' own words to reinforce key ideas. This is the 116th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly reportseries New Directions for Teaching and Learning,which offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques forimproving college teaching based on the experience of seasonedinstructors and the latest findings of educational andpsychological researchers.

Leseprobe

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: The Essential Elements of Team-Based Learning

A Broad Overview of TBL

The Four Essential Elements of Team-Based Learning

Implementing Team-Based Learning

Chapter 2: The Social Foundation of Team-Based Learning: Students Accountable to Students

Accountability: The Conceptual Bridge Between the Student and the Team

Chapter 3: Knowledge Is No Longer Enough: Enhancing Professional Education with Team-Based Learning

Cultivating Competencies: What Small Group Learning Brings to Professional Education

Team-Based Learning: A Powerful Form of Small Group Learning

In Their Own Words: How the TBL Process Develops Professional Competencies

Conclusion

Chapter 4: Teaching Skills for Facilitating Team-Based Learning

Teaching Competencies

Facilitation Strategies

Personal Instructor Characteristics

Chapter 5: Peer Assessment and Evaluation in Team-Based Learning

Pedagogical Merits of Peer Assessment and Evaluation

Student Perceptions of Peer Assessment and Evaluation

Guidelines for Implementing Peer Assessment and Evaluation

Assessment Instruments and Approaches

Conclusion

Chapter 6: Technological Alternatives to Paper-Based Components of Team-Based Learning

Readiness Assurance Tests

Reporting Complex Team Assignments

Providing Feedback on Peer Evaluations

Conclusion

Chapter 7: Team-Based Learning in Asynchronous Online Settings

Setup

Outcomes

Conclusion

Next Steps

Appendix: Key Teaching Activities for Team-Based Learning

Index

Team-Based Learning: Small-Group Learning’s Next Big Step

Larry K. Michaelsen, Michael Sweet, Dean X. Parmelee (eds.)

New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 116

Marilla D. Svinicki, Editor-in-Chief

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Preface

Until the first book on team-based learning (TBL) was published in 2002 (Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink, 2002), this unique and powerful strategy was often seen as nothing more than another variant of cooperative learning, even though Michaelsen and a number of other faculty had been using, researching, and publishing about TBL since the late 1970s. In 2004 a slightly updated paperback version was published (Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink, 2004) in the more appropriate format as a trade book (rather than a reference book), with a more readable font and a more affordable price. As a result, the paperback quickly became the more commonly used version of the book. It has made TBL more visible to a wider range of audiences and has expanded its use to hundreds of disciplines and thousands of schools in at least twenty-three countries.

The question now, a half-decade later, is, “What else have we learned about TBL?” The answer is, “A great deal!” Although the essential elements of TBL have remained stable, more faculty have used TBL in a wider variety of disciplines, with a wider variety of student populations, and in a wider variety of educational settings. These efforts have resulted in a clearer understanding of what it takes to capture and retain the unusual educational power of TBL and avoid practices that can limit its effectiveness.

We begin this volume with a few cautionary tales about what TBL is not, then discuss briefly the new settings in which TBL is being implemented, and finally introduce the chapters that follow.

Treatment Fidelity: Cautionary Tales About What Team-Based Learning Is Not

When a new idea comes along that promises significantly better results than current practices, at least two problems can arise. The first is that people try only some parts of the idea. The second is that people do not heed best-practice advice about what is required to implement the process for success. The danger is that those who fall into either of these traps can conclude and tell others, “I tried this idea, and it did not work.” Both kinds of problems have been reported to us, and as a result, we believe that a major contribution of this volume is informing potential users what they need to do—if they in fact want to do TBL and enjoy the significant benefits it has to offer.

This volume is about what TBL is and how it works, from the first chapter on the essential elements of team-based learning all the way through the key teaching activities in the appendix. (In fact, we generated the list in the appendix after reflecting on reports we received of both kinds of problems described above.) We begin, however, with a consideration of what TBL is not.

When is a perceived implementation of TBL not really an implementation of TBL? To clarify this, we will describe some of the versions of TBL we have heard about that did not work, how it was a departure from TBL best practice, and explain why we believe the teacher experienced the results reported. (For readers who are new to TBL and not yet familiar with its terminology, a firm grasp of this concept is not necessary for the broad points we are making here.)

If you overuse readiness assurance tests, it is not TBL. An example of the first problem with TBL is when professors become attracted to the ability of the readiness assurance tests (RATs) to motivate students to complete assigned readings but fail to use assignments that require students to apply the knowledge they acquire from those readings and RATs. When this happens, students wind up taking RATs followed by even more RATs. Then they complain about the process because the course has been transformed into a pattern of test after test after test and they feel cheated (we believe legitimately so) by being “rewarded” for memorizing meaningless detail followed by being expected to memorize even more meaningless detail.Without peer evaluation, it is not TBL. One respected psychology professor used readiness assurance tests and at least some application problems, but contrary to best practice, did not use also use student peer evaluations. The result? Although two of his three groups worked well and most students were very positive about their experience, one of the best students made the predictable (and valid) complaint: “I did most the work, and everyone in my group got the same credit. This is not fair.” Unfortunately, this professor concluded that TBL “did not work for good students in his discipline,” and in spite of numerous and well-publicized successes with TBL elsewhere on campus, it was over twenty years before anyone in his psychology department experimented with TBL again.If you do not properly introduce your students to TBL, they will likely perceive it as an alien way of teaching and will resist it. Sometimes a teacher implements the entire TBL system and is gratified to see students engaged in significant learning, but is then frustrated by surprisingly low course evaluations at the end of the term. In our experience, this occurs because the professor has, contrary to good practice, failed to spend time at the outset explaining what TBL is, why the course is being taught with it, identifying its benefits, and providing an early, nongraded practice exercise to let students experience for themselves the uniqueness and potential benefits of the process. Often these teachers simply announce that they will be using TBL and warn students, with a minimum of explanation, that they need to start studying because the next class will start with a readiness assurance test. This can make students feel confused, unsafe, and perhaps even a little ambushed. As a result, in spite of the positive evidence of improved student learning in TBL classrooms, some professors (and we suspect many of their peers) have come to view TBL as being a potential career risk.

These are just some examples of teachers not following best practice and attributing many of the resulting problems on TBL as a teaching method. Unfortunately, the stories these teachers then tell can prevent others from trying TBL for themselves and discovering what it really does have to offer. We are aware of at least one instance in which, contrary to Michaelsen’s repeated warning that lengthy group papers are the worst type of group assignment, one of our colleagues said to the class, “Because of Michaelsen’s success with TBL, I’ve decided to try it out this semester. So form your own groups, and pick a topic for a thirty-page term paper that will be due on the Friday before finals.” Results? The better students complained because the less responsible students did little or nothing; the professor concluded that TBL did not work in his subject area; and the majority of the students (who had not actually experienced TBL) concluded that TBL was a bad idea.

Expanded Use of Team-Based Learning

The publication of the original books on TBL in 2002 and 2004 led to much greater awareness and use of TBL, making the publication of this volume a timely update on current practice. Three areas in which this expanded use has been especially noteworthy are in professional education (the health professions and engineering, for example), internationally, and in mixed-mode and online environments.

TBL in Professional Schools.

Professional school educators have found TBL particularly attractive because it offers powerful solutions to several major problems they face:

The need for students to acquire and retain what seems to be an increasingly large volume of content knowledge and the ability to use that content to solve the problems that occur in students’ future professional practiceThe need for students to develop a sophisticated level of interpersonal skills so that they can work effectively as members of interdisciplinary groups and teamsFrequently having to teach in large-class settings

Consequently professional educators have organized several initiatives:

The publication of a book for health professions educators (Michaelsen, Parmalee, Levine, and McMahon, 2008) in which the authors describe their use of TBL with different kinds of subject matter and in different settingsSeveral Web sites on using TBL in professional schools (for example, in business, engineering, and health professions)A password-protected repository for sharing teaching modules for the health professionsAn annual conference on using TBL in the health professions

TBL in International Settings.

Another exciting area in which TBL has grown is in international contexts. Based on personal contact with the authors of this volume and our awareness with professional publications, TBL is now being used in at least twenty-three countries outside the United States and on every continent. Furthermore, due in part to the impact of the Internet, we are regularly asked to present workshops on TBL at schools virtually worldwide. As a result, many of the chapters in this volume examine how and why TBL enables students to learn to work in diverse teams and to value differing opinions and why TBL is effective in such a wide variety of cultural settings.

TBL and Instructional Technology.

Instructional technology is increasingly affecting every aspect of higher education, including the use of TBL in various forms of technology-mediated instruction. As a result, two of the chapters specifically focus on technological innovations that have been applied to TBL. One outlines a number of ideas for using technology to enhance face-to-face implementations of TBL. The other describes two authors’ experiences with implementing TBL in a totally asynchronous, online environment.

Organization of this Volume

This volume is designed to address three questions:

What are the essential elements of TBL?Why are these elements essential to TBL?What do faculty members need to do to implement these essential elements in a variety of different contexts?

These three questions are addressed in the following chapters.

In Chapter One, Michaelsen and Sweet outline the specifics of what needs to happen for someone to accurately say, “I used TBL.” In Chapter Two, Sweet and Pelton-Sweet use transcripts of student interactions to show how and why the readiness assurance process has such a powerful and positive effect on the development of lasting and productive interpersonal relationships within teams.

In Chapter Three, Sibley and Parmelee outline why TBL is ideally suited for dealing with the challenges of the professional school curriculum and describe, through the eyes and voices of students, what it is like to be in a professional school TBL course.

In Chapter Four, Lane discusses why facilitation skills are so important in TBL and provides concrete facilitation tools and suggestions, as well as describing certain teacher characteristics that can make TBL easier or more difficult to implement successfully.

Then in Chapter Five, Cestone, Levine, and Lane outline why peer evaluations are such an important part of TBL and describe a variety of options for collecting peer assessment data and providing formative and summative feedback to students.

The final two chapters deal with the impact of technology on TBL. In Chapter Six, Robinson and Walker outline a number of technical enhancement options for implementing TBL in face-to-face classes. Finally, in Chapter Seven, Palsolé and Awalt describe how they have successfully implemented TBL in purely asynchronous, online environments.

TBL Through the Eyes of Students

We have recognized for some time that TBL is about learning, not teaching. But in part because of the more widespread use of TBL, we have only recently realized the value of inviting the voices of students into the scholarly and practical conversations about TBL. As a result, a major feature of several chapters in this volume is that they reinforce many of TBL’s key ideas by using the very words of students who have experienced and are experiencing TBL.

Larry K. Michaelsen

L. Dee Fink

Editors

References

Michaelsen, L. K., Knight, A. B., and Fink, L. D. Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching. Sterling, Va.: Stylus, 2004.

Michaelsen, L. K., Knight, A. B., and Fink, L. D. Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002.

Michaelsen, L. K., Parmelee, D. X., McMahon, K. K., & Levine, R. E. (Eds.). Team-Based Learning for Health Professions Education: A Guide to Using Small Groups for Improving Learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2008.

Larry K. Michaelsen is professor of management at Central Missouri, David Ross Boyd Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma, a Carnegie Scholar, and former editor of the Journal of Management Education.

L. Dee Fink was director of the Instructional Development Program at the University of Oklahoma from 1979 until 2005 and currently is a national and international consultant in higher education.

Chapter 1

The Essential Elements of Team-Based Learning

Larry K. Michaelsen, Michael Sweet

TBL is a collection of practices that support one another for powerful instructional effect. This chapter describes the building blocks of team-based learning and the steps necessary to put them into place.

Team-based learning (TBL) possibly relies on small group interaction more heavily than any other commonly used instructional strategy in postsecondary education (for comparative discussion of different approaches, see Fink, 2004; Johnson, Johnson, and Smith, 2007; Millis and Cottell, 1998). This conclusion is based on three facts. First, with TBL, group work is central to exposing students to and improving their ability to apply course content. Second, with TBL, the vast majority of class time is used for group work. Third, courses taught with TBL typically involve multiple group assignments that are designed to improve learning and promote the development of self-managed learning teams.

This chapter begins with a brief overview of TBL. Next, we discuss the four essential elements of TBL and then walk through the steps required to implement them. Finally, we examine some of the benefits that students, administrators, and faculty can expect from a successful implementation of TBL.

A Broad Overview of TBL

The primary learning objective in TBL is to go beyond simply covering content and focus on ensuring that students have the opportunity to practice using course concepts to solve problems. Thus, TBL is designed to provide students with both conceptual and procedural knowledge. Although some time in the TBL classroom is spent ensuring that students master the course content, the vast majority of class time is used for team assignments that focus on using course content to solve the kinds of problems that students are likely to face in the future. Figure 1.1 outlines generally how time in one unit of a TBL course is organized.

Figure 1.1. Team-Based Instructional Activity Sequence

Note: This sequence is repeated for each major instructional unit—typically five to seven per course.

In a TBL course, students are strategically organized into permanent groups for the term, and the course content is organized into major units—typically five to seven. Before any in-class content work, students must study assigned materials because each unit begins with the readiness assurance process (RAP). The RAP consists of a short test on the key ideas from the readings that students complete as individuals; then they take the same test again as a team, coming to consensus on team answers. Students receive immediate feedback on the team test and then have the opportunity to write evidence-based appeals if they feel they can make valid arguments for their answer to questions that they got wrong. The final step in the RAP is a lecture (usually very short and always very specific) to enable the instructor to clarify any misperceptions that become apparent during the team test and the appeals.

Once the RAP is completed, the remainder (and the majority) of the learning unit is spent on in-class activities and assignments that require students to practice using the course content.

The Four Essential Elements of Team-Based Learning

Shifting from simply familiarizing students with course concepts to requiring that students use those concepts to solve problems is no small task. Making this shift requires changes in the roles of both instructor and students. The instructor’s primary role shifts from dispensing information to designing and managing the overall instructional process, and the students’ role shifts from being passive recipients of information to one of accepting responsibility for the initial exposure to the course content so that they will be prepared for the in-class teamwork.

Changes of this magnitude do not happen automatically and may even seem to be a dream rather than an achievable reality. They are, however, achievable when the four essential elements of TBL are successfully implemented:

Groups. Groups must be properly formed and managed.Accountability. Students must be accountable for the quality of their individual and group work.Feedback. Students must receive frequent and timely feedback.Assignment design. Group assignments must promote both learning and team development.

When these four elements are implemented in a course, the stage is set for student groups to evolve into cohesive learning teams.

Element 1: Properly Formed and Managed Groups.

TBL requires that the instructor oversee the formation of the groups so that he or she can manage three important variables: ensuring that the groups have adequate resources to draw from in completing their assignments and approximately the same level of those resources across groups, avoiding membership coalitions that are likely to interfere with the development of group cohesiveness, and ensuring that groups have the opportunity to develop into learning teams.

Distributing Member Resources.

In order for groups to function as effectively as possible, they should be as diverse as possible. Each group should contain a mix of student characteristics that might make the course easier or more difficult for a student to do well in the course (for example, previous course work or course-related practical experience) as well as demographic characteristics like gender and ethnicity. The goal here is to equip groups to succeed by populating them with members who will bring different perspectives to the task.

Findings in both group dynamics research (Brobeck and others, 2002) and educational research (Chan, Burtis, and Bereiter, 1997) illuminate the positive impact of diverse input in problem-solving discussions on both learning and performance. When group members bring many different perspectives to a task, their process of collaborative knowledge building in pursuit of consensus is powerful to watch. In addition, although member diversity initially inhibits both group processes and performance, it is likely to become an asset when members have worked together over time and under conditions that promote group cohesiveness (Watson, Kumar, and Michaelsen, 1993).

Minimizing Barriers to Group Cohesiveness: Avoiding Coalitions.

Coalitions within a group are likely to threaten its overall development. In newly formed groups, either a previously established relationship between a subset of members in the group (such as a boyfriend and girlfriend or fraternity brothers) or the potential for a cohesive subgroup based on background factors such as nationality, culture, or native language is likely to burden a group with insider-outsider tension that can plague the group throughout the term. Because it is human nature to seek out similar others, allowing students free rein in forming their own groups practically ensures the existence of potentially disruptive subgroups (Fiechtner and Davis, 1985; Michaelsen and Black, 1994).

Time.

Any group dynamics textbook will tell you that groups need time to develop into high-performing teams, regardless of whether you favor sequential or life cycle models (Tuckman, 1965; Tuckman and Jensen, 1977), cyclical models (Worchel, Wood, and Simpson, 1992), or adaptive or nonsequential models (McGrath, 1991). For this reason, students should stay in the same group for the entire course. Although even a single well-designed group assignment usually produces a variety of positive outcomes, only when students work together over time can their groups become cohesive enough to evolve into self-managed and truly effective learning teams.

Element 2: Student Accountability for Individual and Group Work.

In lecture classes, there is no need for students to be accountable to anyone other than the instructor. By contrast, TBL requires students to be accountable to both the instructor and their teammates for the quality and quantity of their individual work. Furthermore, teams must accountable for the quality and quantity of their work as a unit. (For a review of the effects of accountability on an array of social judgments and choices, see Lerner and Tetlock, 1999.)

Accountability for Individual Preclass Preparation.

Lack of preparation places clear limits on both individual learning and team development. If several members of a team come unprepared to contribute to a complex group task, then the team as a whole is far less likely to succeed at that task, cheating its members of the learning that the task was designed to stimulate. No amount of discussion can overcome absolute ignorance. Furthermore, lack of preparation also hinders the development of cohesiveness because those who do make the effort to be prepared will resent having to carry their peers. As a result, the effective use of learning groups clearly requires that individual students be made accountable for class preparation.

Accountability for Contributing to The Team.