Team-Based Learning (TBL)
TBL is an instructional method that puts students into roles of greater autonomy and responsibility in their learning. TBL emerged out of research in organizational and cognitive psychology.
The Critical Components are:
Permanent student groups. In traditional learning settings, student groups are permanent for the entire semester to allow time for teams to learn to function well together. With Kritik, group collaboration and participation is enhanced, and professors are able to change groups seamlessly throughout the semester.
Student readiness process. In traditional learning settings, student readiness is assessed using assessment methods such as Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) and short answer quizzes. With Kritik, professors can efficiently set up group activities where students self-reflect and evaluate each other.
Problem-based group assignments. Assignments require students to work collectively by applying course content to find a collective solution to a significant problem.
The principles behind TBL
TBL emerged out of research in organizational and cognitive psychology. Among the principles that drive the method are the following:
1. Effective group work most often depends on the type of work. Group work is most effective when used with assignments where students are asked to converge their diverse thinking in making a single, collective decision, much like a deliberative body.
2. Students learn best and are more motivated when feedback is frequent and immediate. The use of groups increases opportunities for frequent, immediate feedback and reflection among peers.
3. Teamwork and collaboration among students are necessary both in student teams (permanent) and groups (temporary). It doesn't matter what specific choice you make as there is no wrong or correct answer as to the proper facilitation of the whole process.
4. Effectively functioning groups need very little instructor oversight or management. TBL is therefore a more efficient use of an instructor’s time, and can be scaled to classes of any size..
Structure of the TBL process
Assignment & Objectives: The educator sets the objectives and the assignment.
Finding a Solution: Student groups navigate the assignment independently to find a solution to a significant problem.
Problem-Based Learning: Debate occurs among team members where individuals challenge the viewpoints of their teammates.
One Collective Solution: Collectively, one solution will emerge, and each team member’s understanding of the concept will inherently change.
Peer Evaluation: Peer evaluation serves as a critical feedback source for student learning and drives individual accountability.
Grading: Based on peer evaluation and team submissions, the educator assigns grades for individuals and the team. With Kritik, professors can select group members based on their "weighted average" assessment score. This means groups will consistently have a diverse range of abilities to improve the learning experience.
Peer assessment enhances student learning
1 - Student learning improves when they provide assessment to peers.
2 - Students get faster feedback from more diverse sources.
3 - Active environments offer more opportunities to improve.
4 - Peer assessment improves metacognition and increases independence.
5 - By comparing their work to their peers, students become self-reflective.
6 - Peer assessment helps develop the lifelong skills students need to succeed.
Research strongly supports the use of peer assessment as a formative practice for improving overall academic performance. Overall, findings indicate that peer assessment can be more effective than teacher assessment. Read more on the impact of peer assessment.
Additionally, in online or remote learning, studies have shown that facilitating peer assessment online rather than in person can significantly reduce the logistical burden of implementing peer assessment (Tannacito and Tuzi 2002).
Peer Feedback drives the success of TBL
1 - Students receive quick and frequent feedback. Study results indicate that students can best learn when feedback occurs quickly and frequently throughout the duration of an assignment. The peer evaluation of the students serves as a critical feedback source for student learning.
2 - Assess individual student contribution & learning. The evaluation reflects the assessment of each member’s contribution to team learning. It keeps the students accountable to their teammates. Kritik has a library of 4000+ fully customizable rubrics to align and guide student learning.
3 - Ability to teach large classes effectively. Professors teaching large classes tend to take peer feedback as the central component for TBL. Breaking up larger assignments into smaller assignments has proven successful for many professors.
Cite: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40670-019-00816-z
Advantages that TBL offers over other learning methods
For Students
Builds teamwork skills. Students learn how to collaborate with fellow students & debate ideas to come up with collective solutions.
Appreciate different viewpoints. When solving complex problems, students are exposed to different arguments & viewpoints held by other teammates on how to solve issues, thus exposing students to new ways of thinking.
Synthesizing information. Students are forced to challenge their own learnings if new answers by group members are presented. Students learn how to analyze new ideas critically & the best solutions are chosen, independent of personal bias.
Facilitates a deeper understanding of concepts while bringing about high knowledge retention and practical application.
With TBL, group work and group assessment is the catalyst for the personal growth of students. It is through group dynamics students are exposed to different opinions, ways of thinking, even conflicting ideas, and it is in this process of navigation where students learn to build their critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence and higher-order skills. Kritik, compared to the traditional methods of teaching, take the student experience even further. Kritik introduces objectives around the quality of assessment, and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to measure the assessment quality, providing rapid feedback to enhance student learning.
For Instructors
Control over content. The TBL instructor sets the agenda for covering, processing and applying a specific body of information, the control of content is very attractive to university instructors.
Blends with tradition teaching practices. TBL courses can easily co-exist in an academic program with many traditional teaching practices, and does not require altering the program outcomes or overall curriculum.
Less time. needs to be invested by the instructor while simultaneously providing immediate feedback to students to consider and work on.
Scalable to large classes. Effectively functioning groups need very little instructor oversight or management. TBL is therefore a more efficient use of an instructor’s time, and can be scaled to classes of any size.
Advantages of intragroup and intergroup activities?
Intragroup Activities
- Accountability for group participation
- Self evaluation
- Structured feedback from group members
- Scaffold group projects for full visibility
Intergroup Activities
- Visibility into other group submissions
- Collaboration
- Democratized feedback (quantity & quality)
- Group evaluation is individual
Challenges of implementing TBL
- Lack of equal accountability and learning among team members. In most teams, there are high performers who do most of the work, while some students tend to contribute less and learn less.
- Logistical challenges of creating student groups online.
- Facilitating high quality peer evaluations and feedback.
- Course administration load on the instructor (especially in large classrooms).
With Kritik, professors can address these challenges while seamlessly integrating TBL in their class regardless of whether they teach online, or in-person.
-In Kritik, students are given specific criteria that they must complete both as a group and individually. This ensures accountability, and participation. Additionally, with Kritik, professors can select group members based on their "weighted average" assessment score. This means groups will consistently have a diverse range of abilities to improve the learning experience.
-Kritik saves the hassle of creating student groups online. With a simple activity set up, professors can have their class split up into groups in no time.
-Kritik leads students through stages of feedback, including "feedback on feedback", with the objective for students being to provide feedback that is both motivational and critical.
-With Kritik, the administrative load is lessened on the professor and large classrooms are managed just as easily as smaller classrooms.
How Kritik uses artificial intelligence to address challenges of TBL
With Kritik, professors can overcome many of the challenges of implementing TBL, including logistical challenges, lack of student accountability, course administration load, difficulty facilitating high-quality evaluations and logistical challenges of creating groups online.
Here are the various ways Kritik incorporates AI to improve the student and professor experience alike.
- The proprietary AI-driven Kritik Evaluation Score works behind the scenes to accurately determine the quality and effort of students' evaluations. No bias, just accurate results.
- Professors can use Kritik to automatically assign students to groups and monitor individual and group performance.
- Kritik helps professors monitor student activity and track each students' progress and assess individual & class trends throughout the semester.
- Professors can use the spotlight feature in Kritik to easily identify exemplary work to use as an assessment benchmark for students peer-assessment.
- Kritik helps professors drive student accountability via intra group peer evaluation and feedback tasks.
- With Kritik, professors can assess team performance using Inter group peer evaluation.
- With Kritik AI working behind the scenes, professors can facilitate anonymous peer evaluations that promote honesty, openness and meaningful feedback.
Learn more
TBL’s track record
TBL is now being used internationally in every academic discipline. The extensive emerging research helps explain why it is attractive not only in technical and applied fields such as medicine, engineering and business, but also in natural science, social science, and humanities. It is also now being used in trades education. Research data confirms that TBL allows instructors to challenge their students at a higher level. Several studies provide evidence that students in a well-run section of TBL will typically outperform students taught through more traditional approaches.
How is TBL different from PBL (Problem-Based Learning)?
TBL is more tightly structured than PBL. The TBL instructor sets the agenda for covering, processing and applying a specific body of information, much the way she would in a conventional lecture-based course. By contrast, in PBL, the instructor’s role is restricted to identifying the problem, while students seek out the information they need in order to frame and solve it—with limited direct involvement from the instructor.
Both methods can be highly effective, depending on goals and circumstances. In TBL, however, the control of content is very attractive to many university instructors, as TBL courses can easily co-exist in an academic program with many traditional teaching practices, and does not require altering the program outcomes or overall curriculum.****
TBL process in a course
A course will normally be divided into 4 to 7 instructional units within a 12-15-week time frame. Key elements of a typical sequence over 2 to 4 class meetings would be as follows:
1 - A substantial reading assignment (outside of class)
2 - Graded individual “readiness assessment” test on the reading (in class)
3 - Graded team “readiness assessment” test (in class)
4 - Short (mini-) Lecture, if needed, to clarify confusion made visible by the tests
5 - Team responses to cases; problems; applications, etc., all using the material in the initial reading
Books
Team Based Collaboration
Catherine Newell, Alan Bain - Team-Based Collaboration in Higher Education Learning and Teaching
Quote from the book
"While we know the existence of a collaborative professional community correlates with improved pedagogy and student achievement(Levine & Marcus, 2010; Goddard, Goddard & Tschannen-Moran, 2007), there are few well-found models of practice to guide universities to become more collaborative enterprises." (Newell, p.2) Kritik provides an environment or infrastructure that facilitates collaboration.
"Friend and Cook (2014) define collaboration as a style for interaction, which focuses our attention on the nature of the interrelationship among the group members collaborating, over the activity or task they are working with. The focus is on how they communicate and position each other in the interaction. Effective collaboration is a complex mutual process that depends on interacting and overlapping sets and subsets of interpersonal communication skills and the underlying predispositions (beliefs, attitudes and experiences) that contribute to them." (Larry et al., p.29)
For health care
Larry K. Michaelsen, Dean X. Parmelee, Kathryn K. McMahon, Ruth E. Levine, Diane M. Billings - Team-Based Learning for Health Professions Education
Passage from the book Read p.68-71 on enhancing critical thinking through TBL
Research Papers
• Peer Assessment in Problem-Based Learning: A Qualitative Study • Team-based learning in an industrial/organizational psychology course
• Team- Based Learning: overview and best evidence
• Computer-supported team-based learning: The impact of motivation, enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes
• Online team-based learning sessions as interactive methodologies during the pandemicTBL.pdf
• The relationship between shared mental models and task performance in an online team-based learning environment
• Off to On: Best Practices for Online Team-Based Learning™Off to On_ Best Practices for Online Team-Based Learning_.pdf
• The educational theory basis of team-based learning
• Getting started with Team-Based Learning (TBL): An introduction