Abstract

TBL is a distinctive educational approach that has been used across a range of curricula world-wide. Developed by Larry Michaelsen of the University of Central Missouri, TBL is a form of collaborative learning that uses a specific sequence of individual work, group work and immediate feedback. It has been shown to improve students’ engagement with course material, increase their capacity for problem-solving and develop their team working skills, all of which are essential in medical and healthcare education.
Forget your previous experiences of group work or team working; TBL is very different!

Students work in permanent teams with diverse resources and there are 3 main stages to TBL:

1. Pre-class Readiness: guided independent individual learning; students are given guidance as to what material they should study before coming to class.
2. In-class Readiness Assurance Process; students undertake a short test, based on the guided pre-class independent learning. This is a 2-stage process, with a test being done by individual students, followed by the same test done by teams. A mini-lecture will follow, if need be
3. In-class Application Exercises; teams apply concepts they learned about to solve real-world problems.
At key points during the module/unit, students are asked to evaluate the performance of their peers and provide them with constructive feedback.
An evaluation of TBL at Durham University showed that TBL scores correlated highly with their examination scores. In addition, key message from students’ free text comments were: that TBL was well organised, that the application exercises allowed students to apply their learning to important aspects of medical practice, that feedback was received in a timely fashion, and that TBL had supported students' learning overall.
This workshop will introduce participants to the TBL approach and provide them with opportunities to discuss TBL experiences with educators from three UK Universities.