Dean X. Parmelee

Team-based learning: a practical guide: AMEE guide no. 65.

Team-based learning™ (TBL) is an instructional strategy developed in the business school environment in the early 1990s by Dr Michaelsen who wanted the benefits of small group learning within large classes. In 2001, a US federal granting agency awarded funds for educators in the health sciences to learn about and implement the strategy in their educational programs; TBL was put forward as one such strategy and as a result it is used in over 60 US and international health science professional schools. TBL is very different from problem-based learning (PBL) and other small group approaches in that there is no need for multiple faculty or rooms, students must come prepared to sessions, and individual and small groups of students (teams) are highly accountable for their contributions to team productivity. The instructor must be a content-expert, but need not have any experience or expertise in group process to conduct a successful TBL session. Students do not need any specific instruction in teamwork since they learn how to be collaborative and productive in the process. TBL can replace or complement a lecture-based course or curriculum.

Active learning in a Year 2 pathology curriculum

Purpose  Team‐based learning (TBL) has been successfully used in non‐medical curricula, but its effectiveness in medical education has not been studied extensively. We evaluated the impact of TBL on the academic performance of Year 2 medical students at Wright State University by comparing this active learning strategy against a traditional method of case‐based group discussion (CBGD).

Twelve tips for doing effective Team-Based Learning (TBL).

Team-based learning (TBL) in medical education has emerged over the past few years as an instructional strategy to enhance active learning and critical thinking – even in large, basic science courses. Although TBL consistently improves academic outcomes by shifting the instructional focus from knowledge transmission to knowledge application, it also addresses several professional competencies that cannot be achieved or evaluated through lecture-based instruction. These 12 tips provide the reader with a set of specific recommendations which, if followed, will ensure the successful design and implementation of TBL for a unit of study.

Perspective: Guidelines for Reporting Team-Based Learning Activities in the Medical and Health Sciences Education Literature

Medical and health sciences educators are increasingly employing team-based learning (TBL) in their teaching activities. TBL is a comprehensive strategy for developing and using self-managed learning teams that has created a fertile area for medical education scholarship. However, because this method can be implemented in a variety of ways, published reports about TBL may be difficult to understand, critique, replicate, or compare unless authors fully describe their interventions. The authors of this article offer a conceptual model and propose a set of guidelines for standardizing the way that the results of TBL implementations are reported and critiqued. They identify and articulate the seven core design elements that underlie the TBL method and relate them to educational principles that maximize student engagement and learning within teams. The guidelines underscore important principles relevant to many forms of small-group learning. The authors suggest that following these guidelines when writing articles about TBL implementations should help standardize descriptive information in the medical and health sciences education literature about the essential aspects of TBL activities and allow authors and reviewers to successfully replicate TBL implementations and draw meaningful conclusions about observed outcomes.

Medical Students' Attitudes about Team-Based Learning in a Pre-Clinical Curriculum

Background: Team-Based Learning is relatively new in medical education. Team-Based Learning was integrated into one medical schools pre-clinical curriculum in 2002. Purpose: This study compared how medical students’ attitudes about the Team-Based Learning process changed between the first and second year of medical school. Method: 180 students responded to 19 statements regarding their attitudes about Team-Based Learning during their first and second year of medical school. Data were analyzed using a Mann-Whitney U test. Results: Significant changes in attitudes occurred in the areas of Professional Development, Satisfaction with Team Experience, and Satisfaction with Peer Evaluation but not in the areas of Team Impact on Quality of Learning and Team Impact on Clinical Reasoning Ability. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that students’ attitudes about working within teams, their sense of professional development, and comfort and satisfaction with peer evaluation change in a curriculum using Team-Based Learning.

Professional Formation: Extending Medicine's Lineage of Service Into the Next Century

In his 1910 report on medical education, Flexner emphasized the importance of competency in basic sciences. Less widely recognized is that he also emphasized the necessity of liberal education. On the Flexner Reports 100th anniversary, medicine is challenged to realize Flexners full vision for medical education to ensure that physicians are prepared to lead lives of compassion and service as well as to perform with technical proficiency. To meet the complex medical and social challenges of the next century, medical educators must continue to promote cognitive expertise while concurrently supporting “professional formation”—the moral and professional development of students, their ability to stay true to their personal service values and the core values of the profession, and the integration of their individual maturation with growth in clinical competency. The goal of professional formation is to anchor students to foundational principles while helping them navigate the inevitable moral conflicts in medical practice. The consequences of inadequate support for professional formation are profound, impacting individual learners, patients, the profession, and society at large. Among the many successful professional formation projects nationally, two long-standing programs are described in modest detail to identify common elements that might guide future developments elsewhere. Key elements include experiential and reflective processes, use of personal narratives, integration of self and expertise, and candid discussion within a safe community of learners. Committing to professional formation within medical education will require transformation of formal and informal curricula and will necessitate a rebalancing of attention and financial support within schools of medicine.

Team-based learning: A relevant strategy in health professionals’ education

For about a decade, team-based learning (TBL), as an educational strategy, has been growing in use in the US and in several other international medical schools. It is a learner-centered, small group instructional strategy with good academic outcomes and considerable potential to address many of the professional competencies that are critical for the practice of medicine. For it to be successful in a course or curriculum, its essential components must be used properly. This article explains the importance and relevance of TBL in healthcare education, supports its inclusion as an effective learning strategy, and encourages the reader to explore additional resources, including the recently published AMEE Guide in Medical Education related to the topic (Parmelee et al, ).

Team-based learning: Moving forward in curriculum innovation: A commentary

Team-based learning (TBL) is an instructional strategy developed by Professor Larry Michaelsen at the University of Oklahoma’s Business School, USA, in the early 1990s. He developed it because his class enrollments were increasing, he questioned the effectiveness of lectures, and he wanted to use classroom time for students to solve the kinds of problems they would face in the business world. Professor Michaelsen discovered that his business school students had had ‘small group’ assignments and activities in other courses, but they felt that there was often great variability regarding how much each student contributed. Through trial-and-error, he crafted a structure for TBL that works to build both individual, small group, and whole class ACCOUNTABILITY. The three foundational components are: (1) Advanced Preparation, (2) Readiness Assurance, and (3) Group Application, with peer evaluation that matters and an appeals procedure that stimulates additional learner engagement with the content. Students come to class on time, prepared, and one faculty member conducts the session with the whole class (as few as 10 students to 120þ students; Michaelsen et al. 2007).

Evaluating the quality of learning-team processes in medical education: Development and validation of a new measure

Background Measurement of the quality of team processes in medical education, particularly in classroom-based teaching settings, has been limited by a lack of measurement instruments. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop and test an instrument to measure the quality of team interactions. Method The authors created 30 items and reduced these to 18 items using factor analysis. They distributed the scale to 309 second-year medical students (RR = 95%) in a course that used teams and measured internal consistency, validity, and differences in scores between teams. Results Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was 0.97. Team ratings were variable, with a mean score of 95.7 (SD 8.5) out of 108. Team Performance Scale (TPS) scores correlated inversely with the spread of peer evaluation scores (r = −0.38, P = .003). Differences between teams were statistically significant (P < .001, &eegr;2 = 0.33). Conclusions The TPS was short, had evidence of reliability and validity, and exhibited the capacity to distinguish between teams. This instrument can provide a measure of the quality of team interactions. More work is needed to provide further evidence of validity and generalizability.

Teaching clinical pharmacology using team-based learning: a comparison between third- and fourth-year medical students.

The purpose of this study was to formulate evidence‐based recommendations on whether to deliver the team‐based learning (TBL)‐designed clinical pharmacology course at the American University of Beirut Faculty of Medicine (AUBFM) during the third year instead of the fourth and final year of the medical curriculum. Between June 2010 and May 2011, AUBFM offered the course to both classes simultaneously to compare their performance. The findings of this endeavor supported the introduction of the course during the third year, first because fourth‐year students did not outperform third‐year students despite having the advantage of an additional year of clinical experience, and second, third‐year teams seemed more likely to develop into better functioning teams. The findings also suggested that simultaneous delivery of TBL sessions to both third‐ and fourth‐year teams was less favorably recommended because of the varying learning pace of both student groups.