Team-Based Learning Emerging as a Sweet Approach to Innovative Teaching
If you were to accuse DIIA instructional consultant Michael Sweet of encouraging groupthink, he’d surely just smile.
For more than a decade Sweet has been helping teachers across scholarly disciplines employ Team-Based Learning (TBL), an exciting teaching strategy for promoting active learning in undergraduate classes. Now, Sweet has teamed with Larry Michaelsen to produce an article on the power of Team-Based Learning for the June newsletter of the National Education Association: Thriving in Academe—Reflections on Helping Students Learn. Production of Thriving in Academe is a collaborative initiative of the National Education Association and the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.
Michaelsen, David Ross Boyd Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma, is the acknowledged developer of the idea of TBL in the late 1970s. As a junior faculty member facing booming enrollments, Michaelsen experimented with TBL as a strategy for translating the group approach he used in classes of 40 to classes of 120. Over the years he has found that the approach works as well in classes of all sizes in virtually all disciplines.
Four defining components characterize the TBL approach.
First, the instructor forms permanent, heterogeneous work groups that assure a fair distribution across the teams of student characteristics essential for tackling coursework.
Second, to begin each unit, the instructor assigns readings for students to use in preparation for the Readiness Assurance Process (RAP). The RAP begins with students taking a Readiness Assurance Test, first as individuals and then as teams, with immediate instructor feedback following. Over the course of the semester, the important stakes reflected in the group results encourage team members to learn how to communicate productively, collectively.
Third, peer evaluations across the semester serve to make team members accountable to each other, rather than simply to their teacher, discouraging freeloading behavior.
Fourth, the RAP shows the instructor where gaps exist—and don’t exist—in students’ grasp of content, freeing up considerable classroom time to allow the teams to apply course material to solve problems rather than listen to lectures about content they already command.
Proponents of TBL emphasize its transformative effect on teachers and students. Used properly, TBL transforms small groups into teams, teaching technique into teaching strategy, passive learning into engaged learning, and teacher-centered instruction into student-centered teaching. By prompting students to take responsibility for their learning, teachers are freed to concentrate on valuable and enjoyable aspects of teaching besides lecture preparation. Informed by a clear notion of what they expect that students should be able to do with course material, teachers design and assess activities accordingly.
Even as Sweet has helped early adopters at UT Austin to embrace the TBL approach, he has been active in spreading the word about TBL. In addition to a recent article he co-authored with Michaelsen about group dynamics research, he has edited a special issue of Educational Psychology Review dedicated to postsecondary collaborative learning.
And Sweet will be bringing the annual international conference for Team-Based Learning to the Thompson Conference Center on March 5 and 6, 2009, where presenters from dozens of countries and every discipline will engage participants eager to explore innovative pedagogy to focus and motivate undergraduates expecting a passive classroom experience. The smile you’ll see then from Sweet will acknowledge TBL’s grouphug from growing numbers of dynamic college teachers.