Team-Based Learning at NIC

by Jen Wrye, Teach­ing and Learn­ing Fac­ul­ty Devel­op­er

Last spring, two groups of fac­ul­ty at NIC par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Cen­tre for Teach­ing and Learn­ing Innovation’s inau­gur­al Team-based Learn­ing (TBL) Course Redesign Insti­tute. The ses­sions focused on the prin­ci­ples of team-based learn­ing, as well as stu­dent learn­ing, engage­ment, and metacog­ni­tive skills more gen­er­al­ly. I had a chance to catch up with sev­er­al atten­dees to see how that learn­ing expe­ri­ence changed their teach­ing. (For an intro­duc­to­ry overview of team-based learn­ing, click here).

Fac­ul­ty across NIC’s cam­pus­es and pro­grams, and using var­i­ous modal­i­ties, described a vari­ety of expe­ri­ences with team-based learn­ing adop­tion. Every­body enjoyed the spring redesign ses­sion, whether they’ve imple­ment­ed TBL ful­ly, in part, or have yet to take that plunge. Indeed, a few indi­vid­u­als who have not taught using team-based learn­ing planned to spend some of their pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment time redesign­ing their fall 2024 or win­ter 2025 cours­es and using team-based learn­ing.

Instruc­tors using team-based learn­ing resound­ing­ly report­ed that this approach led to con­sid­er­able ben­e­fits. In my inter­ac­tions, improve­ments to four spe­cif­ic areas emerged: (1) stu­dent engage­ment; (2) stu­dent prepa­ra­tion; (3) inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships; (4) over­all learn­ing.

A key ben­e­fit of TBL is its back­ward design. Fac­ul­ty who teach with TBL spend most of the class meet­ing ask­ing stu­dents to tack­le sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems in the field rather than lec­tur­ing on the course con­tent. The means stu­dents, to be suc­cess­ful, must attend class with some base knowl­edge, ready to apply it as need­ed and share it when prompt­ed. In his adop­tion of TBL, Eng­lish instruc­tor, Sean Hick­ey, observed: “team-based learn­ing has made a big dif­fer­ence in terms of keep­ing stu­dents more engaged and stay­ing on top the read­ings.” Sean also not­ed that TBL also pro­vid­ed him with a bet­ter sense of over­all stu­dent prepa­ra­tion, allow­ing him to “record/measure it as opposed to try­ing to infer it through ques­tions and indi­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

Many fac­ul­ty mem­bers remarked on how solv­ing prob­lems in class can dri­ve stu­dent inter­est in their cours­es. Biol­o­gy fac­ul­ty, Ais­ling Brady, felt that team-based learn­ing made a big dif­fer­ence in the deliv­ery of a dif­fi­cult course. She explained that this is an impor­tant course in sci­ence edu­ca­tion that is also wide­ly known to be con­tent-dense. Stu­dents tend to drag through it, but using TBL has helped them engage with the mate­r­i­al and each oth­er much bet­ter. Ryan Blaak also makes the point that in-class exer­cis­es give his his­to­ry stu­dents a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with pri­ma­ry doc­u­ments, just as his­to­ri­ans do in their pro­fes­sions.

In team-based learn­ing, mod­el­ing stu­dents’ learn­ing after pro­fes­sion­al expec­ta­tions is a pow­er­ful learn­ing tool. Barb McPher­son observed that prac­ti­cal nurs­ing lab instruc­tors felt the stu­dents who had tak­en the prepara­to­ry the­o­ry course, which used TBL, were bet­ter pre­pared to exe­cute the skills required in a clin­i­cal envi­ron­ment. Impor­tant­ly, the stu­dents them­selves also felt more pre­pared and con­fi­dent. These are con­sid­er­able ben­e­fits that pro­mote qual­i­ty learn­ing for stu­dents and great teach­ing expe­ri­ences for fac­ul­ty!

As is true with all teach­ing expe­ri­ences, fac­ul­ty cer­tain­ly faced some chal­lenges with the inte­gra­tion of TBL in their cours­es. Some hope to improve their readi­ness-assess­ment test ques­tions while oth­ers plan to work on their in-class activ­i­ties. Fac­ul­ty also hope to explore pos­si­bil­i­ties for bring­ing in prin­ci­ples of UDL and ungrad­ing into future iter­a­tions. Over­all, fac­ul­ty using TBL expressed excite­ment about what their cours­es will become in the future.

The Cen­tre for Teach­ing and Learn­ing Inno­va­tion will con­tin­ue sup­port­ing fac­ul­ty with their reflec­tions and adap­ta­tions, offer­ing sev­er­al TBL-themed learn­ing ses­sions this Spring 2024.

  • May 6 – Team-Based Learn­ing Shar­ing Cel­e­bra­tion
  • May 23 – Cre­at­ing Effec­tive 4S Prob­lems
  • May 30 – Doing Team-Based Learn­ing in Digital/Hybrid Cours­es group
  • June 12 – Top­ic TBD

For more infor­ma­tion about these ses­sions or any­thing team-based learn­ing relat­ed, con­tact Jen Wrye and jen.wrye@nic.bc.ca