TBL as Student
Because lecturing is boring! 😃
Team based learning (or TBL) is a learning strategy in which you, the student, are in control of your own learning. Surprisingly, lecturing is still quite prevalent in a lot of educational institutions despite the advances in communication, learning psychology and technology. It's mind-blowing that we've been taught the same way for more than century!
In short: a typical TBL lesson is a sequence of individually and group activities. These activities are design by your teacher with the aim to help you apply the subject knowledge to a real-world problem.
Take a look at this short video that explains how students engage in a typical TBL lesson in the classroom:
TBL at LKC Medicine - NTU Singapore
TBL steps
A TBL lesson is a sequence of individually and group activities, when you break them down they are as follows:
Let's break these activities down to see how TBL aims to achieve that:
- 1.Preparation Material Usually a set of content materials curated by the teacher that you will review own your own before the TBL lesson
- 2.Individual Test (iRAT) An individual test at the beginning of the TBL lesson.
- 3.Team Test (tRAT) A team test where you will now answer the same questions as in the individual test, but in your team.
- 4.Clarification session Where as a whole class, you and your team mates will have the opportunity to align your understanding of the subject before...
- 5.Application of knowledge Where as a team, you get a chance to solve a real world problem with the knowledge you just acquired in the previous activities.
- 6.Self & Peer evaluation From time-to-time, you get a chance to evaluate your team mates performance as well as your own.
We'll go on each of them in detail, but the good news about TBL lesson in LAMS is that they can be done completely online.... or in class. Or a combination of both! So regardless of if you are doing the lesson virtually or face-to-face, your learning and interaction shall not be affected.
As a student, learning with TBL, you not only learn about the subject but also teamwork skills as you will need to interact and build knowledge collectively a team.
One very interesting aspect of TBL in regards to teamwork is that ensures that individuals in the teams are accountable for their contribution and productivity.
As you are asked to solve authentic real-world problems in teams, you have to developed critical thinking and problem solving skills along with subject knowledge mastery.
The fact that you are solving these problems in a team, t
Rather than passively taking notes in a lecture, you (and your team mates) are now actively learning and engaging in activities which makes the lesson fun.