Getting Started With Team-Based Learning

"The book is full of practical advice, however, which is well-grounded in literature about teaching and learning so that faculty members who are hesitant to transform a course to TBL can still benefit from reading (advice such as how to write effective multiple choice questions and how to facilitate discussions). ...after reviewing the book, I am motivated to try this model in my teaching."

David B. Howell, Ferrum College - , Wabash Center for Teaching & Learning in Theology and Religion

“The book does a terrific job of covering all the basics, but it also does much more. In almost every page, it sprinkles in amazingly helpful tidbits. The icing on the cake are the quotes and vignettes that make the ideas come to life. In every chapter, I found a number of ideas that I will be using to improve my own teaching—and so will you.”

Larry K. Michaelsen

FOREWORD, Larry K. Michaelsen
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE: Overview of TBL
1. INTRODUCTION TO TEAM-BASED LEARNING
2. GETTING YOUR COURSE READY FOR TEAM-BASED LEARNING, Bill Roberson and Billie Franchini
3. THE WHOLE COURSE EXPERIENCE
4. THE EVIDENCE, PLEASE, Karla A. Kubitz

PART TWO: Essential Elements of TBL
5. USING TEAMS EFFECTIVELY
6. READINESS ASSURANCE PROCESS
7. APPLICATION ACTIVITIES
8. THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY

PART THREE: Getting Yourself Ready
9. THE EMOTIONAL JOURNEY TO TEAM-BASED LEARNING, Bill Roberson and Billie Franchini
10. THE LAST WORD

APPENDICES
Appendix A ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Appendix B MORE SIMULTANEOUS REPORTING OPTIONS
Appendix C: LESSONS LEARNED IN FACULTY PREPARATION
A Retrospective, Bill Roberson and Billie Franchini
Appendix D: LIST OF INTERVIEWEES


REFERENCES
ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX

Jim Sibley

Jim Sibley is the director of the Centre for Instructional Support at the Faculty of Applied Science at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He has 30 years of experience in faculty development, facilitation, and educational software development. He is an active member of the Team-Based Learning Collaborative (TBLC). He has served on the TBLC’s Board, Train the Trainer committee, Membership committee, many TBLC Conference Organizing committees’, and the Web Strategy committee (as a member of the Web Strategy committee, he served as the original webmaster for www.teambasedlearning.org). He continues his work as a mentor in the TBLC’s Train the Trainer program. He is an international TBL consultant, having worked in schools in Australia, Korea, Pakistan, Lebanon, the United States, and Canada to help others develop TBL programs. You can learn more about his work at learntbl.ca.

Pete Ostafichuk

Pete Ostafichuk is a professor of teaching in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC). His primary teaching area is engineering design, but he has taught a variety of other topics including aircraft aerodynamics, naval architecture, engineering principles, and even some physics, math, and statistics. He is the co-creator and former coordinator of the multi-award winning Mech 2 program that integrates 15 previously disparate courses into a fully-integrated, hands-on, team-taught curriculum. From his first course as a new faculty member at UBC in 2004, Pete has been teaching using TBL. He has taught almost 2000 students, from sophomore to doctoral level, in 20 TBL courses in the years since. He has delivered numerous faculty workshops, conference papers, and webinars on the use of TBL. He also helps to mentor faculty members making the switch to TBL.

Bill Roberson

Bill Roberson directs the teaching and learning center that serves the Albany campus of the State University of New York. A former faculty member and now faculty developer, his career has focused on the integration of critical thinking into the university classroom. To that end, he has been a practitioner of Team-Based Learning since 2000, and has consulted with faculty at approximately 75 institutions, in North and South America and Europe, on course design for critical thinking, active learning, assessment of teaching, and the use of TBL to promote critical thinking. He has held positions in faculty development at UNC-Chapel Hill, Indiana University and the University of Texas at El Paso, where he was founding executive director of that university’s division for instructional technology, classroom design, digital media production and distance learning. He came to New York in 2006 to create the Institute for Teaching, Learning, and Academic Leadership at the University at Albany, State University of New York (www.itlal.org).

Billie Franchini

Billie Franchini is the Assistant Director of the Institute for Teaching, Learning and Academic Leadership at the University at Albany (SUNY). She entered faculty development after more than a decade of teaching at the high school and University levels. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses using TBL and has worked with scores of faculty to support them in implementing TBL in their own courses.

Karla Kubitz

Karla Kubitz is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University. She teaches classes in sport psychology, exercise psychology, motor learning, and the psychology of sport injury/ rehabilitation and has been teaching using team-based learning since 2005. Karla is an active member of the Team-Based Learning Collaborative and is currently serving the TBLC in several roles. She is a member of the Steering Committee (i.e., the Member-at-Large for Higher Education) and she is on the 2013-2014 Program Committee. In addition, she is editor of the TBLC Casebank and a mentor in the Train the Trainer Program. Karla has published two book chapters on team-based learning, one in Team-Based Learning for Health Professions Education (2008) and another in Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities (2012). She has also published several teaching modules in the TBLC Casebank .