How I Found TBL

Here's an entry I posted to the Spirit of Inquiry in December of 2010:

On to Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink

L. Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences has led me to a book he co-authored with Larry K. Michaelsen and Arletta Bauman Knight: Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching.

Team-based learning is, of course, a way of creating significant learning experiences. It is also one of those things you read about and think, “Oh yeah, I already sort of do that.” However, as Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink emphasize, team-based learning goes beyond the casual/occasional use of small student groups or the more systematic use of groups in cooperative learning; team-based learning “is an instructional strategy, not just a teaching technique” (9), one that “calls for procedures that support the transformation of newly formed ‘groups’ into ‘high-performance learning teams’” (8).

Rhoda Reddix and other faculty teaching NURS 1310: Pharmacology in Nursing have been using team-based learning and have seen significant measurable improvements in student performance. I suspect others on campus are using team-based learning as well, though I have yet to find out who they are (who are they?).

My goal is to revise my approach to teaching ENGL 1311, to move from the casual use of small groups to a full commitment to team-based learning. Doing so is no small task, as it will mean eliminating some assignments and creating new ones, writing several RATs (Readiness Assurance Tests), and doing things differently in every single class period (while generally taking care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater). But the potential advantages are significant in size and number.

One of the advantages has to do with student motivation. For students to write well, they must have motives. It can be a challenge to get students to care about producing quality writing (and caring is one of the domains in the taxonomy of significant learning): to care enough to plan a piece of writing carefully, draft it well in advance, take seriously feedback from others, truly revise (not just “tweak”) the text, and edit it thoroughly. In my classes (and in most writing courses universally), it is up to me to motivate students, and it is up to each student to motivate herself. With team-based learning, a third party comes into play: the team (of several fellow students). If I can implement team-based learning the way I hope to, student writers will have not only their own and my expectations to meet, but also their teammates’.