Online Education: Team-Based Learning at ACTA
Team-Based Learning in online education: "Breakout rooms worked very well."
Team-Based Learning (TBL) is applied at ACTA in the bachelor Dentistry. TBL is a special form of collaborative learning in teams, in which individual work, group work and feedback succeed each other (Sweet & Michaelsen, 2007). TBL requires much interaction between students and because of Covid, this interaction was organised online in breakout rooms. In online education, it is essential that students feel they are in contact with others in the online learning environment (Garisson et al., 2010). This has worked well in the TBL at ACTA. The feeling of being in touch with others contributes to more motivation (Ng, 2019), lower study dropout rate (Muljana & Luo, 2019) and a more positive learning experience (Sun & Chen, 2016).
About Team-Based Learning
In TBL, students individually prepare a problem and take a competence test, the readyness assurance test (iRAT). Afterwards, the problem is discussed in small fixed groups (teams) of six students and the team makes the same test again (tRAT) in pre-assigned breakout rooms. The underlying idea is that as a team you arrive at the correct answer more often, an added value of teamwork. After the test, the correct answers are discussed in the whole group consisting of several teams. This is followed by the elaboration or application questions. In this form of active teaching, the students take the lead. The role of the teacher differs from the traditional lecture and tutorial methods; the teacher remains the expert, but with TBL he or she has more of a coaching role. The TBL teams remain intact throughout the year, meaning that everyone takes on the role of chairman or spokesperson at some point.
Read more about TBL:
Read more about online experiences from the teacher’s perspective:
Teun de Vries
Experience of teacher Teun de VriesTBL to train cooperation skills with more senses
“About 10 percent of contact teaching in Bachelor-1 at ACTA was done in the TBL tutorial format, with the main aim of training students’ collaboration skills. Later in the professional life, clinicians have to collaborate a lot, so the sooner you start practicing these skills the better. We want to make this part of their professional development file. TBL asks something different from the teacher too. One teacher said to me: ‘TBL has pulled me out of my one-man show’. I thought this very nicely captured the essence of the role that the teacher assumes in this type of education. A student movingly said: ‘You experience TBL with more sense’. I found that wording so surprising that I incorporated it into the title of my SKO study.”
Online TBL appealed to students
“2020-2021 was the first year that this activating tutorial format was applied at ACTA in the Bachelor-1 Dentistry. Because of Covid, this had to be done online and that went quite well. We conducted a survey among 75 respondents to find out how they experienced TBL online, and 70 respondents even preferred online to on-campus in the future without Covid. I found that very remarkable, but it also urged me to do something with it: It could be that certain forms of online teaching work very well, although I am also very curious about an on-campus TBL application phase in a large room. This year we worked in teams online on the application questions in pre-assigned breakout rooms. That worked very well, both for students and teachers.”
"Apparate and disapparate': Changing breakout rooms is easy for teachers
“The teacher can go to any breakout room to observe and assist each team. I find that joing the teams is very easy online. You can almost invisibly observe and easily switch from one team to another – I always call it ‘apparate and disapparate’ like in Harry Potter. You are much more invisible online than in an on-campus setting, which provides you a better picture of the discussion and the dynamics.
Serene quietness in breakout rooms
“Another advantage of the breakout rooms is that there is a serene quietness compared to the cacophony of sound of different group discussions mixed together in the same room, situations that I saw on Youtube videos. Because of the quietness, very focused and concentrated work per team is possible and it makes it easier for the teacher to watch and coach.
A possible disadvantage of an online version of TBL is that you do miss the non-verbal communication between groups in the application phase.”
Fixed teams, changing team leaders
“The teams stay together throughout the year and students swap leadership roles among themselves, so that everyone gets a turn. This year students who are the pioneers with TBL are required to attend the sessions and they get a bonus point of 0.1 on their grade for the course. Next year the grade the student gets for the TBL component will be an integral part of their grade.”
“Think carefully how you will use the time in the breakout rooms and be well prepared. TBL offers a good format, in which three questions form core, giving each team 15 minutes to discuss a topic and then 15 minutes for feedback. This short time span and the alternation between discussions and feedback works well for the concentration curve, which may be even shorter online than on-campus. If you are inspired by this article to try to incorporate the online version of TBL, make sure that you have a team in place that is willing to shape the TBL education in the background. Start on time, and also involve the ICT department of your faculty. If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact ACTA’s TBL team, tbl@acta.nl.”
Ayla Usakligil
Breakout rooms make for a structured discussion
“With TBL, you deal with application questions with your team in breakout rooms. Collaborating online took some time getting used to – Zoom was new – but I find it a huge advantage that you do not talk over each other online, because then you cannot hear anything in an online setting. Online, people are better at letting each other finish and it’s nicer to discuss without interruptions is nicer. Those breakout rooms are the reason why it works so well online, as far as I’m concerned.”
Online class benefits the shy student
“It’s also a great working method for the more shy student who doesn’t dare to talk in class. The threshold to say something is lower, but the team leaders also took it upon themselves to give everyone a turn. This meant that not only the people who scream the loudest were heard. On campus, teachers tend to focus more on the articulate student, but online everyone gets a chance. We were asked if we wanted to stay together as a group for the entire semester and everyone preferred to stay with the same fixed team. That’s how you build a bond of trust, so that everyone feels more free to say something. I am someone who does things last minute, because I need some pressure, but TBL helps me to start earlier with the material. Because of the structure – the set-up of TBL – with multiple short test moments, but also because you don’t want to let your team down. You do your best to prepare for each other.”
Online more practical logistically
“I also completed the survey and I am in favor of doing this subject online. Apart from the advantages I mentioned before, it also is more practical in terms of scheduling. If you have to come to the ACTA building, which is on the VU campus, for each component of TBL, it takes a lot of time and effort. iRAT and tRAT tests take half an hour, a mini-lecture is 15 minutes and then there are the various discussions about application questions within your team. I live in Amsterdam, but if you live outside of Amsterdam and you have to be present for each component, it is not efficient. If all you have to do is to be ready with your laptop for each part, as far as I’m concerned it would take minimal effort and safe time. For TBL, attendance is compulsory, but it also seems that attendance is higher online, even at unreasonable times such as 8:15 am.”
Online class pushes a team leader to carry out that leading role thoroughly
“When filling in the multiple-choice test for the tRAT, the team leader first checks whether everyone actually agrees with the answer that is filled in for the team. The role of team leader was alternated, so that each team member would have a turn. We were not given a manual on how to behave as a team leader, but it naturally went very well in our group. I haven’t heard any bad stories from other groups either. I think that the fact that the team worked online contributed to the thorough exercise of the leading role. Online, it is necessary not to talk over each other, so a team leader needs to keep a close eye on this. You also have a better overview of who has not yet been able to say anything, and you can actively ask those people for their contribution. What was also nice about TBL and working online was that students were better prepared.”
Continue online with TBL or on campus?
“For both forms – online and on campus – a case can be made. The disadvantage of working online can be the delay in connection, technical failures and the somewhat more formal way discussions take place. On campus, a discussion might be more lively and passionate and it would definitely be nice to experience that as well, but I liked the civilised way of discussing that the online format more or less enforces. I know my fellow students by now and for some of them, it might be a good thing that they don’t get the chance to constantly talk through each other online. I’m a fan of online because it is so regimented and directed.”
TIP from AYLA
“There is a big difference between the way teachers use TBL. Some are better at leading a discussion than others. Some are inclined to give a mini-lecture; one might put reading material on Canvas, the other only provides basic information on TBL. There should be more unity in this and teachers should follow a format, a clear structure, in addition to the TBL structure. Furthermore, technical failures were annoying. Sometimes we had to wait a long time before we could continue because of a technical problem, and that can become awkward online. Also, something went wrong with saving the results, therefore it took a long time before we received our results.”
REACTION TEUN:
“Ayla expresses that students need the same structure in the classes across teachers, instead of different formats for each teacher, so we are going to work on that. We are going to outline the structure more clearly, because only then a new culture in education is created with this new tool. We are going to work on a buddy system for teachers. Because TBL is introduced per academic year up to Bachelor-3, several Bachelor-1 teachers already gained experience. It would be great if these teachers could play an inspiring role in guiding and observing the Bachelor-2 and Bachelor-3 teachers. For me, one of the best gifts of online TBL was the enormous willingness of teachers to admit observers. That can lead to a lot of good things to ACTA.”
This sotry is part of a series of inspiring practical examples of online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged during focus group discussions within the research project ‘Online and blended education at the UvA’. This research project provides insight into the experiences of teachers and students with online (aspects of) education and the strategies that teachers have used to stimulate (online) learning. The stories and reports from this project can be found on the project page on this site
Literature
Sweet, M.S., & Michaelsen, L.K., (2007) How Group Dynamics Research Can Inform the Theory and Practice of Postsecondary Small Group Learning. Educational Psychology Review, 19(1), 31-47.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 5-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.10.003
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher educationmodel. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6
Muljana, P. S., & Luo, T. (2019). Factors contributing to student retention in online learning and recommended strategies for improvement: A systematic literature review. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 18, 19–57. https://doi.org/10.28945/4182
Ng, C. (2019). Shifting the focus from motivated learners to motivating distributed environments: a review of 40 years of published motivation research in Distance Education. Distance Education, 40(4), 469–496. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2019.1681892
Sun, A., & Chen, X. (2016). Online education and its effective practice: A research review. Journal of Information Technology Education, 15, 157–190. https://doi.org/10.28945/3502