Biggest TBL Challenges

Team-Based Learning
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It would be great to hear from the community about what were (are) their biggest challenges and if you resolved it - how did you do that?

I think we can all learn from your experiences.

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Hi Sandy,

Thanks for starting this thread. A few came to mind in a conversation @bobkamei and I had with someone earlier this week at a medical school in Europe. They had two major concerns:

  1. Faculty buy-in: faculty are traditional lecture mostly and are overwhelmed. TBL is new and more work.

  2. TBL space: there was concern about using traditional lecture style rooms for TBL.

Any thoughts?

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Hi Brian,

Agree, Faculty are often overwhelmed and TBL can be more work (initially) if they don’t have admin support. One strategy that helps is to create a TBL interest/support group among several faculty (even if in different disciplines) to share ideas, commiserate, and provide feedback/support. I was fortunate enough to have a great boss (Bob) who allowed me to create an admin support feature within the office of education that minimized the added burden on the faculty. We had educators to help with the Objectives, admin staff to prepare materials and run logistics during class, and encouraged the faculty to work in teams to prepare material. Too often faculty are on their own - and it does take an energetic, committed, passionate, educator to take on this challenge - but seeing the excitement and learning at play among the students has often been the great reward.

Regarding space - while not ideal, it can be done in traditional lecture style rooms. Duke did it, until they were able to create a new space. learning and engagement seems to overcome some space limitations.

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