Hi,
My name is Annica Gad and in my new role I will support the implementation of TBL in the medical programme at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. As KI is a Medical faculty, I am mainly interested in how to change the teacher-student relationship in medical faculties from a "traditional teacher lecturing - student listener / master-apprentice type of relationship to that of " a “teacher facilitator - to an active, engaged and self-driven students”. Does anyone have any ideas about how to best do this? Fun fact about me is maybe that I have lived in around half a dozen, different cultures and countries and enjoy the diversity of cultures and perspectives on this planet, and also greatly enjoy cultural clashes, when these different perspectives meet and exchange views.
I look forward to learning more about how to implement TBL in more hierarchical social learning environments, any suggestions or ideas on how to do this would be greatly appreciated 
All best!,
Annica
Hi Annica
We introduced TBL across our pharmacy programme at Bradford (in the UK) in 2012 and learned the following:
Dear Simon,
Thanks very much for feedback (I have lived and worked in the UK, in Yorkshire, as well, which was a great experience). I am very curious to see what you learned, but I can unfortunately not see the link…I do not know why…is there a link somewhere that I should be able to open and see?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
All best!,
Annica
Hi Annica
Apologies, the post I made seems to have cut off after the first sentence, possibly because I used bullet points. I’ll try again. Perhaps if you could also share your email address with me I’ll send it via email to you too.
We introduced TBL across our pharmacy programme at Bradford (in the UK) in 2012 and learned the following
It’s vital to prepare students for TBL so that they understand how it works and how we learn. I don’t do this as a didactic lecture though, student work in their teams to ‘unpack’ TBL, it’s different elements, and we have a comprehensive discussion (using AEs) on how we learn, how we process knowledge and the benefits of collaborative and peer learning and teaching. This is a student-led TBL session. We also explore (via application exercises) how to get the most out of a team, the benefits and challenges of working in a team, how to give feedback, how to prevent conflicts, and what to do if a student in their team disengages
It’s also very important that faculty understand how to optimise student learning and the benefits of student-centred active and collaborative learning. In 2012 we had to convince several members of our faculty that ‘just because you’ve said it in a lecture’ doesn’t mean that that they have learned it or even understand it’. A lot of academics had come through a less than optimal learning environment themselves and often think that if they survived a teacher-centred approach then their students should too. It did us 2 years or so to convince the majority of faculty that TBL was so much better than the traditional methods. Our strategies included
- bringing in TBL experts (@lmichaelsen spent a week with us) and pharmacy TBL faculty from the US who were a little further down the TBL journey than we were at the time, all of which ran some workshops for us in which faculty participated as students.
- Forming faculty unit/module teams so we could review each other’s resources and facilitation skills and give feedback
- Listening to students’ feedback about their experiences of TBL and sharing that with faculty
- Developing a plan for SoTL on TBL so we captured quantitative and qualitative data from exams, RAT tests and used validated Heidi Mennenga’s TBL-SAI to gather student’s experiences of TBL compared with traditional experiences and sharing these results with faculty (who love data!). I also ran some focus groups with students
- We had a Steering Committee with employers on who told us they wanted pharmacists who could work in teams and make collaborative decisions.
- We joined the TBLC so we had access to resources and a network of people who had experiences to draw on
- We developed our faculty via the TBLC’s Fundamentals Training programme and two of us signed up to be TBL Consultant-Trainers so we could continue to train and develop our new and existing faculty and help others externally to set up TBL programmes.
We also introduced ‘TBL tasters’ for applicants so they experience TBL as part of the interview day they attend, so they understand how they will be learning when they come to us. We also use TBL tasters in open days (getting parents involved) and have demonstrated it to local science teachers, who also participated as students (we call this influencing the influencers)
After 12 years TBL is so well established in our school we would never go back. We now only recruit faculty who are prepared to educate students using TBL. It is one of our main USPs and what we are known for. I’m happy to have a Teams call if I can help further or share any resources.
Best wishes
Simon
Hi @sjtwedde
Thank you for the valuable insights above. Can you elaborate more on ‘TBL tasters’ or ‘Influencing the influencers’ program that you conduct? Is there a specific course that your team has designed for the interview day?
Dear Simon,
Thank you so much for all this information!
This is all so very useful.
Yes, it would be great if we could meet online, but, maybe a bit later in the fall, when I know more about what my role entails, and ideally together with my line manager Juha Rantala (who you know, I think, he asked me to send you his warmest greetings). I also need some time to reflect on the successful approaches you listed and how to implement them at our university.
I am so very grateful for the insightful, constructive, and specific information you sent, and I will get back to you in around two months from now to see if you would have time to schedule in an online meeting. I hope that is fine with you. I wish you a lovely end of summer,
Kind regards,
Annica
Dear Simon,
You summarized almost everything I would have said about our introduction to TBL at Duke-NUS Medical School. Our “taster” is part of the Applicant Day for applicants who we interview for entry to medical school. We send them a research article or two on a current/relevant topic. Our RAT focuses on the content of the article(s) – from definitions, author’s conclusions, maybe study design – elements to help them think about how to answer the application. Then the application often focuses on policy decisions one might make based on the readings. But we also explain the TBL process as we go along. Why do we send the material before, the purpose of the IRAT, how to use the TRAT to best enhance team and own learning, purpose of the applications and appeals, and most importantly the focus on learning rather than scores/grades.
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