March 1, 2013
Craig Scott: Team-based learning prepares medical students for interdisciplinary team-based practice
“Trust students — help them be more active in and accountable for their learning. Encourage transformative thinking by faculty — help them realize that there are often better ways to give students the benefit of their expertise than by lecturing.”
Craig Scott
Professor, Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics, UW Seattle
Dr. Scott, a professor in Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics, and Director of the Northwest Consortium for Clinical Assessment in the School of Medicine,U W Seattle, has been working to create classroom environments in which faculty members can better share their expertise and insights than by lecturing. Moodle, a learning management system, is used to administer ‘answer until correct’ class-prep
feedback quizzes at the beginning of class, which leads into processes that promote more active student participation during class. He says that Team-based Learning (TBL), a form of small-group learning that promotes collaboration, active learning,
and critical thinking, has several key attributes that make it an attractive supplement and/or alternative to lecturing.
Benefits for students: As Dr. Scott described in an October 2012 Ignite! presentation, team-based learning better simulates the real-world experience of practicing medicine. He noted, “Medicine is a discipline of teams, and we have never concentrated on teamwork as much as we are now. We recognize that every facet of medicine involves individuals working together, and we’re trying to start students off with team-based learning. One of the problems we’re trying to address is the lack of value that the classroom has been adding for many students. We’re now venturing into team-based learning where they’re accountable for their pre-class preparation; students are choosing to come to class to participate in small teams.” He added, “lectures are largely dispensed with. It gets very, very noisy if it works right.”
Student reactions: “Students are certainly more engaged; they uniformly prepare better for class. TBL is coming to be viewed as a qualified success both by students and by initial faculty adopters, at least to the extent that most seem to like it relative to exclusive lecturing. Team-based learning has the potential for making better use of student’s most valuable resource — time.”
Advice: “Trust students — help them be more active in and accountable for their learning. Encourage transformative thinking by faculty — help them realize that there are often better ways to give students the benefit of their expertise than by lecturing.”
Learn More
Read the full Provost report on how UW faculty are enhancing teaching with technology.