Team-Based Learning workshop held for area psychology instructors

By Jackie Seeman

Dr. Krisztina Jakobsen has been studying and practicing a teaching method called Team-Based Learning (TBL), in which students learn primary course content outside of the classroom and spend class time working in permanent teams to apply their knowledge. On Wednesday, August 10, 2016, Dr. Jakobsen and her students conducted a workshop for high school teachers and college professors of Psychology to teach them about TBL.  Dr. Jakobsen received a grant from the Association of Psychological Science Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science to support this workshop.

A TBL classroom strays from the typical classroom structure, in which students primarily listen to lectures and may participate in group work outside of class.  In a TBL classroom, students start by learning course content outside of the classroom using guided readings and videos.  Students’ next interaction with course material comes in the form of an individual quiz, which assesses their understanding of course material at various levels of Bloom’s taxonomy; the individual quiz holds students accountable for preparing for class activities.  Following the individual quiz, students take the same quiz in their teams, which allows students a chance to participate in peer instruction.  The instructor then does a mini-lecture to clarify any confusing points.  This mini-lecture ensures students are fully prepared to participate in subsequent application activities.  Application activities, structured to facilitate within and between group discussions, present the team with a challenging question or scenario and require the team to come to a consensus with regard to the answer or decision, which is then shared across teams. 

Workshop participants learned about the structure and function of TBL through actively engaging in the TBL process.  Dr. Jakobsen set up the workshop as she would a TBL classroom, by first placing the participants into mixed teams based on the type of psychology class they teach (e.g., AP, IB, college) and years of experience in teaching psychology.  Participants completed a reading about TBL, then completed individual and team quizzes based on the reading.  Next, participants completed application activities to engage more deeply with content related to what TBL is and how it is useful in the classroom.  Through engaging in the TBL process, participants learned not only about the structure and function of TBL, but also how to modify it to meet their needs and the needs of their students within their unique learning environments.