Promising Practices:
- Explore TBL online resources. Before developing your course, we
recommend reading or visiting the following resources: Clark et al
2018 reviews best practices for implementing TBL online. Palsolé and
Awalt 2008 describes a different TBL case study with asynchronous team
discussions. Clark and Leonard. 2016. Team-based learning in an
online environmenthttps://sites.google.com/site/tbladvantageschallenges/welcome-video
provides an example of an online module and further information on TBL
practices.
- Survey students before creating teams . Team building is perhaps
one of the most essential steps to successfully use TBL online. A
short 1-5minute survey can facilitate this task. One of the first
questions should be time availability to work with teams during the
week or weekend. After asking about time availability and the time
zone for each student, different methods can be used to group the
students (several methods summarized in Donovan 2018). We suggest
considering questions regarding gender, under-represented status, and
other relevant experiences for team work (e.g. playing instruments or
student membership in a varsity team) (Woolley et al. , 2015).
- Share tools and skills that students can use when working in
teams . Most students had never worked in online teams before the
social distancing restrictions. It is important to show them tools and
behaviors that can facilitate team communication. An instructor could
share online applications such as When2meet or doodle poll,
demonstrate how to set up recurrent meetings, and model respectful
online discussion behaviors.
- Provide strategies and expectations for good teamwork . The
instructor should guide the students understanding of team rules. For
example, ask the students to discuss what would happen if one team
member does not show up for a meeting on time, would the team wait for
five minutes before starting the meeting or delay the meeting?
- Provide an estimated time to completion for every assignment .
Students often ask how often they need to meet and for how long. It is
easy to add an estimate of time to the assignments description and it
allows the students to schedule their weekly team meetings more
efficiently.
- Use participation points in online discussions . In our
experience, providing incentive for discussion boards often results in
a more active discussion among team members and helps generate
accountability. We also find that asking for photos or transcripts of
online meetings helps assure that all students are participating
during online synchronous meetings.
- Maintain active instructor and student interactions . There is
some evidence that a higher number of interactions between instructors
and students help generate engagement and cohesion in the online
classroom (Chatterjee & Correia 2020). Instructor-student
interactions are particularly relevant at the beginning of the course
when students are learning how to engage with the course and team
members. We recommend that instructors initiate daily interactions
through discussion boards and announcements during the first one or
two weeks of classes, as well as answering emails and messages
promptly.
- Use of multiple tools for discussions . Different discussion
platforms provide opportunities for the students to engage with the
material more thoroughly. We found that structured discussions such as
those using VoiceThread were useful to enhance student participation,
practice recalling concept, and applying those concepts to new
scenarios. Other discussion platforms, such as Slack or other
discussion boards allowed for spontaneous discussions with students
building up on each other ideas and creating informal conversations
that might enhance the sense of belonging in the class.