Conclusion
Overall, TBL enhanced the student experience in our online course. Our
experience showed not only that students participated actively in the
course but also acquired high performance levels. This was especially
demonstrated when we transitioned our face-to-face class to online
teaching in the Spring of 2020. To our surprise all of our students not
only completed our course (despite the opportunity to withdraw without
penalty) but also did very well – only two students had final grades
below 70% and none failed the course. In addition, discussions and
assessments demonstrated that students had a clear understanding of
fundamental evolutionary topics.
Students reported the usefulness of teamwork but found scheduling
meeting times a challenge and an added stressor, which underscores
previous research on online courses with team work components (Palsolé
& Awalt, 2008; Goh & Gunnells, 2020). We recommend requiring teams to
set weekly meeting times at the start of the term. Other online courses
that implemented TBL opted for only asynchronous team discussions (e.g.
Palsolé & Awalt, 2008). However, we found that synchronous team
discussions in our online course had components usually associated with
enhanced sense of belonging and accountability. We suggest that online
courses continue assessing the role of synchronous and asynchronous
discussions in different student populations. Overall, our experience
transitioning to online learning during the pandemic confirmed that the
use of TBL strategies and teamwork can help increase student engagement,
equity, and accountability in online life science courses.