Team-based learning

Who should attend?

Team-based learning (TBL) is a teaching strategy that offers the benefits of small group learning within large classes by creating opportunities for students to apply conceptual knowledge through a systematic process of preparatory work, individual assessment, teamwork and immediate feedback.

This half-day workshop is designed to prepare staff to plan and facilitate team-based learning within their undergraduate or postgraduate programmes. The workshop uses an experiential approach to allow participants to explore the nature of TBL and experience its educational value by being on the receiving end. This is then followed by an opportunity to discuss the practicalities of how to design and deliver TBL within new and existing modules.

Key areas

• The structure of and educational rationale for TBL
• Facilitating student-led, peer learning
• Designing and planning for TBL

Prerequisite

This workshop assumes an understanding of key principles of teaching and learning. Prior attendance at Introduction to teaching for learning or a comparable workshop is recommended as a prerequisite. This workshop requires some preparatory reading that will be emailed to you in advance.

Imperial STAR Framework

This workshop is particularly suitable for those seeking recognition at D1 or D2 level of the Imperial STAR Framework. It addresses the following dimensions of the Professional Standards Framework (PSF 2023): A1, A2, A3, A4, K1, K2, K3, V2, V3, V5.

Further Information

TBL at Imperial - selected examples

Prof Pietro Spanu and Senior Learning Technologist, Moira Sarsfield, have developed a shareable technologically enhanced approach to facilitating TBL for 140 UG 2nd year students in Applied Molecular Biology. Read about Pietro and Moira's work in Imperial's Innovations in Learning case studies. Pietro, Moira and Kate were finalists in the HEA Collaborative Awards for Teaching Excellence (CATE) for their work. 

Dr Magda Charalambous, Dr Josh Hodge and Kate Ippolito have developed and published on a TBL approach that enables 1st and 2nd years in Life Sciences to develop important statistics, R programming and team-working skills.

Dr. Chris John and Dr. Deepak Barnabas use TBL to teach and assess groups of 90 1st and 2nd year medical students in their Clinical & Scientific Integrative cases module designed to develop students' ability to work integratively and collaboratively.  View details of their work:  Utilising challenging assessment to develop collaborative team working skills in medical students.

Dr Elizabeth Hauke has developed a novel approach to using TBL to teach 62 UG Global Challenges students over a series of 20 sessions and was awarded Best Innovation in the 2015 Student Academic Choice Awards.  

Dr Matt Harris who uses TBL to teach critical appraisal to students on MSc in Health Policy fed back: "What worked really well in the workshop, was that Kate and Jo used the TBL technique to teach the TBL technique. It was a highly effective, practical approach that drove home the key principles of the technique in a fun and highly interactive way.  TBL requires a lot of up-front preparation from the teacher, but it is a very efficient way to ensure that the learning outcomes for the session are met, not by some students, but by all students. TBL is a useful technique to improve learning in groups, that goes beyond the usual sage-on-the-stage model, but is also more reliable than traditional group work formats."

To find out more about these and additional examples, please contact Kate Ippolito.