Team-Based Learning (TBL) Faculty Development Open Educational Resource (OER)

This module explores Creating a TBL Module and Application Activities

Before doing the iRAT please make sure to:

1. View TBL activities at LKC School of Medicine
2. Read Sibley and Roberson’s (2016) Guide to Creating a TBL Module

Experience a sample application activity entitled, “Peppers 101 or How Hot is Hot?” created by Byron E. Crawford.
Since application activities typically require that students come prepared to class, you will have to engage in some pre-work and the readiness assurance process before you can complete the application activity.

1. Read "TBL Hot Pepper App Pre-Reading" Byron Crawford, Tulane University by Chris Burns, University of Illinois.
2. Take iRAT #2 for module 4

3. Complete the Hot Pepper application activity.  Ideally, you will engage in this activity with colleagues to figure out which choices you will make. As with most application activities, if not all, you can consult the reading if it helps during the team discussion.

Create an application activity for one of the units of your course, but first:

1. Consider the following:

2. Look at four different samples of application activities from the same course, each using a different response modality:;
   1. Sample 1 uses a gallery response mode and is a common type of activity Graciela Elizalde-Utnick uses on the first day of class to get the students thinking deeply about the course topics without having yet read any of the assigned readings.

2. Samples 2, 3, and 4 use similar response modes whereby each team selects from several choices provided. Students report their answers by each team simultaneously holding up a paddle or a small whiteboard with their answer written on them, or laminated colored cards (e.g., Choice A is on a blue card, Choice B is on an orange card; Choice C is on a yellow card, etc.). This way, on the count of three, all teams raise their answers up at the same time, and the teams and instructor can quickly see the choices made. It is important for this to be done simultaneously so that a given team does not second-guess themselves if they see different responses chosen by the other teams. Sometimes, if there is one best answer, the lone team is right! But with application activities, there does not have to be one right answer – it is all about having a deeply considered argument for a position taken and having a wonderful inter-team (whole-class) discussion where all the students are engaged

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

3. Now create your own application activity. Consider using an activity you already implement in your teaching. Tweak it so that it becomes a TBL activity and conforms to the 4 S’s:
   1. significant program;
   2. specific choice;
   3. same problem; and
   4. simultaneous reporting.

These S’s are key to TBL. How will your students report? Response cards? Team white boards? Gallery-style, whereby teams create some form of product (like on large post-it paper) and display it on the wall for other teams to view and make comments?

Explore the following Team Application Exercises based on Sibley, 2016:

1. You are an instructor in an English course at a small college that mostly caters to overseas students. You are creating an assignment about the use of the active and passive voice. You want the assignment to be both cognitively challenging and create a rich reporting discussion. Regarding the wordings for an assignment:
   • Which of the following wordings would likely best achieve the objectives of being "Cognitively challenging?"
   • Which of the following wordings would likely best achieve the objectives of "Creating a rich reporting discussion?"
   1. List the mistakes writers frequently make that detract from their efforts to write in an active voice.
   2. Read the following passage and identify clear examples of active voice and passive voice.
   3. Read the following passage and identify the sentence in which the passive voice is used most appropriately.

2. Omitting which S of the 4 S’s would have the least negative impact on the effectiveness of team tasks?
   1. Significant Problem
   2. Same Problem
   3. Specific Choice
   4. Simultaneous Report