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Team-Based Learning
Team-based learning is a structured approach to small-group learning that typically consists of three steps or stages:
- Pre-class Preparation.
- Readiness Assurance Test (including Individual Readiness Assurance Test (iRAT) and Group Readiness Assurance Test (gRAT).
- Application Activity.
The process is underpinned by effective group formation, which means ensuring the groups have a range of abilities within them and remain consistent throughout the module. Students are accountable for their own pre-learning, but this is tested as part of the iRAT and gRAT. Team activities and assessments should encourage both knowledge/skill and team development. Students should receive feedback on their assessments and should be encouraged to reflect upon their results.
Digital Tools for Team-Based Learning
MS Forms for Assurance Testing
The associated workload and feedback that accomanies the iRAT and gRAT can be lightened by the use of MS Forms to auomate the marking and basic feedback process. By creating your tests within MS Forms, the students’ marks can be provided automatically within the session, therefore reducing your marking load and allowing the rest of the teaching session to be used for reflection, discussion, and solidifying understanding where needed.
Automating this process allows for immediate feedback, which can then be built upon during sessions. If students can see where they need to develop or consolidate their knowledge and/or understanding, they can better target their efforts within the application activity that follows, often learning from group members whose understanding is strongest or having the opportunity to ask you for support or guidance with that element of the activity.
Journals for Reflection
Most VLEs have the options to create journal spaces for students to reflect upon their learning. Setting up journals within your VLE gives each student or group their respective spaces in which to add their ideas and comments or to ask any questions. You can then respond to those journal entries yourself if you choose or you can use them to gauge confidence levels and plan teaching and learning activities for future sessions.
Where this feature is not available within your VLE, a similar approach can be achieved by used Class Notebooks within Microsoft OneNote.
MS Teams for Fostering Learning Communities
Setting up a Teams site for your cohort and then assigning each group their own channel can help foster a learning community and help your students develop positive working practices within their groups. These shared spaces provide students the opportunity to ask each other questions, create and share collaborative files, and ask questions of and share their experiences with other groups.
Such practice requires facilitation from a tutor’s perspective: you should set expectations at the start of the module and demonstrate how they might get the most out of these shared spaces. Encouraging that asking of questions in the ‘General’ channel, for example, gives the opportunity for learners to respond to one another or for all students to see your response, reducing the same questions being asked of you
