“Is there anybody out there? Oh wait… there actually is!” – Using Team Based Learning with LAMS to nurture high student engagement in the live online classroom.

Team-Based Learning (TBL; Michaelsen and Sweet, 2011) is a pedagogical approach which utilises a sequence of activities such as pre-reading, individual/team quizzing, team problem-solving tasks, whole-class discussion and peer feedback to nurture high student engagement during lectures.

This paper discusses how the authors were able to successfully facilitate TBL with remote learners. Lessons learned about how to adapt technology to support high engagement through Online TBL will be discussed.

Existing tools available through the Moodle VLE provided capabilities for completion of individual quizzes. However, even with the use of the breakout room function on Zoom, the ability to seamlessly complete team quizzes with immediate “question by question” feedback and recovery attempts was not possible. Immediate feedback for students and staff during team quizzing is a cornerstone of TBL as it can stimulate peer teaching, encourage whole team involvement, and provide instructors with real time data which assists with “just-in-time” teaching (Michaelsen and Sweet, 2011).

It was also not feasible to share group decisions simultaneously within the live online classroom. Simultaneity helps to nurture fruitful whole class discussion (which can be stunted when presentation of decisions and rationales by groups is sequential; Michaelsen et al., 2008).

LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) Open Source software was adopted by the authors to facilitate online TBL. LAMS enabled teams to have several attempts at quiz questions with immediate feedback. It also enabled teams to complete application exercises together as well as sharing their group decisions simultaneously. As the sequence of TBL activities occurred on a single platform, the opportunity for faculty to efficiently monitor class understanding, to record class engagement and grades, as well as seamlessly facilitate whole class discussion was made feasible.

By adopting appropriate open-source technology, faculty successfully nurtured an engaging online synchronous TBL experience for students who were unable to attend in-class sessions.

References

Michaelsen, L. K., & Sweet, M. (2011). Team‐based learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 128, 41-51.

Michaelsen L, Parmelee D, McMahon K, & Levine R. (2008). Team-based learning for health professions education: A guide to using small groups for improving learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing