This paper describes the development of the Integrated Online—Team-Based Learning (IO-TBL) model and details students’ perceptions of IO-TBL using the Community of Inquiry framework. IO-TBL is an online team-based learning course design that combines the flexibility of asynchronous engagement with the connectedness offered through synchronous meetings. Student comments from small group instructional feedback sessions and end-of-course teaching evaluations were grouped into clusters of similar statements about what was going well and suggestions for improvement, which were then assigned to one of the three presences of the Community of Inquiry framework. While students most commonly identified increased learning, synchronous meetings, teamwork, and the instructor as going well in the course, students found IO-TBL to impose a heavy workload and require a significant amount of time. Clusters were most often related to teaching presence, followed by social presence, and then cognitive presence.
Developing a sense of classroom community is important in promoting course satisfaction and in helping students overcome feelings of disconnectedness, especially in online courses. When considering the various strategies identified as contributing to a sense of classroom community, instructors likely need support in which strategies and technology tools to select, as well as how to implement those strategies. This support may be especially needed for instructors seeking to translate community building practices in face-to-face settings to their online courses. Team-based learning might be used to foster a sense of classroom community among students in both face-to-face and online courses. An embedded mixed methods design was used to determine if and how students’ perceptions of classroom community varied between method of course delivery (face-to-face or online) and course format (non-TBL or TBL). The results showed whether students in face-to-face courses (non-TBL and TBL) reported a stronger sense of classroom community than those students in online courses (non-TBL and TBL). The results also revealed how students in TBL courses (face-to-face and online) described their sense of connectedness to their instructor and peers compared to those in non-TBL courses.
This chapter describes the Integrated Online Team-Based Learning (IO-TBL) model, an online TBL course design which utilizes both asynchronous and synchronous modes of engagement to maximize the benefits of TBL in an online environment. Students' perceptions of the effective and ineffective aspects of the IO-TBL model are also reported.
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