Team-Based Learning in Pharmacy Education

Abstract

Instructors wanting to engage students in the classroom seek methods to augment the delivery of factual information and help students move from being passive recipients to active participants in their own learning. One such method that has gained interest is team-based learning. This method encourages students to be prepared before class and has students work in teams while in the classroom. Key benefits to this pedagogy are student engagement, improved communication skills, and enhanced critical-thinking abilities. In most cases, student satisfaction and academic performance are also noted. This paper reviews the fundamentals of team-based learning in pharmacy education and its implementation in the classroom. Literature reports from medical, nursing, and pharmacy programs are also discussed.

Impact of Abbreviated Lecture with Interactive Mini-cases vs Traditional Lecture on Student Performance in the Large Classroom

“…Another strategy for active learning in large lecture halls involves adding small group break-outs; these are limited by faculty and physical resources. Team-based learning has been successful in engaging students and increasing learning, 23,26,27,40,41 but with the existing classroom at our institution with fixed seating and no extra space in the room for student grouping, it would have been difficult to adopt such an approach. Other instructors using traditional fixed-seat lecture halls with relatively large student enrollment may wish to include iRATs and multiple interactive mini-cases with individual assessments as a component of their active-learning approach.…”

“…In the literature, the iRAT is a readiness assurance tool used in team-based learning, but it is also applicable to individual learning. 40,41 In year 1, method 1 was used to teach the therapeutics of osteoarthritis and method 2 was used to teach the therapeutics of gout. In year 2 the methods were flipped in an attempt to eliminate differences in student performance based on therapeutic topic ( Table 1).…”

A Multiyear Analysis of Team-Based Learning in a Pharmacotherapeutics Course

“…[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Reports of TBL in pharmacy education often use student and faculty perception or performance to examine the initial implementation of TBL. However, no reports have used nationally standardized faculty evaluations of teaching using TBL, examined experiences over a longitudinal implementation of TBL, or reported course outcomes in a pharmacotherapeutics course series that used TBL.…”

Promoting Patient Care Through Communication Training in a Pre-clerkship Pharmacy Education Course in Japan

“…This exposure to the reality of communicating with patients provided "the highest level of learning (that) occurs during the application exercises, which are team activities that build on the readiness materials and encourage students to engage the content at a deeper, more meaningful level." 29 Many students noted afterwards that they struggled to express themselves in discussions and commented that they felt pressure from the time restraints to produce answers in a specified The total mean scores for all three factors significantly increased from pre to posttraining in the 2016 group. The increase in student response scores can be assumed to be a result of understanding, as they gained more knowledge and awareness of effective communication with patients.…”