Abstract
One activity-rich way to utilize collaborative learning, team-based learning (TBL), can present students and teachers with both opportunities and challenges. TBL requires students to prepare for each class, where they are then assessed for their ‘readiness’ to apply the concepts learned during their pre-class preparation. This study addresses two aspects of TBL in an aim to better support and facilitate student learning and engagement: (1) supporting students during their pre-class preparation by providing metadata on the often-difficult required readings, and (2) offering students communication from the teacher, or ‘expert’ – something students often perceive as missing in active learning classes. Short, supportive podcasts are provided to students to give context to their out-of-class preparation and to allow them to hear directly from the teacher. Results suggest that the intervention of supportive podcasts successfully addresses these two issues and may benefit other collaborative classrooms that face similar challenges.
Keywords
Team-based learning
One way for teachers to confront modern pedagogical challenges, such as increasing class sizes and expectations of new modes of teaching, is to break a class into small groups (Cooper and Robinson, 2000; Fink, 2004; Michaelsen et al., 2004; Nicol and Boyle, 2003). There are numerous ways small groups can be managed in class: by breaking up a lecture with a few minutes of casual, small-group discussion (Fink, 2004), by structuring small groups of individuals to work toward a shared goal, as with cooperative learning (Cooper and Robinson, 2000; Johnson and Johnson, 1999; Slavin, 1980) and by structuring small groups to engage together to solve a problem, as with collaborative learning (Dillenbourg et al., 1996). Team-based learning (TBL), one form of collaborative learning, goes further as it requires a specific course structure ‘to develop and then take advantage of the special capabilities of high-performance learning teams’ (Fink, 2004: 7).
TBL is more than small, in-class, group-based learning and teaching: it is a specific six-stage model developed by Michaelsen et al. (2004). There are at least six defined stages in TBL (Figure 1), with some variation between practitioners: (1) Pre-class preparation (Individual study), (2) Individual readiness test, (3) Team readiness test, (4) Supportive teaching, (5) Team challenge and (6) Class discussion. TBL is intended to be used so that one topic is covered during each six-stage cycle, usually over a 2–3 week period in a regular teaching semester. The cycle is repeated for each major topic area to provide comprehensive course coverage. Stage 1, pre-class preparation, is an individual task. It involves students doing their pre-class readings and preparation before coming to class. Stages 2 to 4 are part of a readiness assurance process, that is, a process that ensures students are ‘ready’ to apply their knowledge in the subsequent team-based, in-class activities. Stage 2 involves students individually doing a short test to assess their grasp of fundamental understanding of the preparatory materials. In stage 3, students work in their teams and repeat the test questions they did individually at stage 2. This is underpinned by the benefits that arise from collaborative learning and promotes the development of a range of ‘soft skills’, including (among others) the capacity to negotiate and diversity awareness. In stage 4, the instructor gives whole-of-class feedback, focusing on the demonstrated areas of knowledge deficiency highlighted via the readiness assurance tests. The readiness assurance process is designed to motivate students to adequately do their pre-class preparation at step 1 and to utilize peer learning to help close any gaps in understanding. The final two stages, the team challenge and class discussion, involve the application of topic concepts in a way that combines practice with feedback. Stages 1–4 form the student preparation for a given topic and should only take approximately one quarter of the overall TBL cycle, with stages 5 and 6 taking the remaining time (Michaelsen et al., 2004).
The stages of TBL
TBL is designed to ensure students are well prepared so that they can spend the majority of their in-class time applying concepts and principles. TBL has been reported to be successfully used in a range of disciplines, such as the natural sciences (Popovsky, 2004), business – including accounting and human resources management (Cragin, 2004; Freeman, 2004; Freeman et al., 2006; Streuling, 2004), and health professions (Parmelee, 2008).
TBL has a number of advantages for students and motivators for teaching staff. Common concerns (for educators and students) of unequal effort in groupwork (Scott-Ladd and Chan, 2008) are partially addressed by TBL. By beginning the readiness assurance process with an assessed individual readiness test, a motivator is introduced to encourage all students to contribute (Michaelsen et al., 2004: 37–8). Research has suggested that student learning is enhanced when students receive immediate and regular feedback (Cooper and Robinson, 2000; Michaelsen et al., 2004). TBL allows students to receive a rich range of feedback: immediate feedback from the peers in their team and teaching instruments during the team readiness test, feedback from the teacher during the supportive teaching part of class and when they receive the individual readiness test results, and feedback from their team and other teams during the team challenge and class-discussion portions of class. Students are encouraged to engage in collaborative decision-making, often requiring debate during the learning and teaching activities. Debate and argumentation, both regular occurrences in TBL, have been found to develop higher-order thinking skills and benefit learning (Andriessen, 2006; Kennedy, 2009). Transferable skills development is sought by students and educators world-wide. TBL is equipped to afford development opportunities in a range of transferable skills, including communication skills arising from the range of teamwork and debating in class, autonomy and responsibility stimulated by preparing for class and not letting other team members down, and research and inquiry involved in pre-class preparation and preparing for competitive, intra-team challenges (Andriessen, 2006; Cooper and Robinson, 2000; McLoughlin and Luca, 2002). Another aspect of TBL and in-class teamwork is that it allows students to work with their peers in a diverse context. It has been reported that TBL works well with diverse cohorts, in some instances internationalizing classrooms (Cooper and Robinson, 2000; McGrath-Champ et al., 2010). The benefit of TBL for student learning continues to be researched, with results suggesting that TBL improves the performance of previously lower-performing students (Koles et al., 2005) or student performance overall (Freeman et al., 2006).
There are four challenges that TBL and active learning in general face.
(1) The expert: research suggests that students can struggle with the transition from didactic lectures to active learning, especially concerning the change in position of the teaching staff. When students expect three hours of lecturing, it can be a shock to instead be engaged in a range of learning activities for the same time period, where it is vital they have done pre-class preparation because with TBL there is no ‘lecture’ from the ‘expert’. Students can perceive the value of the newer mode as less because they do not hear from a teacher (Haidet et al., 2004) or feel as if they are teaching themselves (Lane, 2008). The literature does not address students’ perceptions of the lack of an ‘expert’ in the context of TBL.
(2) Feedback: while TBL and a number of active learning strategies are feedback-rich (Cooper and Robinson, 2000; Michaelsen et al., 2004), the feedback is not always of the type students might expect, such as a handwritten comment at the bottom of an essay. Again, students may need to be reminded that feedback might be provided in numerous formats: immediate feedback on a readiness test, or from their team, or feedback from others during the class discussions. Literature regarding student perceptions of feedback in a TBL context does not yet exist.
(3) Sequence: TBL requires detailed design of learning and teaching activities at all stages of a course or unit (Michaelsen et al., 2008). An active three-hour session may engage students for the duration, but may leave little energy at the end for an introduction to the following topic. While it has not been specifically documented in the literature, finding a time to communicate supportive metadata to students when it is in sequence with the class and allows students genuine understanding is another challenge for teachers of active classrooms.
(4) Time: a similar challenge is the time available for each learning and teaching activity. TBL is designed to allow students to solve problems and practise concepts during class time, rather than go over content in class. Pre-preparation is done before class and assessed during readiness tests (Michaelsen et al., 2008). It is critical that sufficient time is allocated to activities in class but also that students learn to allocate sufficient time to prepare out-of-class (Chickering and Gamson, 1987). Further research about how to address these challenges would benefit active, and particularly collaborative, learning practitioners.
This study addresses students’ perception of a lack of access to the ‘expert’, including providing another source of feedback, while allowing students the mental energy and time to perform the genuine, pre-class preparation that is required for TBL. In order to address these challenges, a learning and teaching resource is designed to provide students with additional guidance and support while they do their pre-class preparation. It is intended to complement the TBL cycle by providing a smooth transition from the class discussion (stage 6) to the pre-class preparation (stage 1) of the next course topic (Figure 2). A variety of supportive resources could be used at the outset of the TBL (topic-learning) cycle. As outlined and explained below, podcasting is one such resource.
TBL with supportive learning and teaching object
Podcasting
Distance learning research suggests that the human voice is unique in that it can provide emotional emphasis that assists the learner/listener and teacher/speaker to connect and give shape to learning (Power, 1990). Using audio is thus highly beneficial when trying to connect with students outside of the classroom. Providing students with a resource that they can use when it suits them is also very appropriate, as it addresses the energy and time concerns raised above. Podcasting provides a flexible audio resource to students as part of their pre-class independent preparation. Audio materials (Schlosser and Burmeister, 2006) and multimedia learning objects (Gunn et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2008) have been used to support pedagogy for decades and are thus not new to education. Podcasting is a recent means of working with those existing resources in that it utilizes a combination of additional technological aspects: downloadable and potentially mobile digital files linked and delivered by a subscription facility (Dale and Pymm, 2009; Middleton, 2009). Traxler (2008: 13) highlights one description of mobile learning as being ‘informal’, ‘situated’, ‘private’ and ‘portable’.
Much of the podcasting research in higher education focuses on recorded lectures (Brittain et al., 2006; Larkin, 2010; Scutter et al., 2010), or ‘coursecasting’ (Middleton, 2009). The literature about short-format (for example, 5-minute) podcast episodes has started to grow (Evans, 2008; Lee et al., 2008). Ractham and Zhang (2006) refer to podcasting as having the potential for ‘intentional or unintentional collaboration’ when multiple types of podcasts are stored online to create a ‘network effect’ (p. 316). The difference between that definition of collaboration and a definition of collaborative learning is stark: ‘Collaborative learning refers to learning processes in which learning takes place in a small group with an interactive social environment through cooperative processes for common academic purposes and shared learning tasks’ (Erdem, 2009: 154). Some researchers report genuine collaborative activity involving podcasting, yet in those cases that collaborative behaviour is generated by other tasks, such as students designing and producing podcasts (Lee et al., 2008) or developing a performance incorporating an iPod (Dale and Pymm, 2009). In many cases, listening to podcasts is a solitary affair; individually listening to podcasted content creates a potentially mobile, ‘personalised soundworld’ (Bull, 2005: 353).
A number of methods could be used to create the supportive learning and teaching resource designed to address the challenges discussed above: an email, a discussion board, a handout. Using audio, however, can offer a unique benefit over other media. Research in distance education highlights the emotive emphasis that can be portrayed by the human voice, and how that can help a learner to construct connections (Power, 1990). Using a podcast, combined with the TBL readiness tests, may allow and support students to do their individual pre-class study when and where it suits them. Further, podcasts using the voice of the teacher, or ‘expert’, may help to address some of the challenges of an active TBL classroom.
The research questions guiding the study are:
Does the combination of TBL and supportive podcasts guide students with their pre-class preparation?
This question attempts to address whether students perceive that they are supported by the academic coordinator or ‘expert’ providing them with another form of input in asynchronous feedback during their pre-class preparation.
Do the supportive podcasts provide students with flexibility to assist them to prepare for class?
This question examines whether the supportive podcasts address timing and sequence challenges.
Method
Most of the units discussed in this study are part of a much larger study (discussed in Taylor and Clark, 2010) where the uses of podcasting were investigated in 20 units of study at the University of Sydney. Some of the most successful uses of podcasting were found to be in TBL units of study. The six units in this research project were taught at the University of Sydney Business School during 2007–2009 by two academic coordinators from two different disciplines: Work and Organisational Studies, and International Business.
Supportive podcasts in this study are short – less than 10 minutes per episode – and are designed by the academic coordinators to annotate and critically review compulsory reading material (assigned from academic journals, textbooks and/or media). The Business School provides technical support for both preparing and delivering podcasts via a learning management system (Blackboard). The number of podcast episodes depend on the academic coordinators’ perceived need for pre-class preparation support. In this study the podcasts for the International Business units of study include an average of six podcast episodes; the podcasts for the Work and Organisational Studies units of study include an average of three podcast episodes. The typical supportive podcast structure includes the following elements:
Introduction: Explaining why the reading material was chosen and how it links with the broader subject content. The upfront explanation is designed to help students motivate themselves to undertake the reading tasks and to illuminate the alignment of different materials chosen.
Key message: Guidance is provided for students on what elements of the paper they should focus on.
Elaboration on challenging content: An alternative phrasing of difficult and essential theoretical concepts is offered to allow students to check their understanding and/or gain a better understanding of the key issues.
Background on theories/situations/facts: Background is provided on concepts that are not explained in the readings. The podcasts explain these theories to provide an associative network to place the reading in broader academic context.
Grounding questions: These are designed to help students to relate the material to their personal/professional reality. These are included to encourage active and personal engagement with the material.
Supportive podcasts are not designed to replace reading as a way of providing a summary of the material. They provide a context for the learning materials as well as support in reading them critically.
The six units of study comprise two undergraduate units and four postgraduate units, varying in class size from 26 to 143 (Table 1).
Study sample
The voluntary research instruments include a survey and focus groups with students. The survey includes both multiple-answer and 5-point Likert scale questions and asks students about how they perceive studying in the TBL format and about their use and perceptions of the podcasts. The survey and guiding focus group questions are used throughout the Business School in classes that use TBL and/or podcasting, so are designed to be broad enough to suit a number of learning and teaching contexts. Given that the impact of TBL on student performance and grades has been addressed elsewhere (see above) and that the research questions focus on student perceptions, additional investigations into student behaviour or performance were not included in the study. The focus groups each contained up to ten students and – though they were intended to be 30 minutes in length – often ranged to 40 minutes or even in one case an hour and a half as the participants had much they wanted to say.
The survey, attached to ethics information sheets and consent forms, was given to students to complete anonymously during one of their final classes of the semester. By that time, most – if not all – podcast episodes had been broadcast. Descriptive statistics were generated via Microsoft Excel.
Announcements to advertise the focus groups were made to students in the days before they were scheduled. Focus groups were held immediately after the classes in which the surveys were completed, at a nearby location. Focus groups were recorded and transcribed. A grounded approach was taken with the focus group data to discover what findings emerged from the comments. Open coding was performed using QSR NVivo (Glaser, 1978; Glaser and Strauss, 1967) by a Business School learning and teaching support staff member and discussed with the academic coordinators to preserve student confidentiality.
Results
Does the combination of TBL and supportive podcasts guide students with their pre-class preparation?
Students were asked why they listened to their lecturer’s podcast (Figure 3). Students most commonly use the supportive podcasts for the purpose of preparing for class each week (38%). Students’ knowledge arising from the readings is directly assessed via the individual and team readiness assurance tests (see above). A further 18% of students reported using podcasts to support them when doing the assessments that form the first component of the readiness assurance process, the process that assures they have attained requisite fundamental knowledge of a topic. Thus 56% of students use supportive podcasts for which they were intended.
How students said they listened to the class podcast (N = 305)
Students were asked to respond to how the TBL context impacted their study habits (Figure 4). Most students (74%) agreed that TBL helps them learn progressively throughout the unit of study. Most students agreed that the TBL format encourages them to prepare for classes (83%).
How students said TBL impacted their study (N = 355)
Students were asked how the supportive podcasts impact their study (Figure 5). Most students (69%) agreed that the supportive podcast supports or enhances their learning. Comments from focus groups regarding this point suggest that student learning was impacted by the supportive podcast:
How students said the supportive podcasts impacted their study (N = 329)
I think that those podcasts were useful. If we would have read the reading before . . . then if you have some difficulties you can just listen to it and it puts it into context. we had a weekly reading and it was quite long and she just pretty much gave a summary of that reading – five minutes or less – to help us understand. [In the podcast she went] through the readings that we’ve done and explain[ed] it to us. So, from my point of view, [it] was really valuable, and I’d actually play it two or three times to sort of pick up on everything that she was saying. . . . every time she spoke about an article she would use previous theory from other weeks . . . You see the application of the theory in the way she talks about it. there was extra stuff like . . . she talked about the structure of the article itself, not just the content; how he argued his point. That was kind of interesting. just listening to that five minute summary before you did [your reading] just really clarified [things] [For] the team [readiness tests] you should bring in what you’ve learnt out of that podcast. I think it does help because after you finish your reading you can’t totally understand what it’s about especially the academic paper so it can give some extra information. I think a good thing was the continuous feedback we got through the process so you knew where you st[oo]d. . . . a lot of these readings were pretty long and going off on so many . . . tangents it was actually hard trying to figure what their main purpose and where the issue was. And just with a couple of minutes, it [the podcast episode] just gave so much more direction to it.
Students described how the supportive podcasts integrate with their study methods:
With the podcast, I feel like I get to learn again about that topic . . . reading . . . is hard for me to understand . . . it enhances my understanding more with the podcast I tried to . . . go back and find out what is actually in the document itself, reverse engineering type thing . . . very, very helpful I found it increased your reading productivity I would have a good listen through first, and then go back and go over [the readings] . . . . . . I read the readings before the class, it is really helpful for me to listen to the podcast after my reading [I use the podcast] for self study and [to] remind me of the key points I listened about two times just because firstly I found it very useful because when I read the article I couldn’t understand it . . . when I listened to the podcasts I got a more clear understanding I find it’s very useful and interesting. More importantly it has helped me a lot to prepare for the draft of the final report. Yes I got a lot from it. It’s very useful I think.
Some students highlight that the podcast episodes could not replace the readings:
. . . it’s a supplementary material rather than actually replacement I found that relying on the podcast is not enough and I still have to read the articles . . . If I read nothing, I don’t think it helps . . . it’s a good way for me to prepare for the reading, but just listening to the podcast is not enough for doing this text so I still have to spend more time on the readings.
Participants highlight that the podcast supplemented lecturers’ communications with students which students considered was important:
. . . what I’m looking for is the point of view from the lecturer because I need some guidelines . . . I think having podcasts is much easier for us. We don’t need to do so much consultation . . . It’s easier for both parties, for me and for the lecturer as well it’s so personal. It’s not like [in] a lecture where they’ve got 200 students I think it was very interesting to have this. It was very personal as well.
Do the supportive podcasts provide students with flexibility to allow them to make time to prepare for class?
When asked about whether students like supportive podcasts because of the impact on timing, two-thirds (67%) of students agreed they like using podcasts because they can learn in their own time (Figure 5). Comments about timing include:
By the time I get home I’d be too tired from work. So this was a good time for me to do it – to utilize that time in travelling to work. it gives you the freedom to be able to go and do your study when you want to do it if you have work it’s good that you can do it in your own time rather than be forced to [do it in class]. [I like to] be able to have the flexibility to go back and revisit it and listen to it again if something is in the podcast I can listen again and again and I’ll get a better idea whenever I want to listen.
Most students agreed that TBL encourages them to take responsibility for their learning (77%), as demonstrated in Figure 4. Comments provided more depth to this question:
It’s more flexible I think . . . you can just whack it on and focus on the one thing [when] you’re ready to learn . . . We took control of all of our own learning . . . this forces you to do the readings but then again wouldn’t that be up to us? We’re post-grad students and we should read them anyway and if we don’t read then I mean it’s up to us.
Reflecting on the perceived benefits and strengths of podcasts, 73% recommended that the coordinators continue to utilize supportive podcasts.
Discussion and conclusions
The results of this study suggest that the combination of TBL and supportive podcasts guide students with their pre-class preparation. Most students agreed that TBL helped them learn progressively throughout the unit of study, and that it encouraged them to prepare for classes. The majority of students used the podcasts as they were intended, with some students also using the podcasts to reinforce ideas and revise. Only 4% of students attempted to use the podcasts to replace lectures (which have a minimal role in TBL learning); however, focus group participants highlighted that the podcasts could not replace the readings, so it would be interesting to find out how many students were successfully able to replace the classes with supportive podcasts. The TBL sequence (Figure 1) includes individual and team readiness tests to encourage students to do their pre-class preparation so they are ‘ready’ to proceed with applying those initial concepts. So while the TBL format encourages the pre-class preparation through preparatory reading, the supportive podcasts provide the metadata for the required readings, giving students a context for, and supporting, their study (Figure 2).
Haidet et al. (2004) discuss students’ possible a priori perceptions that an active classroom, such as a TBL classroom, has less value than a didactic class because of less contact time with the subject matter expert (the lecturer). Collaborative learning requires an exchange of feedback between peers to – in the case of TBL – successfully apply theory and content to a team challenge or inter-team discussions. Because the ‘expert’ or unit coordinator creates the supportive podcast episodes, another opportunity to interact with them is offered to students. Well-known benefits of podcasting augment the perception of the involvement from the expert. Unique benefits of audio (Power, 1990) give the students the impression that the podcast is personal. As one student in this study said it is much more personal than the communication experience in a large lecture class (see above). This research suggests that supportive podcasts offer students more feedback to guide and support their pre-class preparation as well as more access to the ‘expert’.
The results suggest that the supportive podcasts provide students with flexibility to allow them to make time to prepare for class. Most students agree that they like using podcasts because they can learn in their own time. Offering flexible resources might allow students not to use those resources; however, by having assessable readiness tests, the TBL sequence also encourages students to do their pre-class preparation. In this study, more than three-quarters (77%) of students agreed the TBL sequence encourages them to take responsibility for their learning.
Research suggests that it is important for students to have energy and time to spend on a learning activity (Chickering and Gamson, 1987). Chickering and Gamson (1987) further assert that time management is an important skill for students, something that the TBL format helps to encourage (1) by ensuring that students find time to do their pre-class preparation by having an assessed ‘readiness test’ at the beginning of each class (thereby helping students develop their time-management skills) and (2) by allocating to each of the six stages in the TBL activity sequence a recommended portion of time (Michaelsen et al., 2004) to ensure that students have the right amount of time in-class to spend on each activity. This study suggests that the supportive podcasts allow the teaching staff to give a brief context to the next topic without impacting on the time available in class (that is, shortening stage 6), while also supporting students’ pre-class preparation by adding a new resource to the TBL sequence.
While the study furnishes evidence of the contribution podcasts make to student learning in a TBL context, there are a number of limitations. The study was carried out in two Business-related disciplines, so future work should involve other disciplines. The units in this study comprise only two undergraduate and four postgraduate units; there is a need to gather more data in order to support the findings described. The units comprise very small to small class sizes (from 26 to 143), so future work would ideally look at whether or how the experiences of students might vary in a large class (500 plus). Influences related to gender and culture are not addressed. Despite the existing research that looks at student performance and TBL, it is relevant to consider these factors in relation to supportive podcasts. It would also be relevant to consider student performance in this context in relation to international students. The researchers continue to examine the combination of TBL and supportive podcasts with a focus on diversity and internationalization. Another limitation is that podcasting is the only learning and teaching method investigated; other methods could provide students with a similar experience to the supportive podcasts in this study. These means of communication would provide the content and context in the manner required – outside of class time when students may need it while doing their pre-class study. Whether these means of communication would have the same potential flexibility and ‘personal’ impact of podcasting could be a topic for future investigation.
While TBL involves a specific sequence of stages that are designed to address common group- or team-work concerns and ensure that the majority of class time is spent by students actively developing their knowledge and skills, it shares with other active learning formats the challenge of ensuring sufficient preparatory support for students. This research suggests that a learning and teaching object – podcasts – designed to address these challenges can benefit students’ perceptions of their learning experience.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive suggestions and comments. Their feedback has guided the improvement of this article.