Using team-based learning to teach pharmacology to second year medical students improves student performance

Abstract

The results suggest that TBL provides a better outcome for students, and provide insight into appropriate design of TBL exercises.

The effectiveness of team-based learning on learning outcomes in health professions education: BEME Guide No. 30

“…Three hundred and thirty studies were identified, and 14 were included ( 2011; Willett et al 2011), two prospective cohort studies (Torralba et al 2009;Wiener et al 2009), one retrospective cohort study (Koles et al 2010), one concurrent cohort study (Zingone et al 2010) and seven non-concurrent cohorts (Nieder et al 2005;Levine et al 2004;Letassy et al 2008;Pileggi & O'Neill 2008;Mennenga 2010;Simaan et al 2010;Zgheib et al 2010). Of the 14 included studies, 12 took place in the United States, 1 in Lebanon (Zgheib et al 2010) and 1 in Austria (Wiener et al 2009). Thirteen of the studies concerned undergraduate education, including eight in medicine, three in pharmacy (Letassy et al 2008;Conway et al 2010;Zgheib et al 2010), one in dentistry (Pileggi & O'Neill 2008) and one in nursing (Mennenga 2010).…”

“…Of the 14 included studies, 12 took place in the United States, 1 in Lebanon (Zgheib et al 2010) and 1 in Austria (Wiener et al 2009). Thirteen of the studies concerned undergraduate education, including eight in medicine, three in pharmacy (Letassy et al 2008;Conway et al 2010;Zgheib et al 2010), one in dentistry (Pileggi & O'Neill 2008) and one in nursing (Mennenga 2010). The only study that did not include undergraduate learners assessed internal medicine residents in their first, second and third postgraduate years (Torralba et al 2009).…”

“…Eight studies compared TBL to traditional didactic lectures, three of which reported significant improvements in knowledge scores for the TBL group (Nieder et al 2005; Levine et al 2004;Koles et al 2010). Two studies compared TBL to CBGD; one study found statistically significant improvements, while the other found significant improvements only in students in the lowest academic quartile (Zgheib et al 2010;Koles et al 2005). Two trials compared TBL to their own form of SGL and both reported statistically significant results favouring TBL (Thomas & Bowen 2011;Willett et al 2011).…”

“…None of the trials seemed to be at risk of selective outcome reporting or other sources of bias. For 8 of the 11 cohort studies, the learners were truly representative of the average health-care professions student, and both exposed and non-exposed cohorts were drawn from the same community (Nieder et al 2005;Levine et al 2004;Letassy et al 2008;Pileggi & O'Neill 2008;Conway et al 2010;Mennenga 2010;Zgheib et al 2010;Zingone et al 2010). One study lost five failing students, leading the reviewers to deem the remaining cohort somewhat, but not truly, representative of the average health professions class.…”

“…However, one NRCT (n ¼ 167) reported that after adjusting for pre-intervention knowledge scores between groups, there was no significant difference after TBL implementation (Willett et al 2011). Among the other studies reporting a significant difference were one NRCT (n ¼ 112) (Thomas & Bowen 2011), one retrospective cohort (n ¼ 186) (Koles et al 2010), one concurrent cohort (n ¼ 64) (Zingone et al 2010) and three non-concurrent cohorts (n ¼ 306, n ¼ 371, n ¼ unclear) (Nieder et al 2005;Levine et al 2004;Zgheib et al 2010). Two studies (one RCT and one prospective cohort) did not report a significant difference between TBL and comparators overall, but found a significant difference in subgroup analyses (Koles et al 2005;Torralba et al 2009 (Torralba et al 2009).…”