Moving to pre-allo, as this thread is more pertinent to pre-meds choosing med schools.
Did not enjoy TBL and PBL, but I know some people did. Just depends on the person, but it was hard to find people who really enjoyed TBL. I'm really big on efficiency, and TBL seemed so inefficient to me. It would be 3 hours to go over a few concepts that I could read about in 30 minutes. And the only "team" part of it was bickering over which answer choice was right. PBL was better, but still inefficient IMO. I liked working through the cases with the group, but could have done without the short Wikipedia presentations. 😛
Since no one has actually defined PBL and TBL, for those who aren't familiar (details vary between schools, and some schools do it much better than others):
PBL - Problem Based Learning - small groups with a faculty member facilitator. You typically go through a clinical case, pick out "learning objectives" based on things you don't know or aren't familiar with, and each student gets assigned a topic to present at the next PBL meeting. Each person presents their little powerpoint and then you get to resolve the case and find out what the diagnosis is. Some people like it, some people don't. I thought it was a lot more tolerable than TBL....
TBL - Team Based Learning - still small groups, but it's like a game show and here it's done in a big auditorium with the whole class and just 1-2 facilitators. You're usually assigned some reading to do or the TBL is based on certain lectures. Each person takes an individual quiz. Then you get together with your group and take the same quiz as a group with a silly scratch off card. Then the facilitator goes through the quiz and you have these letters that you hold up (exactly like in the above video) to say what you picked. Then they go through cases or a lecture or something to followup.
Like I said, each school may have their own spin on these things. I've also heard the term CBL thrown around but I don't know what that is.
I would hands down choose to be in clinic or surgery or ANYTHING even remotely productive and active over sitting in a lecture hall for 4 hours. But then I talk to some lecture-going classmates and they're thankful for the break from clinical duties. It's kind of unfortunate that it's hard to determine what kind of lecture vs no lecture person you are until you're in it and drinking from the fire hydrant.
