Team Based learning - Good or Bad?

[ravin]

Do any of you have any experience with TBL at your school? What do you think of it and is it a good curriculum to consider in a school? It sounds good, but I don't know if I buy their propaganda.

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[Gimlet]

All of our Pathology TBL's just got cancelled for the year. I couldn't be happier about it.

 

[Kiroro]

The idea of TBL sounds good but it's really hard to organize it in an efficient way. Our school incorporated it in recent years and I only like it because sometimes it could be a facter that can increase your final grade by taking like 10-15% weight in the total grade. Otherwise, I don't see anything positive about it. Studying basic science in med school should be more personal because it's mostly just memorization.... just my $0.02

 

[DrThom]

Hate It!

 

[DocVirk]

Hate It!

I think that's the general concensus from everyone who has actually been in our TBL. It's just really not well run. The time could be spent in so many better ways, like sleeping, or eating, or watching ER reruns when you should be studying...

 

[Instatewaiter]

At my school it's terrible eventhough it is a such a minor component of each class . We are the first year to have PBL and so the kinks are not worked out. Even if the kinks were all worked out, it really is a major waste of time. What would take 30-40 minutes in a lecture ends up taking 2-3 hours in my afternoon.

The worst part is that the administration is trying to attach clinical correlations to classes where it is a stretch at best, like Biochem for example.
I could see the PBL being a plus for some people who don't learn well on their own but I feel that most pre-meds got to med school for the specific reason that they are good on their own.

 

[Kiroro]

At my school it's terrible eventhough it is a such a minor component of each class . We are the first year to have PBL and so the kinks are not worked out. Even if the kinks were all worked out, it really is a major waste of time. What would take 30-40 minutes in a lecture ends up taking 2-3 hours in my afternoon.

The worst part is that the administration is trying to attach clinical correlations to classes where it is a stretch at best, like Biochem for example.
I could see the PBL being a plus for some people who don't learn well on their own but I feel that most pre-meds got to med school for the specific reason that they are good on their own.

Exactly! Almost feel like we are in the same school...
At least you guys aren't the only ones that are suffering from it. Seems like quite a few med students are being forced to waste our time pretty much equally.

 

[twtkid]

My school's PBL program is as old as I am, and I find it fun to work out problems with classmates. 4/6 of the people in my group have or are working towards their MPH and they bring up ideas that I would not really put much thought into otherwise. For me it's only about 90 minutes in the afternoon and we have a good time with the cases. Its also nice to focus on something other that biochem or molecular stuff, mixes it up a bit.

 

[DrThom]

At my school it's terrible eventhough it is a such a minor component of each class . We are the first year to have PBL and so the kinks are not worked out. Even if the kinks were all worked out, it really is a major waste of time. What would take 30-40 minutes in a lecture ends up taking 2-3 hours in my afternoon.

The worst part is that the administration is trying to attach clinical correlations to classes where it is a stretch at best, like Biochem for example.
I could see the PBL being a plus for some people who don't learn well on their own but I feel that most pre-meds got to med school for the specific reason that they are good on their own.

PBL is totally not the same as TBL.....

I miss PBL....

 

[lms]

TBL is terrible - at my school it used to be part of the first and second years but they eliminated it first year. The feedback from multiple classes has been that it is not a good way to learn. It is the biggest waste of time ever. I believe that there is a facebook group called "I hate TBL with a passion" - It only has 18 members but consider that is from a class of 108

 

[8744]

Bad bad bad. Medical school is bad enough without having to force yourself to follow other people's schedule. The problem with TBL or PBL or whatever the hell they call it is that you are chained, yes chained, to other people who are responsible for your learning as you are responsible for theirs.

Screw it. I despised the relatively few PBL courses we had. I don't want to research every friggin' thing myself, especially basic science.

 

[8744]

"Team Based Learning."

Har. Don't you know that anything with the word "team" in it that is not sports or the military is ridiculous and developed by people who were never picked for teams when they were kids?

 

[SoCuteMD]

Whenever I do stuff in groups I always end up with SOMEONE who perserverates and mentally masturbates over the smallest, most clinically INsignificant minutiae. UGH.

 

[santa_claus]

"Team Based Learning."

Har. Don't you know that anything with the word "team" in it that is not sports or the military is ridiculous and developed by people who were never picked for teams when they were kids?

That's awesome, Panda! My school is PBL-based and I f**king hate it. You have to sit there and watch people you don't really like showing off or stand there and present your Learning Objective to 9 listeners who don't give a rat's a** about it. Hate it.

 

[boilerbeast]

I'm not a huge fan. If I'm paying 50K/year, I want to be taught by a bona fide expert, not a classmate who studied Chinese Philosophy and is basically reading out loud from an UpToDate/Google search or Review book that I could read myself...and learn it more efficiently on my own time.

Go for the school with the least class time.

 

[Ashers]

I refused to go to my state school because it was almost all (95%) PBL, and everyone at my school now thinks I'm crazy for leaving HI. I can't stand the PBL we do now, and it's very little. I'd go insane if I had to do any more.

Oh yes, I'm also very glad that path canceled all TBLs for the rest of the year.

 

[8744]

That's awesome, Panda! My school is PBL-based and I f**king hate it. You have to sit there and watch people you don't really like showing off or stand there and present your Learning Objective to 9 listeners who don't give a rat's a** about it. Hate it.

Half of the problem is that when we interview and are asked what we think about Problem Based Learning, our first instinct (if we have even heard of it) is to kiss ass and give the sanitized answer that it is an exciting way to learn and we look foward to interacting with our peers to optimize our education blah blah blah.

I wish I had said something to the effect of, "Problem Based Learning? Are you crazy? Not only do I not want to listen to my type-A classmates droning on about some idiotic medical trivia but I don't see why I should go so deeply into debt for education if it is being supplied by me and other medical students. What are we paying you sons-of-bitches for?"

"I mean, why pay the hooker if I'm just going to stay home and do it myself?"

That's what I should have said.

 

[8744]

Besides, the premise of PBL is wrong. It is true that we have to be self-learners but we don't typically do this in groups. True, we have lectures and conferences but when I need to know something I find a quiet corner and open up Tintinalli or some other book. I don't call a meeting of my peers and ask each of them to prepare a short presentation on the treatment for pulmonary emboli.

The other problem with PBL is that generally medical students don't know enough about anything and PBL is horrifically inefficient.

 

[logos]

I didnt realize "TBL" was something that other schools have. We only have a few sessions of it. A couple during medical genetics and a couple during cardio (basically now). The medical genetics ones were truely aweful. Unfortunately, it appears that the cardio ones look to be a pretty similar format.

They do it like this:
Individual Readyness assessment (ie. quiz)
group readyness assessment (ie. same quiz over again as a group)

then some discussion where the groups that are wrong are told why they are wrong by the professor. Then (last couple anyway) the groups that were wrong show the professor why she is wrong....professor gets angry....accepts the other answer

....all because....they intentionally make the questions so devoid of meaning that any of the answers could be right....so as to "foster discussion"

of course with two "readyness assessments", a graded group presentation, and get this....peer assessment.....you havent the slightest clue what your grade will be. We managed to complain enough last year that they didnt make us do the "peer assessments"...i mean come on....not only were they making us teach each other....they were trying to make us grade each other....


Of course...all of this takes about 1.5hrs teaches you the same amount of material as maybe half a lecture.

 

[logos]

Besides, the premise of PBL is wrong. It is true that we have to be self-learners but we don't typically do this in groups. True, we have lectures and conferences but when I need to know something I find a quiet corner and open up Tintinalli or some other book. I don't call a meeting of my peers and ask each of them to prepare a short presentation on the treatment for pulmonary emboli.

The other problem with PBL is that generally medical students don't know enough about anything and PBL is horrifically inefficient.

They always preach to us that its important that we be able to work with other members of the "healthcare team"... Of course, the big difference is that on the healthcare team everyone has their place and assigned role.

 

[DrThom]

....all because....they intentionally make the questions so devoid of meaning that any of the answers could be right....so as to "foster discussion"

Yet you are graded based on the answer with the "most correctness"....*sigh*

And you always get a crapload of readings to prepare for the iRAT and gRAT, which FURTHER cuts into productive study time.

TBL is also called "Learning through Humilation" as scores for groups RATs are posted for all to see so we know which groups sucked and during the application phase, people who deviate from the norm and have to explain their answer get met with the appropriate amount of whoopa$$ from the facilitator....

 

[8744]

Who came up with this PBL crap anyways? I know Harvard was an early pioneer but why are other medical schools so gung ho for it?

 

[8744]

I didnt realize "TBL" was something that other schools have. We only have a few sessions of it. A couple during medical genetics and a couple during cardio (basically now). The medical genetics ones were truely aweful. Unfortunately, it appears that the cardio ones look to be a pretty similar format.

They do it like this:
Individual Readyness assessment (ie. quiz)
group readyness assessment (ie. same quiz over again as a group)

then some discussion where the groups that are wrong are told why they are wrong by the professor. Then (last couple anyway) the groups that were wrong show the professor why she is wrong....professor gets angry....accepts the other answer

....all because....they intentionally make the questions so devoid of meaning that any of the answers could be right....so as to "foster discussion"

of course with two "readyness assessments", a graded group presentation, and get this....peer assessment.....you havent the slightest clue what your grade will be. We managed to complain enough last year that they didnt make us do the "peer assessments"...i mean come on....not only were they making us teach each other....they were trying to make us grade each other....


Of course...all of this takes about 1.5hrs teaches you the same amount of material as maybe half a lecture.

Absolutely *****ic.

 

[Ezekiel20]

I don't know how dependent American med schools are on PBL, but from this thread (and others before it) it seems that everyone hates it.

But I think that PBL can be an effective way to learn if you use it properly.

For example, many people have mentioned so far that PBL takes 3 hours to learn something that will take 30 mins in a lecture.

But do you really expect to learn NEW information in PBLs? From my personal experience (and I've nearly finished the campus-based part of my curriculum), PBL is not for learning new things, but a way of applying what you've read in textbooks (or heard in the lecture) to CONSOLIDATE the knowledge.

For example, we recently did a series of problems on sexual health.

It's one thing for me to sit down with a physiology textbook and read the reproductive chapter from start to finish, but I am able to retain it far better by discussing it in a PBL setting - for example I might answer someone's question regarding a tricky topic, and in the process of explaining to them I can add layers to my own knowledge. In the same way, I might ask the group about something I have trouble understanding, and realising that I didn't know something that everyone else did makes me go back to my books and understand it more thoroughly.

Of course it would be troublesome if all your contact hours were PBL - but I don't think any school runs it this way. When lectures and labs are combined with PBL, I think it can be an interesting and intellectually stimulating way to learn.

But I do realise that you guys have the BOARDS to study for, which appears to be more about memorisation than in-depth understanding. So given this fact, I can understand why you guys hate PBL so much.

Regards

 

[Ezekiel20]

Also, let me add that a lot of people suspect that PBL is a 'cost-saving' way to teach, but they don't realise that it's cheaper to pay one professor to deliver lectures, than it is to pay 20 PBL tutors 3 times a week. So PBL is actually more expensive to run than a traditional lecture-based course.

 

[bjackrian]

I didnt realize "TBL" was something that other schools have. We only have a few sessions of it. A couple during medical genetics and a couple during cardio (basically now). The medical genetics ones were truely aweful. Unfortunately, it appears that the cardio ones look to be a pretty similar format.

They do it like this:
Individual Readyness assessment (ie. quiz)
group readyness assessment (ie. same quiz over again as a group)

then some discussion where the groups that are wrong are told why they are wrong by the professor. Then (last couple anyway) the groups that were wrong show the professor why she is wrong....professor gets angry....accepts the other answer

....all because....they intentionally make the questions so devoid of meaning that any of the answers could be right....so as to "foster discussion"

of course with two "readyness assessments", a graded group presentation, and get this....peer assessment.....you havent the slightest clue what your grade will be. We managed to complain enough last year that they didnt make us do the "peer assessments"...i mean come on....not only were they making us teach each other....they were trying to make us grade each other....


Of course...all of this takes about 1.5hrs teaches you the same amount of material as maybe half a lecture.

Heh...that's exactly hour our pych TBLs go, only with professors who refuse to listen to students complaints and mock them instead. Thankfully, we only have three this year, and they're all for psych.