Frequently Asked Questions

Academic honesty
Time investment required
TBL equipment
Buying forms
More information about TBL

 

Academic honesty

Academic honesty is always a concern with assessment and TBL is no different. Creating a strong sense of a learning community will make students less tempted to copy from others, but this can be challenging in large classes. The particular academic honesty challenges with TBL relate to using readiness tests in streamed lectures/tutorials and teaching in tiered and/or crowded spaces.

In streamed units of study or when using assessable parts of TBL in tutorials the challenges comes in a form of students sharing questions and answers between sessions. One way to reduce the opportunities for this type of dishonesty is to make sure students return all question sheets and that the question/multiple choice order is changed between different cohorts. In readiness tests using different scratchable forms between cohorts can be very helpful.

In a crowded and tiered lecture theatre it is almost impossible to seat students in a way that they cannot see each others either individual or team answers in readiness tests. It is also very hard to monitor use of mobile phones which can be easily used to share answers particularly when using scratchies in team tests. If there are no alternative teaching spaces available, it might be worthwhile to consider adopting online individual readiness tests and/or moving the tests into tutorials. Though readiness tests in tutorials increases the opportunities for the other type of academic dishonesty described above.

When teaching in a suitable teaching room where individual students and teams can be provided with adequate personal space and the teaching staff are able to move around students, academic dishonesty seems to be very rare.

Time investment required

As with making large changes to any kind of teaching method, the initial development of TBL with readiness tests requires intensive effort. Particularly in its first iteration, writing questions and becoming familiar with the administrative purposes can be quite time-consuming as the lecturer and students share the experience of working together in a new way. In future re-iterations, the staff are likely to find that their workload has either reduced or shifted as less and less students contact them with questions as they are dealt within their student teams and the time can be focused on developing materials that benefit the whole class.

The workload for adopting TBL using the team exercises/assignments only is considerably less demanding. It does not require re-developing a unit of study or changing existing assignments. It is thus a low risk, but high return opportunity to gain benefits of students working together and learning to apply theory.

TBL equipment

Using TBL with in-class scanning and with a large class generates a reasonable demand for material and equipment to be transported from the office to the class at least once a fortnight. The Office of Learning and Teaching in Economics and Business has wheely bags for loan to enable you to take your folders, a portable scanner, and your laptop ergonomically from A to B. These are available for all to borrow for the semester.

Also involving the teaching team in the logistics will share the burden and involve everyone in the process.

Buying forms

In TBL special forms can be used to make most of readiness tests. These are ordered collectively through the Office of Learning and Teaching in Economics and Business. Two months before semester it is important to contact OLTEB with expected student numbers and planned readiness tests to make sure all forms are available at the start of the semester. Currently the forms are supplied free of charge to those teaching at the Faculty, unless the teaching team has grant funding to begin using TBL.

More information about TBL

Previous research about TBL research is collated on the University of British Columbia TBL website, including a 30 minute video explaining all about TBL.