Team-Based Learning: A Promising Strategy for Use in Online Distance Education

Abstract

Beginning in the 2000s, active methodologies began to emerge in some medical schools, evolving from the traditional teaching methodology to the use of methodologies, such as team-based learning (TBL), in which the student acts as the protagonist of his learning. In 2020, with the outbreak of a pandemic that required measures of social distance, a new reality emerged in the educational field, which was the adaptation of strategies traditionally carried out in person for the online format. The purpose of this article was to structure and execute a TBL design, based on the principles of online distance education and the use of technologies. The article presents a brief review of the TBL methodology and the design of the strategy in the online format, with a roadmap to adapt the execution on known platforms and available for online use. The article also presents reports of the utilization of TBL online through the Moddle platform in the first semester of the fourth year of a medical school course. In a second semester of the first year of a Psychology course and in a pharmacology graduate course for a nursing class, the Team-based learning was conducted by Microsoft’s platform. It is worth mentioning that for Moddle, the questionnaires to guarantee preparation and response in groups were carried out on the platform itself, while for TEAMS, the questionnaires were carried out through another platform, Socrative, which proved to be agile and compatible. We conclude that the TBL methodology is perfectly feasible in the distance modality, presenting significant learning, but some difficulties are observed, such as the need for a safe and efficient internet network, as well as the dependence on the student’s and teacher’s digital knowledge.