Team-Based Learning

I've been reading Michaelsen, Knight, and Fink's Team-based Learning from 2002, and I've been taking away a lot more than I thought I would. It's not that everything I assumed about team-based learning was wrong -- more that I didn't realize how big an effect small changes can have on the success (or failure)of a team-based learning project.

Michaelsen's article, for example, discusses what he terms the "Four Essential Principles" of team-based learning, at at first glance they look fairly pedestrian:

1) Groups must be properly formed and managed.
2) Students must be made accountable
3) Team assignments must promote both learning and team development
4) Students must receive frequent and immediate feedback

Nothing you haven't seen before, right?

But the smaller points under each principle, combined with the results of his previous research, make pretty interesting reading. Take points under proper formation and management of groups:

a) Allowing students to form their own groups virtually guarantees the creation of potentially destructive subgroups (Feichtner & Davis 1985, Michaelsen & Black 1994).

b) Learning teams should be large and diverse, consisting of five to seven members, and as heterogenous as possible. (Watson, Kumar, and Michaelsen, 1993 [on diversity as crucial asset])

c) Groups should be permanent, and utilized throughout the course as most groups require between 20-25 hours of collaborative work together before all members of the group begin to benefit (Watson, Michaelsen & Sharp, 1991).

The other sections are as interesting.

No real revolutionary point here, except perhaps that I'll be finished with this book in a couple of days, if anyone wants to borrow it after that, let me know -- you won't be disappointed.