I've been reading a bit about learning of late and it got me thinking
about the underpinnings of why TBL seems to work so well.
In "Applying New Research to Improve Science Education,"
http://www.aapt.org/Conferences/newfaculty/upload/Wieman-feature-Issues-in-S-T-9-12.pdf
Carl Wieman looks at the cognitive science literature and finds that
"deliberate practice" is a key to acquiring expert-like abilities. In
"Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class," Science, May 13,
2011, vol. 332 no. 6031 pp. 862-864,
http://www.iclicker.com/uploadedFiles/Content/User_Community/Custom_Marketing/Weiman_2011.pdf
Wieman and his co-authors compare a lecture-taught class with one that
employs a lot of deliberate practice and they find that the latter leads
to much more learning. Wieman is a huge name in science education: Nobel
Laureate, U.S. Professor of the Year (given for teaching), and former
deputy Science Adviser to the President for science education. As an
aside, it would be great if TBL was used in papers like the last one.
The work on deliberate practice mainly comes from the work of K. Anders
Ericsson and his colleagues in papers like "The Role of Deliberate
Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance" (Google Scholar reports
more than 3,000 cites to this paper alone). This research became
popularized by the "10,000 Hour Rule" in Malcolm Gladwell's book
"Outliers."
Wieman describes deliberate practice as
This involves the learner solving a set of tasks or problems that are
challenging but doable and that involve explicitly practicing the
appropriate expert thinking and performance. The tasks must be
sufficiently difficult to require intense effort by the learner if
progress is to be made, and hence must be adjusted to the current
state of expertise of the learner. Deliberate practice also includes
internal reflection by the learner and feedback from the
teacher/coach, during which the achievement of the learner is compared
with a standard, and there is an analysis of how to make further
progress.
Of course, this sounds pretty similar to a good application exercise, with
the possible exception of internal reflection -- but it wouldn't be that
hard to add that I would think.
Wieman goes on to describe how students must be encouraged to devote time
to deliberate practice and I'd guess that the social aspects of TBL are an
aid here -- one comes to class prepared so as not to let others down and
to not look like a free-rider. Students also contribute to the team in
application exercises as a social endeavor.
Another bit of cognitive science that might apply to TBL is a concept
called a "time for telling." Two references are "A Time for Telling,"
Schwartz and Bransford, Cognition and Instruction, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1998,
and 'Preparing Students to Learn from Lecture: Creating a “Time for
Telling” (Learning About Teaching Physics podcast)'
http://www.ptec.org/items/detail.cfm?ID=12192 . Broadly speaking, it is
about setting up a situation where students are receptive to lecture.
While these cites look at situations a bit different from TBL, in my
classrooms I find that students seem quite receptive to hearing about the
reasoning behind the correct answer in a RAT or application exercise after
they've done it.
Maybe these ideas will be useful for thinking about why TBL works so well.
Also, as above, it would be nice to have more studies about the
effectiveness of TBL.
- Bill
--
Bill Goffe
Senior Lecturer
Department of Economics
Penn State University
304 Kern Building
University Park, PA 16802
814-867-3299
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http://cook.rfe.org
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