Indeed. As someone who has used team-based learning for 2 years in most of
my small (40 students and less) and am moving to conceptests in my large
(300 student courses), let me compare:
First, both approaches have students prepare ahead of class and in-class time
is spent on difficult questions. In both, lectures are used to clear up
problems that come up and are NOT used to present new material to students.
Here's some differences:
TBL:
- generally more structured with its RAP process, permanent teams,
4Ss, and so on.
Conceptests:
- the questions are often developed by a profession, while TBL instructors
are pretty much on their own it seems; there are even banks of conceptest
questions on-line (start Googling "conceptest" and the field of choice
and you'll find some quickly)
- conceptest questions tend to be, not surprisingly, conceptual in nature,
and thus may be more narrow than the application questions in TBL
(I'm not sure that they've actually simpler as they with the ideal
conceptest question maybe 1/2 the students answer correctly the
first time; a short MC question isn't necessarily easy)
- these questions might be based on in-depth studies of common student
preconceptions, which have been studied in a scholarly fashion (I'm
particularly thinking of physics, which formally studies student
preconceptions)
- at least in physics, there is a large body of work that finds that
students learn more with this method than with standard lectures
(something TBL could really use, in my opinion); one member of this
list, Richard Hake, did what I believe was the first large study:
http://web.mit.edu/rsi/www/2005/misc/minipaper/papers/Hake.pdf (yes,
6,000 students in the study!)
As I understand it, conceptests were pretty much started by Harvard
physicist Eric Mazur (and they've spread to many other fields; mostly in
the sciences, as Michael mentioned). Here's some references. The first 2
are very short and the next two are not:
"From Questions to Concepts: Interactive Teaching in Physics"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBYrKPoVFwg (less than 3 minutes; same
as on the SERC page that Michael gave, which I guess really
illustrates how useful it is)
"Farewell, Lecture?" Eric Mazur, Science (the journal)
http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/idia/mecesup/readings/Eric_Mazur/Mazur_52364.pdf
"Confessions of a Converted Lecturer: Eric Mazur"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI (1 hour, 20 minutes)
"Peer Instruction: Engaging Students One-on-One, All at Once"
http://www.compadre.org/per/items/detail.cfm?ID=4990 (apparently the
latest thinking in print; I presume it supersedes his book)
Again, there is an awful lot of commonality and the differences are mostly
in the details. I'm using conceptests in my large class as TBL seems
difficult to execute in a class of 300. At least for me, class size is the
determinant of which approach to use.
Finally, there is all sorts of good stuff at http://serc.carleton.edu .
I could be biased as I contributed to one module there on the use of
clickers in teaching economics and friends of mine are heading up the
economics modules there...
- Bill
Michael said:
> It appears that folks in the sciences are pursuing a similar idea, and
> calling them ConcepTests.
>
> Here is a page on ConcepTests in Geology, with a *goldmine* of examples:
> http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/interactive/conctest.html
>
> These particular examples may be a little simpler than some of us like
> our application activities, but this page provides a fantastic look at
> the *idea* of application activities as we describe them.
>
> -M
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