Hi,

I have interesting, but not necessarily scientific findings that show TBL can be translated to a fully online, synchronous course.  When first arriving to NPS, I was asked to teach the introductory Systems Engineering course as a distance-learning course to support Navy commands around the country.  All the materials were available, highly organized, and of high quality.  The technology we use is Eluminate and Sakai.  The course met once a week for three hours for 10 weeks.  I resorted to a traditional approach of teaching the course via me mostly lecturing and presenting the material.  If lectures are poor in person, imagine online via the computer :(  I realized this and made changes during the semester, but essentially stuck to the lecture format.  At NPS, all students are required to complete a course survey, and the results this first quarter were so-so.

I had to teach the same course the next quarter, and this time I reorganized it according to TBL.  In an online environment, this takes some adaptation.  Here's what I did:

1.  Instead of iRATs/TRATs, I made a multiple choice quiz that followed the lesson for that module via the website on Sakai.  I gave each student 2 tries at the quiz with a due date before the class session.  The students got immediate feedback on the quiz after their first attempt.

2.  Students were organized into teams.  I would lecture and discuss the material for 30-60 minutes.  Then in Eluminate we can create break-out rooms, such that each team has their own room.  The students were given a task, and they would work as a team on the task.  I could virtually "drop in" on each room, see what they were doing and give some direction/feedback.  Then after the time limit, we could all go back to the main room for the debriefing.

3.  Student teams were asked to write up the final team exercises and submit.  The write-up requirements were not very demanding, but I needed some document for records and assigning grades.  I would say about 70% of the teamwork was completed during our Eluminate classes.

In this second offering of the course using TBL, the student evaluations increased significantly (from 3.8 to 4.5/5).  The written comments, were largely in favor of the approach.  They like the quizzes and found it useful because of the immediate feedback and ability to retake the quiz.  They also thought the team assignments were useful.  Although, one student noted that "some team members didn't particpate as high".  I think an "in person" team limits social loafing, but a "virtual team" still enables some to not participate/contribute as fully (e.g., checking email, facebook, etc. during the team exercise since nobody can see what they're doing).

We are very standardized at NPS, so the assignments in the offerings are more or less the same, and the two cohorts had the same grade distribution.  So the TBL section didn't learn anything less than the first. 

The technology has limitations, and I'm interested in anyone else's experience with distance-learning and TBL.  Teams via Eluminate are less efficient, so it takes more time than what is necessary in a classroom.  Also, I cannot figure out how to have "team quizzes" in an efficient manner. 

I'm very happy with the results.  I say the improvements, while statistically significant, are not scientific because other reasons can be attributed to the improvement such as my second time teaching the course, ...