Hi I am a PBLer  trained and worked in McMaster U. in Hamilton, ON, Canada, have developed and administered PBL in medical education for over 20 years. I also use TBL in Pharmacy education (past 6 years). With all due respect to all who contributed to this conversation, I disagree with some of the assessments under “why TBL is actually better.” There is scope for either.   There are breadths of literature that will support scope of PBL vs TBL (big differences). If anyone in the blog is seriously looking for recent literature check Academic Medicine or Google for published resources/books on PBL.

Regards,  Swapan

Swapan K. Nath, Ph.D.

Fellow, Canadian College of Microbiologists

Professor of Microbiology

LECOM College of Medicine & School of Pharmacy

5000 Lakewood Ranch Blvd.

Bradenton, FL 34211

Office: 941-782-5969

Website: www.lecom.edu

From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sibley, James Edward
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 12:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: the difference between TBL and PBL

Hi

I tutored PBL in our medical school here to really understand the PBL pedagogy…and my partner Amanda used to train the PBL tutors for medicine

Similarities

I think both are similar with they are not surface learning methods…both go deep

Both get some impressive team cohesion

With PBL tutor feedback there are often noticeable changes and improvements in PBL student behaviours and contributions

With PBL and the being thrown into unstructured problems…students do need to find their own to the foundational vocabulary

PBL does a nice metacognition and information literacy piece with leaving one tutorial with specific questions (learning issues), doing targeted research and then bring back your research and through discussion reintegrating it into the groups current understanding of the problem

I am actually quite a fan of PBL…but it is a resource nightmare (our medical school uses 70 tutors – 70 tutorial rooms on Monday/Wednesday/Fridays for two hours each day to tutor the PBL groups of 8)….if you had buckets of money…PBL might be a good choice

Why TBL is actually better

There is  another important piece that TBL gets to leverage and PBL doesn't….once you have a had the Application Activity intra team discussion (PBL groups have similar discussion in a PBL tutorial)…with the TBL public report of your decision/findings to other teams and then you get to have that wonderful give and take conversation.…to get to deeper learning and a larger more powerful social consensus…PBL misses that

The classroom efficiency of TBL (we do it in classes of 200 with just the instructor)….and that deeper larger social consensus generated make me pick TBL every time

jim

--

Jim Sibley 
Director pubically
Centre for Instructional Support 
Faculty of Applied Science 
University of British Columbia 
2205-6250 Applied Science Lane 
Vancouver, BC Canada 
V6T 1Z4 

Phone 604.822.9241 
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From: Sandra Schonwetter <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Sandra Schonwetter <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, March 24, 2014 6:27 AM
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: the difference between TBL and PBL

Hi there TBLers,

A question that keeps coming up is, "What is the difference between TBL and PBL?" My answer is that both are under the umbrella of 'the flipped classroom'. Some similarities are: both priortize time to  the application of content, both depend on students taking initiative and being accountable for their learning. One difference is that TBL is more structured than PBL.

I'd like to hear more responses to this question.

Thanks,

Sandra Schonwetter

Educational Specialist

Department of Medical Education

260 Brodie Centre,

272B  727 McDermot Avenue

R3E 3P5

email:    [log in to unmask]

phone:             (204) 272-3172

fax:                  (204) 480-1372