Team-Based Learning in Online Modality -FAQs

For the online TBL sessions we recommend that everyone who can should share their videos since it creates a more engaging environment. Especially during the team breakout sessions, we strongly recommend sharing the videos since it is a smaller group that aims to foster a discussion that everyone engages in. However, some instructors find it less distractive to not share the video in the plenary or during the IRAT.

For time on IRAT and TRAT, the rule of thumb is to give 1 minute per question plus an additional 5 minutes.

Yes, the time required to complete them is about the same. It is recommended to give 1 minute per question plus an additional 5 minutes for each RAT.

No, only the team reporter needs to start the TRAT. However, they should share their screen to help the rest of the team keep up with the questions. Alternatively, all members of the team can start the TRAT, however only the team reporter will be able to submit answers. There is only one team reporter who is able to submit the questions to prevent group members from submitting answers by mistake without consulting the rest of the team.

The feedback to the application exercise is usually provided in the plenary session. The instructor can go through the answers and potential questions of the teams one by one and start a discussion about the questions that need clarifications.

It is a method of IRAT testing where students have multiple points that they can distribute between the choices they have for an answer. It is also called point-spreading.

Yes, images, website links, etc. can be incorporated into questions as well as answers.

Teams can be preassigned in both zoom and InteDashboard if the exact number of participants is known before the session.

Yes, it is possible to import/export group rosters if they are in excel and correctly formatted.

Yes, that’s right. The students have to use an InteDashboard and a Zoom window.

Breakout rooms is an important feature to facilitate TBL sessions online. Zoom provides the best experience with the breakout room function. Therefore, we recommend that you use zoom. However, any other video conferencing tool that has the breakout room function is suitable for TBL facilitation.

There are institutional as well as individual subscription options available. You can book a demo call with us to learn more about the product.

There are different techniques used to choose which group will speak but one method can be to check who elaborated the most and start from that group to kickstart a discussion.

We don't have that functionality as of now.

Yes, you can upload images into the applications.

No, please wait until everyone to finish the IRAT since we will start TRAT in teams. In a synchronous online TBL it’s started by the professor after the individual activity is finished.

You can see the members of the group from InteDashboard while looking at the answers. It shows up alongside the answer.

Zoom, Adobe Connect & BB Collaborate are all video conferencing tools that are similar in functionality. Additionally, Blackboard collaborate has more "teaching and learning" features that Zoom, and other video conferencing tools do not have. InteDashboard is a TBL platform that provide several functions that video conferencing tools are not able to provide. For example, Zoom and BB collaborate would not provide the instructors with the immediate feedback or the incremental scoring based on number of attempts taken by teams to arrive at the correct answer.

Yes, students can do the TRATs in their own time if the instructor chooses to have the activity asynchronously.

Web conferencing systems have become better but bandwidth can be a challenge depending from where your participants access. In the case that the connection seems weak we suggest that you take the communication down from video (high bandwidth) to text chat (low bandwidth). It is important to note that a fair amount of "prepping" the online students for the technology woes they may experience and how to respond to them when they occur will be involved in this process. We believe that the majority of students want to participate and the more we (as educators) help them deal with the tech issues, the more comfortable they'll feel.

Of our customer base, 80% use TBL in an in-person setting. Of the remaining 20% who use online TBL, 10% choose to do it synchronously while 10% prefer to do it asynchronously. Some instructors choose to do first weeks synchronously which helps the groups bond and understand TBL then they do the rest of the activities asynchronously. If it is hard for everyone to do it at the same time then the asynchronous setting is more suitable to use.

Integration with BB and Canvas is available. This integration lets you access InteDashboard from BB and Canvas without having to login again. It is also possible to download the grades from InteDashboard as an excel or csv document. This way you can apply it to any kind of grading practice easily. The feedback we received from our customers suggest that everyone uses different methods of grading therefore we are not looking into working on a tool that will help with grading in the short term - grade weights.

If an individual professor wants to get InteDashboard for their class it is possible to do so. There is also a student paid version available in such cases. For the instructors in the US who want to use the student paid version an ISBN number is also available for students who are on financial aid. So, it can be assigned as a course material.

You can do it via using prework slides that are distributed through email etc. Or a slideshow through zoom. However most of our customers find it easier to use InteDashboard together with platforms such as Canvas or BB.

Yes, we have a latex editor that has the necessary notations for such classes.

Students can add images as answers therefore it is a possibility for them to work on paper and show their work by uploading a picture of it. Zoom also has a whiteboard function that lets members of a group write on the same page at the same time to foster collaboration.

For the IRAT there is only one attempt allowed. For the TRAT it is possible to limit the attempts by giving 0 points after the first attempt.

For IRATs and TRATs it is important to be able to provide immediate feedback therefore they can only be constructed as multiple-choice questions.

Inside the IRAT there are different visibility settings so you can allow them to see their scores after they complete the TRAT. It is not recommended to show students the right answers before TRAT since the TRAT has the same questions as the IRAT.

You can only have MCQ’s with one correct answer in IRATs and TRATs because of the need to provide immediate feedback.

If you detect a problem in the IRAT upon applying it and want to fix the issue before you apply the related TRAT it is possible to do so. You can create a separate activity for the TRAT and upload the questions with the correct answers to this TRAT. Then you can publish it for students to take instead of the previously published version.

We currently do not have that feature.

It is possible to set different timings for each activity.

Instructors get the statistics immediately and they can share this data via sharing their screens.

What generally helps is to go to a break after finishing the TRAT because it is good to give the teams some time for reflections. What usually happens is that in this time group members find the time to explain the answers to each other. This makes it easier while going through the clarifications. During this break time the instructor can have enough time to assign teams for clarifications since they will be able to see which team did a good job with each question.

There is an option to provide instructions for the questions. You can put the case in there and it can be accessible during all the questions.

One way to handle this problem is to set up the different cases as different application exercises. Another way to go is to upload the relevant case as an attachment to every single question.

When you export the grades, you get the grades separately per exercise. Therefore, if you create different application exercises you will have to combine them manually.

They can be different.

The main host can move between breakout rooms, without interrupting the flow.

In the past, more than one person could respond on behalf of the team but that caused a lot of issues because people would accidentally click and answer for the whole group without consulting them. Then we updated our software to prevent this from happening and now only the team reporter can submit answers for questions. People don’t usually fight about being a team reporter but in the case that this happens the team reporter can be changed every question if the group wishes to do that.

Teams should be assigned based on the diversity of background. Diversity can mean different things in different activity settings. In a workshop where different instructors are attending the groups can be determined according to the fields of the attendees. In a classroom full of students who are studying the same subject diversity can mean their readiness to the class. A pre-class survey can also be used to measure the readiness of students and can be a determining factor while assigning teams.

Smaller teams have several advantages in an online setting. Smaller teams are more suitable to allow for better time schedule coordination. Accountability, an important factor, increases as the number of team members get reduced. We suggest that the number of students in a team should be kept at 3-4.

In an asynchronous setting 20 minutes are given for IRAT once the students start. For TRAT they have the whole 48 hours to do it. To give them flexibility to synchronize their timetables.

We see a lot of different approaches when it comes to grading and instructors are free to grade the material in the way they see fit.

The answer to this question depends on the institution and the field. However normally it can be said that the classroom is an important part of the material that is passed down to the students. Therefore, it is harder for students to get the same experience without a real classroom setting without increasing the amount of preparation.

We do not have a tool to do that within InteDashboard. However, we observed that most students use messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook messenger to coordinate their meeting times.

No, it is not possible to do that. However, you can give people a longer window to cover some of the interactive activities.

The number of breakout rooms a class can have is limited by the number of breakout rooms the video conferencing tool allows. Therefore, it can be done with a wide variety of sizes of classrooms. However, it is easier to facilitate when there are lesser number of students.

Online TBL classes are mostly capped at 30-40. However, this does not mean more students are not manageable. Assigning the teams can be tedious as the number of students increase and the way the instructor facilitates the session can change since more people are harder to manage. Therefore, we recommend having more than one facilitators in a session if the number of students are more than 50.

There is no definite way of doing peer evaluations however we have observed various practices that are commonly used by the instructors. If the class is synchronous it is good to have peer evaluations every couple of weeks. If the setting is asynchronous we observed that some instructors assign activities on a weekly basis and turn it into a cycle. Therefore, peer evaluation is applied as a part of this cycle once every 3- 4 weeks. At the end of the day the frequency of the peer evaluations depends on what your students need. If the teams are performing well there may be less peer evaluations needed if they are not performing well then it might be a good idea to apply more peer evaluations to keep them on track.

Synchronous setting closely mimics the in person TBL method and we see that the students prefer this setting because they get to interact with more people. In terms of workload for faculty, synchronous TBL requires high workload at a certain time but asynchronous TBL may require the faculty to be answering questions that come at different times of the week continuously. In this arrangement you may also answer the same question over and over again. In the synchronous setting is also easier to address the problems in the questions quickly. The strongest advantage of using asynchronous TBL is if it is impossible for the students to be available at the same time, it allows you to still have the TBL experience in your course. However, if you can ensure that people can join the class at the same time then the synchronous setting provides a better experience.

It is possible to provide an extra IRAT for the students who miss the first one. You can create that my making a copy of the same exercise and publishing it with a password. You can give the password only to the students who need to take the extra IRAT so that the other students in the class will not have access to this make-up IRAT.

.csv files can be uploaded for questions.

Once you publish an activity, it is possible to reset it which resets the activity back to being unpublished. However, doing this makes you lose all the data on activities that are already completed by the students. Therefore, we suggest that you make sure everything is correct before you publish an activity.

No, there is no word limit. It is possible to use questions with longer answers.

1. Web conferencing software with capability for team breakout rooms
2. A TBL software
3. Laptop, computer, smartphone or tablet with a stable internet connection

The online session typically connects learners using web video conferencing software and a TBL system, such as InteDashboard. A key criterion for the software is the ability to break participants into teams. Tools such as BigBlueButton Blackboard Collaborate and Zoom have this capability.

Provide your students with basic course requirements and curricular content, which includes:

• Understanding of the core course content
• Overview of the course objectives and learning objectives for each course module
• Brief description of the learning activities associated with completing the course successfully

Provide your students' answers about the basic technological requirements: 

• What is the time and effort it takes to successfully complete an online course?
• What are the technical skills required to function successfully in an online course?
• How can I obtain access to software and hardware required for participation in an online course?
• How can I obtain the capacity to achieve effective communication with the instructor?
• How will I gain the ability to achieve effective communication with fellow students?

You can as many students you want on InteDashboard. Zoom allows you to add a maximum of 300 participants for a module. But ideally what we have seen is that it is easier to manage class size up to 100 students in an online environment. Online TBL is easy to implement with a batch size of fewer than 50 students. But we have educators who use it for the batch size up to 100 students. The only cumbersome part is to create breakout rooms on Zoom.

Some institutions limit their online classes to sections of 30 or 40 students to create a more engaging environment.

What we and many other educators have found is that the ideal team size should be 3-4 to promote engagement and discussion during team activities and build team cohesion.  This is smaller than an in-person TBL modality where 5-7 is more common.

You can use various tools to conduct IRAT as it is an individual assignment and easier to manage. But for TRAT, a TBL software such as InteDashboard allows teams to submit answer responses and provides immediate feedback. It automatically grades teams based on the number of attempts taken to arrive at the right answer. Also, teams can submit clarification requests electronically and the educators receive them in real-time.

A comparison of the technical qualities of the systems such as Zoom or Blackboard Collaborate is important. Some concerns that educators have is how students will use the excuse of "my computer kept dropping out of the system" for not participating. Do some systems have more difficulty in maintaining high-quality technical connections?

What we and other educators have found is that high-availability systems are paramount for a good online experience for everyone involved. 

Web conferencing systems have become better, but bandwidth can be a challenge depending on where your participants access. Some educators tend to take communication down from video (high bandwidth) to text chat (low bandwidth - that is if the connection is poor degrade to text chat. Text chat can be quite practical especially for people on smartphones.

• Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate do not provide immediate feedback on TRAT. InteDashboard provides immediate feedback to the teams.
• Blackboard Collaborate quizzes do not provide incremental scoring. Educators find it difficult with quiz functions generally to get points for first, second, third attempts in the TRAT. On InteDashboard, the teams get automatically graded on the number of attempts to get to the right answer (incremental scoring)
• It would be harder to aggregate the results and submit these clarification requests per question in Blackboard Collaborate and Zoom. Clarification requests can be easily submitted electronically on InteDashboard and educators can analyze those requests in real-time.
• Zoom has polls but you don't get the analytics. If you use the RATs for summative assessment you need individual results e.g. in a grade book type function, which you can easily get on InteDashboard

Zoom, Adobe Connect & Blackboard Collaborate.  Not all web conferencing tools have breakout rooms functionality. Zoom has breakout room functionality.

Yes, Teams can do TRATs on their own time, if the educator sets up the TRAT asynchronously on InteDashboard.

InteDashboard can easily be integrated with your existing LMS. It just requires a plug-in which can be set up in minutes, allowing educators and students to sign-in from within their LMS. Essentially, a TBL system can be up and running in minutes. However, it will take educators some time to set up their course content and question bank to the InteDashboard system.

We recognize that five roles need to be thought about to conduct effective TBL sessions:

1. Web conference host
2. TBL system (or LMS) coordinator
3. Facilitator
4. Subject matter expert
5. Project manager

For smaller classes or teacher and students familiar with online TBL, one educator can take on all these roles.  However, for educators or students new to online TBL it may help to have an additional person to coordinate the web conference tool and can address any technical issues.

Yes, InteDashboard can be integrated with Zoom allowing you to invite all your students to join for the online TBL session.

We typically see more frequent peer evaluation in online TBL (generally every few weeks).  This can be done with InteDashboard.