International Interest in TBL

TBL is growing worldwide at a rate that is quite remarkable. Educators and administrators are realising the tremendous benefits that TBL offers in terms of student engagement and proven learning outcomes. As a result, since I officially retired last May, I have been travelling very widely delivering TBL workshops around the world. In just the last 6 months I've worked with faculty in the US, Chile, Colombia, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Singapore, UK and Australia. During these visits, I have delivered workshops to mixed-discipline faculty groups as well as specific faculties including engineering, pharmacy, medicine and education and even to the national training staff of the Boy Scouts of America, and to primary and secondary teachers at the Singapore Ministry for Education.

One of the memorable experiences from my visits to all these countries was to observe the implementation of TBL in a Singapore normal school seventh grade math class. What struck me in particular was to see a student with ADHD in that TBL class who became engaged with math to the point where he was able to tutor other students. Another example of the power of the TBL process was the observation by Bradford University (UK) that after the school-wide introduction of TBL, student requests for two different kinds of support had been dramatically reduced. One was that requests for support from the disability office for special accommodations (e.g. extra time for exams, a quiet test-taking environment, etc.) had almost completely disappeared; students with disabilities didn't need extra help. The other was that student requests for individual tutoring support in relation to their coursework had almost vanished altogether.

Another very interesting project that I have been working on is the introduction of TBL across the University of South Alabama. This is being done as a very well-planned and well-implemented change process that started in 2011, and is progressing well in meeting the objectives of improving student retention and improved learning. This process and the outcomes are being well documented in a paper that will soon be available. For example, dropout rates in the over 150 classes taught with TBL were less than half of the rates in comparable non-TBL courses and there were 38% fewer D's and F's and higher critical thinking scores. I think that the experience documented in the paper will provide a very good model for other institutions that want to address the very universal challenges in improving student learning and classroom experience.

Larry Michaelsen, PhD