Going virtual and going wide: comparing Team-Based Learning in-class versus online and across disciplines

Team-based learning (TBL) is an active learning pedagogy developed for in-class sessions and based on the collaborative work of small groups of students. The increasing push to online and blended learning has enhanced the need to expand this pedagogy to a virtual environment, but little evidence has been produced on how students accept online synchronous sessions of TBL. The purpose of this study, that relies on 427 responses, is to present a comparative perspective of traditional in-class versus adapted fully synchronous online TBL and across different disciplinary fields. Students of two different academic years and different programs were surveyed for their acceptance of TBL. They were invited to answer closed-ended questions focused on their engagement in all TBL learning process and the final outcomes provided. Results obtained from this unique comparative study revealed a wide approval of TBL, regardless of the environment (online or in-class TBL sessions), scientific area of courses and student gender. The acceptance of fully online TBL sessions, in a similar way as traditional in-class sessions, could be a rationale for giving more use to the ‘virtual’ context. Other results corroborated previous researches on TBL, such the need of student awareness of TBL benefits to get more engaged in the process or the impact of student activities overload on the TBL process. Implications are informative for pedagogical practice.