This #LTHEChat took place on Bluesky on Wednesday 14th May at 2000 BST

Led by Dr Jonny Branney, Principal Academic in Nursing and Clinical Sciences, Bournemouth University, @jonnybranney.bsky.social

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I like to try new things. Do you?

When I first became a full-time lecturer in 2014, I thought I knew how to teach. By this point I had studied at three different institutions and experienced all ranges of educational approaches from the good (actively working through clinical case studies) to the bad (reading off PowerPoint presentations) to the ugly (sitting at the front reading off handwritten notes, not looking up once to engage with the audience). With my years of experiential learning gained from being a perpetual student, I felt ready to get my PowerPoint together (mainly image based, no reading off PowerPoint for me!) and do my stuff. I was barely in the door of the office however, when my colleague pointed out I had been signed up to do a PgCert in Education Practice. This made me grumpy. Whatever did I need that for?

Unsurprisingly I soon discovered that I indeed did not know what I was doing and there was a whole tonne of learning to be gained. I will remain eternally grateful to my colleague (Dr Dawn Morley!) for roping me in as, amongst other things, I got to immerse myself in the world of Team-based Learning (TBL). Incidentally, I had originally found out about TBL while preparing for my interview for my first lecturer post. I was looking for ‘latest innovations in nursing education’ or words to that effect and the paper that grabbed my attention was this one by Laura Middleton-Green and Sarah Ashelford (2013). I loved the sound of TBL so much that I implemented it in a small way (one class) with student nurses in my first year of teaching and I loved it so much I never looked back. I even wrote a paper about it, with Dr Jacqueline Priego-Hernández, if you’re interested to find out more about the student outcomes that were achieved (Branney and Priego-Hernández 2018). 

So, what is TBL?

TBL is a form of flipped classroom where learners are provided the learning materials to engage with before attending class. This ‘pre-reading’ might include, for example, podcasts, online videos as well as written material. What would traditionally be ‘taught’ in the classroom therefore becomes ‘homework’, prepared before the sessions. This is then followed up by a variety of activities designed to review and consolidate learning as well as identify any gaps in knowledge or misunderstandings. This then leads to team exercises designed to encourage the application of this new knowledge to real world situations. This is where the gold happens. We all want students to be able to do something. In the application exercises students ‘do.’ 

An example from my own discipline of nursing is that students may have to justify a particular course of action within a patient case study. If the case study is written well (I do try!) this will prompt discussion between the student teams who try to justify their decision-making. This helps not only to deepen learning, viewing a situation from different perspectives, but reflects the reality that real-world decisions are not black or white but grey. There are often competing demands when a decision has to be made and the key thing is not so much getting the answer ‘correct’ but providing a defensible, reasoned argument in support of a decision. 

Other reasons I love TBL are that it:

• Promotes independent learning and maximises time in the classroom to help individuals with whatever they are finding difficult; 
• Elevates the status of the learner who has a voice in the classroom alongside the lecturer;
• Shifts the emphasis from the lecturer being the expert imparting knowledge to one of facilitating students’ learning; 
• Leverages the social benefits of learning together, not only for deepening learning but promoting the formation of social networks, so important in the context of student loneliness. 

Want to find out more?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on TBL. You might use alternative active learning methods with similar aims and outcomes, or perhaps the thought of giving up lectures fills you with dread. I should add that I love giving lectures too and would not want to give these up! Variety is the spice of life. Hope you can join us for the chat!

NB. Some of the words used in this blog are reproduced or adapted from an earlier article I wrote, published in the Live Well with Pain Newsletter, January 2025. 

Webpages (in order) that I have hyperlinked to in case you need them

References

• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.11120/hsce.2013.00031
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026069171730268X?via%3Dihub
• https://www.teambasedlearning.org/definition/
• https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-government-research-shows-lonely-seems-to-be-the-hardest-word-for-students 
• https://livewellwithpain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Newsletter-January-2025.pdf 

Author Biography

Dr Jonathan (Jonny) Branney is Principal Academic in Nursing and Clinical Sciences and Programme Leader for the MSc Advanced Clinical Practice traditional and apprenticeship routes. He has a substantial clinical background as both a registered nurse (critical care; accident & emergency) and was formerly a registered chiropractor. He is passionate about the role of biosciences in nurse and healthcare education, using innovative teaching techniques such as Team-based Learning. He is a Team-based Learning Collaborative (TBLC) certified Consultant-Trainer in TBL, a Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE and a National Teaching Fellow (2024). Jonny has most recently combined his research into musculoskeletal pain with his teaching expertise in developing TBL pain education for patients with chronic pain. Read more about that here.  

Questions and chat

• Q1 What attributes are needed by a lecturer to be an effective facilitator of learning?
  
• Q2 What formative assessment strategies (regular checks of learning) work well? Why?
  
• Q3 Is learning more effective with individual learning or group learning? Please explain.
  
• Q4 In your experience does group learning work best when all groups have different tasks? Or the same task? Please explain.
  
• Q5 What are the best ways to get students engaged with real-world problem-solving?
  
• Q6 Are the challenges going on in higher education right now an opportunity or barrier to small group learning? Please explain