Tried and true methods are best left alone

There is this new method of learning that I have been dragged through a couple times in the last few years.  I'm not sure if it's a widespread trend or just someone's "brilliant" idea at this school, but I don't like it one bit.  It's called "Team-Based Learning," abbreviated TBL.  The concept is that the students learn the material on their own and in teams, then it is reviewed as a class.  It is an ineffective teaching method (if you can call it teaching) for two big reasons: it puts the traditional lecture---learn/discuss---exam method in a really odd order and it wastes a lot of time, both before and during class.

This is how the process goes:

1. There is a pre-class multiple-choice quiz (online) over the subject for the following day's class.  The student works on his own, using whatever resources he wants (not having had any instruction on that topic yet).  This is called a "readiness assessment test (RAT)."

2. There is another quiz at the beginning of class (the same questions and answers) but this time it is taken as a group.  So there is a lot of time given for groups to argue between their answers, still not having had any instruction on the topic.  All the discussion stems from whichever resources each student found and the impressions they have based on their very limited experience.

3. The class discusses each of the questions and the answers their group chose.  This is the first time in the whole process that the instructor may insert her own experience and make sense of all the resources that provide conflicting information or guidelines for treatment.

So, in effect, most of the process is a struggle for each student to find information on his own, and that information is usually limited to the specific circumstances surrounding each question, not how to treat the disease state in general.  I understand that students learn better when they can come up with some of the knowledge on their own, but providing absolutely no basic knowledge or information in advance of two quizzes is not the right way to make that process happen.  Answering the quiz questions usually comes down to trying to justify little pieces of each option that are not ideal and arguing between two answers that are probably both semi-correct.  I don't know about the "ideal modern student," but I learn best in the traditional manner: give some preparation work before class (reading, etc.), lecture on the material (supplementing the text with personal knowledge or experience), allow time to study the material on one's own, then give an exam.  It's frustrating to take a quiz and have to come up with all of the answers from scratch rather than drawing from a professional's knowledge (since that knowledge was never provided in the first place).

Secondly, it's a huge waste of time.  If we had at least a basic background of the topic beforehand, quiz time could be spent looking up exceptions or juggling two good options, rather than that in addition to learning all the general knowledge of the disease state.  Then, in class, more time is wasted when the groups are given time to discuss.  Many times, the whole group agrees, and when they don't it is on something that only clinical experience could decide (something which the professor has not commented on yet).  So inevitably, there is a 10-30 minute period when your group is done with the quiz that you do absolutely nothing.  All this does is take away from the time at the end when the instructor may or may not add to the discussion with the experiences he's had, which is the only thing worth the huge amount of tuition that goes towards these classes.

The class I'm taking now uses parts of this method, so at least it's not as bad as last year's class that used every bit of it, including scratch-ticket-like answer sheets (another great use of tuition…).  But I still feel like the teaching process is turned backward and a lot of my time is being wasted.

So that was the second half of my day…  The first half of my day was about the same level of frustrating and waste of time, learning things I'll never use as a pharmacist.  But that's a different blog for a different day.  Off to camp for a long weekend and work party tomorrow!