A Practical Application of Team Based Learning to Undergraduate Engineering Coursework

Team based learning is a powerful pedagogical tool that has demonstrated, through personal experience, an ability to simultaneously improve student interaction, conceptual understanding, commitment, and cooperative skills.While this technique is organized around student teams, it is far more than just "group work".Team based learning, developed in part by Dee Fink of OU's instructional development program, is specifically designed to: 1) assemble a team with a diverse set of experience and skills, 2) remove the classroom organizational obstructions that typically inhibit student interaction, 3) create team assignments that encourage interaction, 4) create an environment that enables teams to solve more advanced problems.The present example details the application of team based learning to a heavily quantitative undergraduate engineering course (heat transfer).Since some activities (such as lengthy computations) do not encourage an engaging group environment, class activities (assignments, quizzes, and exams) are divided into individual and team portions.Individual assignments are generally preparatory and quantitative in nature and are completed outside class.Team assignments are generally conceptual in focus, and are completed exclusively in class.Practically, team assignments provide an excellent venue for extending simple concepts and tools to real world situations, as well as providing context, motivation and real-time feedback.The intellectual and communal support structure of the team seems especially beneficial to marginal students whose future in engineering is in jeopardy.Initial assessment metrics have indicated that student approval and performance have been overwhelmingly favorable.Students have demonstrated improved conceptual understanding as well as computational skills.While this example is not all encompassing, it does demonstrate the application of team based learning to atypical areas within the engineering curriculum.