Team-based learning, with Jim Sibley

Bonni: [00:00:00] Team based learning has come up a few times on the show previously today however, we dive deep into this teaching approach and discover the powerful ways to engage students with Jim Sibley.

Production Credit: [00:00:12] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:22] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:48] Jim Sibley is director of the Cente for Instructional Support at the Faculty of Applied Science at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Jim welcome to the show.

Jim: [00:01:00] Hi welcome.

Bonni: [00:01:01] Thanks so much for accepting my invitation to be on Teaching in Higher Ed. I would love to hear a bit about how you got started in being a faculty developer.

Jim: [00:01:10] Thanks very much. So I worked at the University of British Columbia for 34 years and faculty supported and for the last 15 years I’ve been the director of the Center for Instructional Support and Applied Science. My campus about 15 years ago went through kind of getting technology into teaching.

Jim: [00:01:33] And they built support units mostly around the pedagogically wise use of technology. But I found that looking at educational technology was only half the story and the sort of faculty development course design you know your personal journey and to be a better teacher was actually where my interest was lying so I actually transform from being a technology guy into being an educational psychologist.

Bonni: [00:02:06] When I look at your Web site I’m going to shift for just a brief moment from the professional to the personal. You almost sound like an advertisement for Vancouver. I’ve actually been to Vancouver but have never lived there. Give us a picture of life in Vancouver for those who maybe haven’t visited or haven’t lived there before.

Jim: [00:02:22] Well I’ll tell you the really good parts and then there are some bad parts. The really good parts. I live four blocks from the beach. Ten minute bus ride up to campus. You can take a city bus in Vancouver to go skiing. Yet we keep the snow in the mountains doesn’t come into the city. We wait to get. A day of snow a year. Absolutely stunning small city place to live.

Jim: [00:02:48] The bad side is that everyone wants to live here. So housing prices are a little crazy. So Vancouver is great but it comes at a cost.

Bonni: [00:03:01] In 2006 you had what you referred to on your Web site as,”a bit of a rough patch.” Would you share that story with us?

Jim: [00:03:10] I had the misfortune of tearing at an artery in my neck. I was actually teaching a kayak lesson and had a stroke and got to spend four months in hospital learning how to walk, talk, and eat again. You know you’re an educational nerd when you’re fascinated by watching someone help you learn to walk.

Jim: [00:03:36] Sounds like a big negative experience but it turned out to be a very positive experience as far as my family was wonderful my friends are wonderful work was wonderful.

Jim: [00:03:46] You know when I have my deficits but it’s mostly been a big plus actually and the journey.

Bonni: [00:03:52] I’m going to be putting in the show notes a link to a number of things but including on your website you have a digital story that you tell there was an interview with Brainstream and then a spoken word that is titled Hiccups that I would encourage people to go and listen to to find out more about this part of your story.

Bonni: [00:04:12] But today we’re going to talk a bit more about something completely different and that is team based learning. And people who have been listening to Teaching in Higher Ed for a while know that it’s come up a few times on the show it’s certainly very popular with the people who are engaged in faculty development and who are passionate about creating such meaningful learning experiences for our students. But for people who that term is new for them. Jim would you just start out by defining what is team-based learning.

Jim: [00:04:39] So team-based learning is a really unique for small group learning and what’s interesting about it is it gets better with the bigger size of class you have.

Jim: [00:04:53] I’ve actually had faculty members lament that they only have 20 students and they wished they had 70. I’ll use an analogy here. So you’ll understand the classroom dynamic who trying to see with team based learning: if you think about the work of a courtroom jury where 12 people come together and if you do teamwork you know that 12 people is way too big.

Jim: [00:05:19] But it turns out a jury actually needs 12 people because we asked them such a complicated question that needs such deep analysis that they need the intellectual horsepower of 12 people to kind of take the evidence the transcripts. To lawyers trying to convince you of different things. The judge here is saying here is the rule of law. Big complicated analysis that leads to what looks like a simple report. Guilty or not.

Jim: [00:05:51] Now imagine if you were in a courtroom. You are the floor person.You rise to state your verdict and you say guilty. But you notice that there’s five other juries in the room and they rise and they say not guilty in that moment on the lips of everyone in that courtroom will be. Why do you think that way. What evidence was important to you. Why did you make that decision team-based learning could easily be called decision-based learning.

Jim: [00:06:22] Because as soon as you make a decision you can get clear and focused. Feedback from everyone else in the room. I mean after a politician about when they make a decision if they get any feedback there’s something special about making a decision and publicly committing to it. And that’s what team-based learning is actually all about.

Bonni: [00:06:47] I know you just kicked off a team-based learning course there at the University of British Columbia. Is that one that would be helpful maybe to share with what what course that is what it looks like and how team based learning is a part of it.

Jim: [00:06:59] Oh sure a different course because the course that Bonni is referring to is of course for 900 students because we have we have a very diffused teaching team and that course. There’s actually 41 people involved of that course.

Jim: [00:07:14] I’ll describe actually a second year in mechanical design course because that’s a more traditional thing 150 students in a period lecture theatre. We have divided that course into five modules of about two weeks in length. We asked the students at the start of every two week module to read a short reading typically in the 25 to 35 page range.

Jim: [00:07:38] We learned early that students wouldn’t read for hours and hours just because we asked them so they complete this preparatory material some other courses will use videos but we have stuck with readings for the most part. They come to the first class of a two week segment and they have an individual test we give them of 20. Question multiple choice test pointed that kind of Bloom’s Taxonomy level. Remember understanding light application just do you have the vocabulary Do you have the conceptual framework for the week they’re going to learn more further into the module.

Jim: [00:08:19] So they do this individual test we get some individual accountability then we put them in teams and they retake the exact same test but this time in a team setting. Are you familiar with IF-AT cards. It stands for immediate feedback and assessment technique cards, they basically scratch and win multiple choice cards.

Bonni: [00:08:41] Oh I think I’ve heard of these but I don’t remember the name because you could just say the name just one more time the acronym.

Jim: [00:08:46] So it’s it’s called immediate feedback and assessment technique and it’s like a lottery scratcher where we will get to the first question we will go around our team going where do you get what’d you get what’d you get if we all agree to a we will scratch off the coding over a and we hope to find a star indicating the right answer and it gets more interesting if we go around and half the team says C and half the team says D.

Jim: [00:09:15] We’ve got to kind of discuss till we get to some form of consensus we might scratch off the find out it isn’t the right answer and then be forced back into the question to discuss it further.

Jim: [00:09:29] Before we scratch off again and the way we get students to go back in is they get four points for the first scratch. Two points for the second scratch one for the third scratch and zero if they have to scratch all four.

Jim: [00:09:42] These aren’t loud, chaotic, fun events but one of the neat things about a team cast is if you think of the Achilles heel of group work in the classroom it’s students at different levels.

Jim: [00:09:58] If you are prepared and I am not there’s going to be tension there all day because I’m going either ride along on your coat tails or disengage from the conversation.

Jim: [00:10:09] This team test and the conversations as we scratch our way through this card have a nice leveling effect for the students get up to the same level.

Bonni: [00:10:19] And how many people are in the teams?

Jim: [00:10:21] Five to seven students and most people when they hear that will go. Ooh that’s way too big.

Jim: [00:10:30] I wrote a couple of years ago a book called Getting Started with Team-based Learning and as part of that I interviewed fifty four people that use team-based learning and one of the questions I would ask them is how big are your teams. And the story was almost always the same. Somewhere between 5 and seven.

Jim: [00:10:52] But they would tell a story of when I started I really didn’t believe that and I had teams that were 3, 4, or 5 because when I’d done other types of group work you know you would get a social low for a free rider or if the team was too big.

Jim: [00:11:08] But all of them had transitioned over the years to the larger size because in reflection looked back and said If I had difficulty with the team it was the smaller teams.

Bonni: [00:11:19] And they just anecdotally figured that out as they were going along.

Jim: [00:11:23] Yeah and the reason they’re a big team actually works is because we’re asking the teams to make a decision and that’s something teams are naturally good at.

Jim: [00:11:34] If I was to ask you to build a large product with it with a group that’s something that’s quite divisive inside a team because you know to think about you’re an A student and I’m a C student and I really don’t care I just want my C I’m going to ride along on your coattails because you’re motivated to get that way and you can coach students to participate equitably.

Jim: [00:11:59] But it’s often you can improve things but you can’t make that dysfunction go away. And that’s actually the magic between team based learning and other forms of co-operative and collaborative learning. Because TVL focused on decisions we don’t even teach team dynamics because we don’t we don’t have to.

Bonni: [00:12:21] You keep predicting my next question I was going to ask if you teach team dynamics; do you also not teach decision making any sort of models for effective decision making is that just something they learn along the way?

Jim: [00:12:31] We don’t have to because if you think about for the second once we have done these team tests the individual tested the team because of the start of a module. We spend most of the rest of the module doing activities where we pose problems to the students.

Jim: [00:12:47] A simple example might be I’m an engineer I’m building a bridge at the marina. Would you build it out of wood, steel, or concrete? You know looks like a simple question at some level, but the analysis and judgment you have to do to select a different option isn’t minor.

Jim: [00:13:10] And then the moment you know I say my group says concrete and the whole rest of the room says steel I might get some feedback about the quality of my conversation and decision making process. So there’s a nice iteration in coaching you towards better inside the team discussions and analysis.

Bonni: [00:13:33] You mentioned putting people in teams and teams of five to seven. You also talked about this being the course you’re describing right now 150 students in a lecture theatre.

Bonni: [00:13:45] What process goes into putting them into the teams and then are they sitting in rows in that lecture theatre and just talking across the rows or anthing you try to do to get them to have the ability to interact more easily.

Jim: [00:13:58] Well there’s a couple of constraints forced upon us by the lecture theatre. We almost always do teams of six in a lecture theatre because if you think about three people can turn around and you can see everyone. If I do five or seven there’s someone awkwardly left on the end of the team.

Jim: [00:14:19] So in a lecture theatre we aim for six just because what you do is the best thing is a small round table and a flat classroom. But we’ve never taught the space like that. We’ve only done it in terrible lecture theatres so six is what we go after but five to seven works fine.

Jim: [00:14:37] The instructor builds the team he or she usually builds them from either lining the students up asking you know can I have everyone that has a previous degree at the front of the line.

Jim: [00:14:50] Can I ask everyone that has work experience behind them what you’re trying to do is put diversity into each team the same kind of diversity and you typically asking questions to find out about the assets that you think every team might need.

Jim: [00:15:07] Maybe you want somebody who’s taken a stats course or somebody who can bring a laptop to class whatever you think are the assets you need to spread amongst the team. You will ask those kinds of questions to order that aligning before you count off the teams.

Jim: [00:15:25] In a large class we can’t line up 150 students. So we’ll do it online survey and do the same kind of sorting in Excel, but we’re looking for a diversity of assets and liabilities spread across the teams.

Bonni: [00:15:41] And if I taught a class that by inherently by itself just didn’t have a lot of diversity because it’s mostly undergrads it’s a freshman level class. Is that a step I could skip or am I putting myself in a dangerous spot if I decide to skip that step of sorting them in some way.

Jim: [00:15:57] Well there’s a good answer to that. There’s a wonderful paper in the Journal of Engineering Education on team formation methods by Brickell. He was at the Air Force Academy and had a 12 section course four sections he did instructor criteria you know a question based on going a certain outset four sections of random and then four sections of students selected groups, and the good news is that the randomly form teams perform almost as well as the instructors selected.

Jim: [00:16:34] So if you’re in a setting where there is it’s a great amount of diversity random works OK. But you know if you think about even on a freshman level there is diversity in rules that might be useful to have on different teams.

Jim: [00:16:50] We want somebody who is really good at math. We want somebody who is thinking about majoring in science. We want somebody who did really well in English. There is more diversity than you think. When you look into even those freshmen classes.

Bonni: [00:17:08] Yeah, I totally concur. I thought you were going to go a different direction. I was going to get myself into trouble already. I was trying to get a shortcut. I mentioned to you we had a guest on who mentioned team based learning that was Chrissy Spencer and she was back on Episode 25. If people want to take a listen to that she talked about team based learning.

Bonni: [00:17:28] And let me first just actually mention a tool she mentioned CATME the CATME website CATME.org where it has a team maker and for people who didn’t have a chance to listen to that episode it will take these various criteria for teams when are they available.

Bonni: [00:17:48] Some of the demographic questions that Jim has already brought up and it will actually do the work of creating these teams for you if anyone wants to look at that. Jim is that a tool that you’ve heard of before the CATME team?

Jim: [00:17:59] Yeah there is that tool there’s also one called GRumbler that comes out of Harvard that does the same kind of thing.

Jim: [00:18:07] All you’re really doing is you’re doing a nested sort with Excel. If I download the survey from my course management system and go sort by column 1 then column 2 then column 3 I end up with a nested sort that does basically what CATME and GRumbler do.

Bonni: [00:18:26] Oh it’s helpful background they have.

Jim: [00:18:28] And that’s actually if you go to my Website, how to form teams in small classes and how to form teams in large classes as described on its own webpage.

Bonni: [00:18:39] I think I already know the answer to the question but I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you have an opinion about in some circumstances students having an opportunity to select their own teams. Maybe it’s their senior year capstone class or something like that or are you always an advocate for that.

Jim: [00:18:54] So I have an opinion. There’s two things. There’s a tension. Students selected teams are typically a disaster mostly because they’re a social entity and you tend to pick people that are the same as you similar backgrounds. Real problems, but where you will see them use and they need to be used is if I ask a student to do it senior design project where you’ve got to be in love with that project.

Jim: [00:19:24] Suddenly your interest in that project is the overriding thing and it might be an interest that you share with your friend. So when we go to our senior design Capstone we do allow students self selection you’re going to spend hours and hours together.

Bonni: [00:19:44] Yeah yeah I think that’s really helpful. I was talking about Chrissy Spencer one of the things she cautioned us when she was speaking about teen based learning is that it isn’t something we can just try on for a day and then go on to other approaches to teaching is really something we need to commit to.

Bonni: [00:19:59] Can you talk a bit about the importance of that commitment and some of your thoughts on why team-based learning maybe hasn’t spread as much as you would have thought over all the years you’ve been doing it.

Jim: [00:20:10] Well you know the hard thing is that it’s not a pedagogy that you can sprinkle on top of your lecture course it’s a complete coherent framework to completely change the contract between you and your students. You become the designer of high quality learning experiences.

Jim: [00:20:30] You give the students what they need to engage in these really difficult problems. There’s a quote from Claire Major from the PBL world that used to think about sage on the stage or guide on the side and what we’re really asking you to be is sage on the side.

Jim: [00:20:49] You build these wonderful deep experiences for the students and your expertise becomes more important because you use it less but you use this more focussed way where you lean in and you help that student a little bit.

Jim: [00:21:03] One of the things though is everybody’s uncomfortable at the beginning right. The students are in this new role. You’re in a new role as a teacher because you or you may have moved from sage on the stage to facilitator.

Jim: [00:21:18] So everyone’s kind of in this process where they feel a little bit uncomfortable and you’ll start getting some student resistance Gore you know I learned better from lectures I wish you would.

Jim: [00:21:28] And there’s a tentative moment there where you need to actually commit to the pedagogy. What I can tell you is that by the end of the semester we see better student evaluations in our TBL courses than our lecture courses.

Jim: [00:21:43] In one semester the students will come onside; one of the interesting things we do see however in the TBL courses is the distribution of student evaluations because it shifts towards positive but it becomes bi modal and there are a few really angry students and we don’t know why it is but we see it consistently in our courses.

Jim: [00:22:08] You always have students who don’t like whatever you’re doing whether you lecture to PBL or TBL but for some reason TBL can make some of them more unhappy the way we take care of that is we make sure we have conversations in class and talk about How’s everyone doing you know asking for feedback.

Jim: [00:22:30] Because what you’ll find is that those unhappy students will stand up and say we all feel like this. And then the rest of the class will go no we don’t see you actually have to have that public conversation often to put perspective on the amount of student resistance.

Jim: [00:22:49] But you do have to be emotionally ready for it’s not going to feel perfect for the first year or two. Bill Roverson who used to be at the University at Albany is probably the best team-based learning faculty developer in the world and he relates in his course that it took him a couple of years before he was like oh good we’re at the student resistance stage.

Jim: [00:23:12] He actually watched it coming and was okay with it but he said you know the first year it did feel uncomfortable and you know nobody wants to feel uncomfortable and that’s why I think taking a big leap and taking going off the pedagogy like this is a little scary.

Bonni: [00:23:31] I’m so glad that you mentioned that because you said it’s not going to be perfect. For the first couple of years and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that perfect looks like you don’t have this resistance perfect looks like you recognize oh this is normal and it’s a part of their learning. You brought into the conversation PBL. Could you share what PBL is and also how it’s distinct from TBl team based learning.

Jim: [00:23:52] I’ve tutored in PBL. I don’t have extensive knowledge about PBL but it’s a problem-based learning tends to be you give the students an open ended case you know they might meet three times a week for two hours they discuss their way through the case they build learning issues they go off in their research and they come back and integrate what they’ve learned.

Jim: [00:24:16] Really a powerful powerful pedagogy but it’s a resource nightmare. Typically it’s one tutor to eight students the medical school here a UBC on any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday morning there are 70 faculty members sitting in PBL rooms that’s a really tough use of resources gets too incredible. I think learning and ends but it’s a resource. I would call it a nightmare.

Bonni: [00:24:45] Sounds like it yeah.

Jim: [00:24:46] The nice thing about TBL is we can do it in classes of 250 and we think that’s fine. You know I’ll have 40 teams or 30 teams or whatever in a class that size they solve these interesting problems.

Jim: [00:25:03] They do this public commit. We often will ask what looks to be a multiple choice question the whole the card up and I’ll get to look out in a lecture theatre and see 30 teams taking a stand.

Jim: [00:25:18] This is I think the best course of action. This is the test we should order. That’s a pretty remarkable thing for faculty member to look out into words lecture theatre and see student thinking.

Jim: [00:25:30] And it is pretty remarkable for the students if they hold their card up and the team beside them holds up something else they are instantly want to be in this conversation when we manage to have a good activity that puts the room the biggest job for the family member at that point is to shut up and let the students sort it out.

Bonni: [00:25:53] And is team-based learning always working under the paradigm that one of these answers is correct and the others are incorrect. And is it always in the form of a multiple choice type of pre-determined decision points?

Jim: [00:26:09] Yeah absolutely not. So they might have the form of a multiple choice question just because there would be a long scenario that presents various data sources that they have to analyze and then there will be four reasonable options with one of them being more reasonable than the other.

Jim: [00:26:27] I mean a real simple one in a medical setting would be you know what would be the first thing you do and this patient presents at the bar what would be the first test you would order.

Jim: [00:26:38] You know that the county has budget cuts and doesn’t want to spend money on expensive tests. What inexpensive test would you order and then you’d have various tests that would give you more information but cost more you know less information because you know every question has a ying and yang and you’re kind of trying to find the points in between where you’re going to draw the line.

Jim: [00:27:03] As a team you’re going to draw the line slightly different probably than the team decided and it’s the conversation about why you put the line where you put it.

Bonni: [00:27:12] When should we use team-based learning and what cautions do you have of when it’s not appropriate?

Jim: [00:27:18] I haven’t bumped into a discipline where it doesn’t work yet but if you are a last minute person I would use large amounts of caution with team-based learning because you’re making the students uncomfortable and they’re looking for someone to hang their discomfort on. So if you’re disorganised you’re kind of a target.

Jim: [00:27:42] When I was interviewing people for my book I asked them if they thought that team-based learning was more or less work than a lecture course to build and it was mixed. Some people said it was the same and some people said it was more.

Jim: [00:27:57] But the people that said it was the same. The interesting point they made was that because you have to do all the work up front before the course begins it can feel like more work.

Jim: [00:28:10] We forget sometimes that our lecture courses you know you dust off last year’s PowerPoint the day before you update a couple of slides and you go make a speech that’s not going to work in the team-based learning world.

Bonni: [00:28:24] And do you have people who successfully mix it with maybe a more traditional lecture one day that maybe has some polling or some kind of way to engage and then the next session that week has.

Jim: [00:28:38] Yeah absolutely. Teen-based learning is not a prohibition on lecturing. I still have some of my courses that I help people with. They will lecture half the time in a little lecture hall full class periods in-between activities in between these tasks and module preparation but they’re usually lecturing for a reason to answer a student need or question.

Jim: [00:29:04] If you look at the way lecturing used in a TBL thing. Often there is an activity that gets students to a point going I wish I knew. The faculty member says, “Well let me help you out with that.”

Jim: [00:29:16] And you know you give them 10 or 15 minutes on that. Then you do another activity where it leads you basically to another teachable moment. The lecturing is actually probably between 30 and 50 percent of the contact time but it’s in smaller amounts and it’s for a reason.

Bonni: [00:29:34] It’s kind of like it got percolated up to that point and the faculty member knows this is now when this is going to be needed.

Jim: [00:29:40] You know they’ll be working on an activity and you’ll hear murmurings from the class. I wish I knew more about you know this kind of analysis and you can go you know I’m going to give a five minute overview of this kind of analysis because I think that’ll help everyone with the activity right.

Jim: [00:29:57] And students like that because they know they don’t know they know that you’re not going to talk for very long. So it’s a much more effective way to lecture.

Bonni: [00:30:08] What are some resources that you could share that would help people find out more about TBL and start using it in their classes.

Jim: [00:30:16] First get yourself to teambasedlearning.org which is the team-based learning collaborative. It’s a national organization that has a good website has resources on TBL. They run a conference every year in March.

Jim: [00:30:33] I’d also recommend a good place to start I think is my Website which is learntbl.ca and that that gives you a good overview of TBL and there are some videos and stories about how it has applied to different courses.

Jim: [00:30:52] I always feel a little funny when I recommend my book but my book Getting Started with Team-Based Learning by Stylist Publishing is a pretty good place to start as well. You can also just get yourself to the ERIC database and type in Team-based learning and you’ll have a few hundred articles to read and convince yourself that it’s a great idea.

Bonni: [00:31:15] And are there any technology tools that support TBHL that you haven’t mentioned yet. We’ve talked a little bit about a couple of ones to help select teams but is there anything else that we’d be remiss not mentioning before we get to the recommendation segment.

Jim: [00:31:28] Typically a piece of a TBl experience is to have peer evaluation so you’ll be looking for some kind of peer evaluation tool. A lot of people will use CATME that was mentioned earlier. It’s a free peer evaluation tool.

Jim: [00:31:43] The big technology tool that that probably most TBl courses will need is just around peer evaluation. You can look to a free tool like CATME is one way you can go. There’s also a tool called IPEER which plugs into blackboard. If you happen to use Blackboard people do use clickers and various iPhone apps but really getting peer evaluation organized is typically the big one.

Bonni: [00:32:11] Is there anything that we should. Maybe I didn’t ask you yet that we should make sure we talk about before getting to the recommendation segment of today’s show.

Jim: [00:32:21] I’ll just say you know floating around in your head might be why would I possibly do this. Why would I want to turn over what I do. Possibly set off some student resistance possibly be uncomfortable and the reason you want to do this.

Jim: [00:32:37] This came out of the interviews for my book. I wasn’t prepared for how happy people were. They were using words like a falling in love with teaching again classes so much fun and fun and joy in the service of deep learning. That’s pretty neat. And that was a recurring theme in the interviews I did.

Bonni: [00:33:02] Wow that must have been really rewarding to hear especially as you’ve committed so much to your work in this area.

Jim: [00:33:07] The backstory on doing the interviews is so I’d been writing this book for about a year and then I went through a crisis of confidence about who was right to tell other people how one should do this and the way I calm myself down was by interviewing 54 people I did 54 one hour interviews across all disciplines across. I’ve got people that were brand new to TBL, people that were veterans.

Jim: [00:33:37] Basically asking them is what I’m saying true. When people have drank the Kool-aid That’s actually almost feels like the right term. They are such advocates for the method because they have such joy. I interviewed one woman from Central New Mexico University.

Jim: [00:33:58] And by the end of the phone call she was just about vibrating on the far end of the phone going I need to get to class I need to get in front of students and we need to have you know I don’t hear that from people that given lectures.

Bonni: [00:34:12] That’s wonderful. This is the point in the show in which we each give a recommendation the recommendation that I have today is around a tool which I recommended before but a little twist on it.

Bonni: [00:34:22] The tool is called Feedly and Feedly for people that may not have heard of it before is an RSS reader where I can subscribe to a lot of different news sources at once or in the case for me. I can subscribe to all of my students blogs and instead of having to go to each blog individually and read it and wonder well what blog entries have I already read and which ones are new since the last time I visited.

Bonni: [00:34:47] It gets all of the new posts and serves them up to me in one place with easy to review headings and I can go in and read the stories as I need. Well one of the challenges I had was when I was teaching classes where it was important for students to read each other’s blogs.

Bonni: [00:35:05] They would essentially have to go through the same thing I did go to each of the blogs. Maybe it’s a class of 20 maybe it’s a class of 30 and manually copy those over to Feedly and that’s a little bit time consuming.

Bonni: [00:35:17] Well Feedly came out with their pro Feedly version and what it allows me to do is I’ve signed up for pro and I can gather up all the different students blogs and then the students in the class can subscribe to our class’s collection with just one click of their mouse which is really good good thing I’m not too happy on their price point.

Bonni: [00:35:40] It’s 5 dollars a month I hope maybe they’ll consider giving educational discounts at some point but it’s going to save me a lot of time so I bit the bullet and decided to invest and I’m really pleased with how it’s working so far. And Jim what is your recommendation for people today.

Jim: [00:35:55] My recommendation is actually a piece of reading it comes out of the Journal of Excellence in College Teaching. It’s a paper by Bill Roberson and Billie Franchini and it’s on team tasks what are good tasks for teams.

Jim: [00:36:12] And it’s the best piece of academic writing I’ve read in probably a decade and they have some real nice clarity on why some team activities we do seem to crash and other ones really seem to soar. So Billie Fred Franchini and Bill Roberson in the Journal of Excellence of College Teaching.

Bonni: [00:36:35] That sounds fabulous; Well I just want to thank you so much for being a guest on today’s show and for accepting my invitation. I know you’ve been real busy lately and I just appreciate you carving out the time and sharing with us about team-based learning.

Jim: [00:36:49] Great thank you very much.

Bonni: [00:36:53] Thanks once again to Jim for being on today’s show and sharing about team-based learning. If you would like to give feedback for future topics or future guests you can do that at teachinginhighered.com/feedback would love to have you subscribe to the weekly update if you haven’t already.

Bonni: [00:37:10] You’ll get the free e-book with 19 educational technology tools as well as a weekly email with all of the show notes the great articles that were discussed in a weekly blog about either productivity or teaching and you can subscribe at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe.

Bonni: [00:37:27] And last but not least I can’t hope but help but ask again if you haven’t left a rating or a review for the show would really love to have you do that. It helps others discover the show so we can continue to grow the Teaching in Higher Ed community. Thanks again for listening and I’ll see you next time.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.