Gabriella Cagliesi, Mahkameh Ghanei and Francesco Guidi
The silver lining of the recent pandemic experience has been the removal of physical boundaries in teaching as students are not confined to a location and now join from four corners of the world, allowing teaching without boundaries. This acquired flexibility can be successfully used in a team-based learning (TBL) approach which was historically designed for in-class group interaction learning. Although TBL can be offered remotely online, its steps and structure will remain the same: students are still asked in advance to prepare for the session and to demonstrate their personal understanding of the topic area before joining their teammates for group activities. A substantial body of empirical evidence in different disciplines has shown that through TBL’s collaborative working on a real-world scenario(s), students will deepen their knowledge and understanding of the topic. With an effort to address the issues of inclusivity and award gaps, we decided and successfully applied TBL to in-person, online and blended sessions for a core module of a final year undergraduate economics degree and a postgraduate economic course, for classes of around 40 to 50 students. This is due to the nature of the TBL activities which enable students to engage effectively even from remote locations, for instance by using: Zoom break-out rooms; Microsoft Teams; Canvas quizzes; Kahoot competitions; and recorded videos.
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