Team-based learning: a promising strategy to foster active learning in cancer education

Team-based learning (TBL) is an innovative teaching method, originally pioneered in business education, which has been increasingly used in medical settings. TBL allows a single teacher to incorporate small groups into a lecture hall or classroom and simultaneously conduct activities with all of the groups. Its focus on application of basic knowledge to solve complex real-world problems is ideally suited for basic science and clinical teaching. Application in medical education settings has demonstrated TBL to result in a number of favorable knowledge, skills, and attitudinal outcomes. We introduce the TBL method and summarize experience to date in health sciences education. We look forward to increasing use of the method to teach oncology content.