Using team-based learning to teach pharmacology to second year medical students improves student performance

Team-based learning (TBL) is an innovative instructional method that fosters active learning. It has been shown to improve student performance in some health care education courses.

To examine the effect of teaching pharmacology using a TBL approach on second year medical students' satisfaction and performance.

A modified TBL method was used in two case-based discussion sessions of the second year pharmacology course: a relatively easy drug metabolism/pharmacogenetics session and a more challenging pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) session. Individual and group answers to all questions were recorded, and an evaluation form was collected for each session. Class performance on a summative quiz was compared to previous years.

Students provided positive feedback. Group performance was better than individual performance during the TBL exercises. TBL was less successful when the questions were very difficult, with a difficulty range of 30-70% being the most appropriate. Performance of the class on the pharmacology summative quiz showed significant improvement over that in previous years in the PK/PD part, but was unchanged in other topics taught traditionally.

The results suggest that TBL provides a better outcome for students, and provide insight into appropriate design of TBL exercises.