We would like to extend our congratulations on behalf of the TBLC to this year’s poster award winners: Stanley Ellis and Kimberly Morris-Ross. Their poster abstract was titled “Faculty Peer Review Program: Quality Assurance in a New Team Based Learning Curriculum.” As the lead presenter, TBLC is pleased to announce that Stanley Ellis will receive one year of free membership for winning. Please see their abstract below:

BACKGROUND: Traditional training for Team Based Learning (TBL) focuses largely on teaching faculty to develop lessons that will be employed to transmit knowledge content to learners and to facilitate TBL sessions. However, TBL literature that espouses its benefits as an instructional method foregoes guidance or training in the area of quality assurance for this knowledge transmission model. To successfully shift to this new learning model, from a curriculum where a majority of instruction was traditionally didactic, the following components were necessitated: (a) buy-in from students and faculty; (b) training for students and faculty in the new pedagogy; and a (c) continuous quality improvement process. To assure quality TBLs were being developed and facilitated, a faculty peer review program (FPRP) was instituted that proved to be integral to our TBL-focused faculty development and curricular change efforts.

DESCRIPTION: The FPRP consisted of six phases: (1) faculty develop TBL session; (2) faculty submit TBL to a faculty peer review committee (FPRC); (3) FPRC reviews TBL; (4) FPRC provides feedback; (5) faculty facilitates TBL event; (6) After Event Review (AER) is conducted. The FPRC consisted of five senior faculty (2 basic science, 3 college of medicine) and an educational expert. Within our first 12 months, the FPRC reviewed, more than 20 new TBLs.

RESULTS: Faculty expressed appreciation of the FPRP process in helping with the transition, with emphasis on feedback provided during the AER phase of the program. In the AER phase, faculty received feedback based on an observation of their TBL session by a FPRC member.

CONCLUSION: As a result of faculty responses, the FPRP was identified as a contributing factor in the successful transition to the new TBL curriculum.

Posters were submitted through our online abstract system and then reviewed by members of our Program Committee. The top posters that scored in the twenty percent of all abstracts were selected as award nominees. If you’d like to submit a poster abstract for the 2018 TBLC Meeting, keep an eye on your email this summer for instructions on the submission process!