Effectiveness of a Team-Based Learning exercise in the learning outcomes of a medical pharmacology course: insight from struggling students

We have previously reported that multiple Team-Based Learning (TBL™) exercises in a 4-week pre-clinical medical school course improved final exam performance and significantly reduced the number of course failures. Here, we conducted a long-term study, with eight cohorts of first-year medical students, to determine whether the implementation of a single TBL individual readiness assessment test (iRAT) exercise in a 4-week medical school pharmacology course produces similar effects in overall course performance. We implemented a single TBL iRAT exercise that covered the subjects addressed during one week of the medical pharmacology course, with the four most recent cohorts of students matriculating at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University ( n = 403). The first four cohorts matriculating at CMSRU did not participate in the TBL exercises ( n = 266). Correlation of individual student TBL iRAT and final examination scores in the medical pharmacology course was compared to a second, unrelated first-year course (physiology) to control for variation in student performance between cohorts. We found that there was a significant moderate correlation between final examination and TBL iRAT scores ( r = 0.49, p