Survey of Student Perceptions of a Modified Team Based Learning Approach on an Information Technology Course

Active learning methodologies have evolved over the years in order to increase student input in the learning process. One example is Team-Based Learning (TBL), which fosters active learning and has become increasingly popular in modern curricula. However, in developing nations, the well-established lecture-based teaching paradigm is the prominent medium of teaching and learning. This paper describes an empirical study to use a pedagogy integrating Team-Based Learning (TBL) for effective learning and hands-on experience in an information technology introductory course. We have adopted a modified version of TBL to study its effect on students learning and to investigate how active interactions influence students´ learning and grades. We refer to this method as LTBL, Lectures and Team-Based Learning, since we added to it a short but an essential teaching component. To explore the effectiveness of this learning pedagogy, we used a survey to evaluate students´ engagement in class and their attitude towards the value of using teams for learning, compared with experiences of students in the traditional lecture format. Our findings confirmed that LTBL has a positive effect on the success rate and the achievement of learning outcomes.