An Initial Experience with “Team Learning” in Medical Education

Team learning is an approach to large-group teaching that combines the strengths of small-group interactive learning with teacher-driven content delivery. Team learning has been used successfully in professional disciplines other than medicine. The authors describe a field test of team learning in the setting of an internal medicine residency noontime lecture in the spring of 2000 at Baylor College of Medicine. They surveyed residents on their attitudes toward the usefulness of the lecture content before and after the session and surveyed them on their engagement in learning. Residents reported their engagement as high and demonstrated favorable changes in their attitudes about the usefulness of the lecture content to their daily medical practice. The authors describe their adaptation of the team-learning approach and conclude that team learning may be a useful new pedagogic tool in medical education.