Team-based learning in an undergraduate nursing course.

To increase student participation in the learning process, active learning methods, including small group learning, have become increasingly popular in modern curricula. One kind of small group learning, team-based learning, is a relatively new instructional strategy in health care education. Team-based learning uses theoretically based and empirically grounded strategies for ensuring the effectiveness of small groups working independently in classes with high student-to-faculty ratios (e.g., up to 200:1), without losing the benefits of faculty-led small groups with lower ratios (e.g., 7:1). To explore the effectiveness of this learning pedagogy, we evaluated students' level of engagement and attitudes toward the value of teams. Findings demonstrated that team-based learning is an effective teaching strategy for large groups of students.