6 Accountability

With the ultimate goal of learning, student accountability is crucial to ensuring participation, engagement and buy in. Like any other course, most instructors of TBL courses are required to assign a grade to students, which can serve as an extrinsic motivator for learning yet has limits (Blum & Kohn, 2020). While TBL does leverage marks as a motivator, the format also seeks to foster intrinsic accountability by way of its structure and use of feedback.

Accountability to Self

Pre-class preparation  is something that most instructors expect of students. Often there are readings from text books, articles or other resources. Yet research indicates that when the expectation is that the instructor will review content in a lecture, preparation compliance is abysmal, with one-half (1/2) to three-fourths (3/4) of students self-reporting that they do not complete any readings prior to class in some instances (Gammerdinger & Kocher, 2018; Hoeft, 2012; Miller et al., 2018).

These same studies advocate the use of the “flipped classroom,” where content from the class preparation is not again covered in the synchronous classroom. When students are aware that content will not be covered before they are immersed in assessment events such as the Individual Readiness Assurance Test (IRAT)  and participation in complex team activities students are more accountable in completing the preparation. It should also be noted that the instructor plays a large role in ensuring that pre-class preparation material is not only relevant and interesting, but that it does not overwhelm the students’ cognitive capacities (Michaelsen & Sweet, 2008; Sibley & Ostafichuk, 2015).

Accountability to Team

When students know that they have an obligation to others and that their actions will impact their team performance during friendly yet competitive group activities, most feel an intrinsic motivation to ensure they are do not let their team down. Students are more likely to ensure that they are accountable when they know that they will be engaging in activities that rely on team members to be prepared and engaged. Sibley and Ostafichuck make the claim that this intrinsic motivator can be more powerful than a transactional grade (2015). TBL also integrates the use of peer feedback and evaluation to support student growth and accountability to the team in a transactional grade (Michaelsen & Sweet, 2008; Sibley & Ostafichuk, 2015).