Preliminaries 9
because humans working on a common problem like to talk. There is plenty ofdoinggoing on,
presuming that the group has a common task list to work through, like a small mountain of really
difficult problems that nobody can possibly solve working on their own and arebarelywithin their
abilities working as a group backed up by the course instructor! Finally, in team-based learning
everybody has the opportunity toteach!
The importance of teaching – not only seeing the lecture presentation with your whole brain
actively engaged and participating in an ongoing discussion so that it makes sense at the time,
not only doing lots of homework problems and exercises that apply the material in some way, but
articulatingwhat you have discovered in this process andanswering questionsthat force you to
consider and reject alternative solutions or pathways (or not) cannot be overemphasized. Teaching
each other in a peer setting (ideally with mentorship and oversight tokeep you from teaching each
othermistakes) isessential!
This problem you “get”, and teachothers(and actually learn it better from teaching it than they
do from your presentation – never begrudge the effort required to teach your fellow team members
even if some of them are very slow to understand). The next problem you don’t get but someother
group member does – they get to teachyou. In the end you all learnfar moreabout every problem
as a consequence of the struggle, the exploration of false paths,the discovery and articulation of the
correct path, the process of discussion, resolution and agreement in teaching wherebyeverybodyin
the team hopefully reaches full understanding.
Note that success in this last key metric depends onyouand you alone. No teaching/learning
approach will help you learn if you quit halfway there. Some approaches make it easier, some harder,
but in the endyoubear the ultimate responsibility for your own active, engaged learning. When you
have completed see, do,teach, you have achieved a critical milestone on the path to comprehension.
I would assert that it is all butimpossiblefor someone to become a (halfway decent) teacher
ofanythingwithout learning along the way that the absolute best way to learnanyset of material
deeply is toteachit – it is the very foundation of Academe and has been for two or three thousand
years. It is, as we have noted, built right into the intensive learning process of medical school and
graduate school in general. For some reason, however, we don’t incorporate a teaching component
in mostundergraduateclasses, which is a shame, and it is basically nonexistent in nearly all K-1 2
schools, which is an open tragedy.
As an engaged studentyou don’t have to live with that!Put it there yourself, by incorporating
group study and mutual teaching into your learning processwith or without the help or permission
of your teachers!A really smart and effective team soon learns toiteratethe teaching – I teach you,
and to make sure you got it youimmediatelyuse the material I taught you and try to articulate
it back to me. Eventually everybody on the team understands, everybody on the team benefits,
everybody on the team gets the best possible grade on the material. This process will actually make
you (quite literally) more intelligent. You may or may not manage to lockdown an A, but you will
get the best grade you are capable of getting, for your given investment of effort.
This is close to the ultimate in engagement – highly active learning, with all cylinders of your
brain firing away on the process. You canseewhy learning is enhanced. It is simply a bonus, a sign
of a just and caring God, that it is also a lot morefunto work in a team, especially in a relaxed
context with food and drink present. Yes, I’m encouraging you to have “physics study parties” (or
history study parties, or psychology study parties). Hold contests. Give silly prizes. See. Do. Teach.
Other Conditions for Learning
Learning isn’tonlydependent on the engagement pattern implicit in the See, Do, Teachrule. Let’s
absorb a few more True Facts about learning, in particular let’s comeup with a handful of things