Table 2 Participants’ responses regarding perceptions of their experiences that related to “Joint enterprise”

Co-teaching

Facilitators found it beneficial and enjoyable to teach alongside other experts in their field

“Positive experience for facilitators. Working with other expert teachers in my area and therefore able to bounce off ideas. It was a positive experience for the facilitators”. (facilitator)

“Working with other “experts” in a very collegial atmosphere is also very rewarding, and being able to interact with the students as we wander around the table, being available for questions”. (facilitator)

Content experts as facilitators

Staff felt TBL improved the quality of teaching by providing content experts as facilitators.

Staff enjoyed sharing their expertise in subjects

“The team-based learning overcomes inequity for student groups by having a small number of well trained content experts rather than having multiple tutors….you just can’t provide enough high quality tutors to do PBL”. (facilitator)

“I enjoyed going through the MCQs & elaborating on the correct answers ..ie a short didactic/highly focused ‘mini lecture’” (facilitator)

Immediate feedback

Students felt that immediate feedback from a content expert helped increase the independence of teams, and improved the continuity while working through their problem solving activities.

Teachers felt the immediate feedback encouraged a desire for subject proficiency among students.

“I felt like we were a lot – a lot more independent in TBL than in PBL… it’s like babysitting in PBL, whereas TBL we could, kind of, take on the clinical case ourselves and then experts come in to clarify points, then leave again… we control how – how fast we go”. (student)

“After they have done the individual and the team test, the facilitator goes through the answers to clarify any misconceptions. That’s actually really fantastic for the students because it produces some competition, it encourages them that if they are not doing as well as the other teams, for the next session, to look more closely at the information that is set for learning”. (facilitator)

Flipped classroom model, same preparation for every student

Students felt that having the same preparation requirements for team members in TBL, rather than having different individual preparation requirements (as is the case in PBL), engaged team members to work effectively together on a clinical problem.

“Everyone on is on the same page because you’ve all watched the same video (pre-recorded lecture) coming in and then afterwards you’ve all got the same questions and you can work through the questions and what your thought process was and think about it, whereas, if you do research on “x” and say, great, now I know about “x” but now I’ve got to still learn everybody else’s learning topics as well”. (student)

“Coming to TBL, it’s kind of that expectation that your four other members in your group have already done it (prepared) so it’s on you to also do it as well. And that’s qualified by the fact that there are questions, so you have to have knowledge, you can’t just breeze through like PBL”. (student)