Faculty Peer Review as a Strategy to Assure Quality in a New Team-Based Learning Curriculum—a Single Institution Experience

Team-Based Learning (TBL) has focused largely on teaching faculty to develop lessons and help learners apply content. TBL literature has overlooked providing guidance or training in quality assurance. In this study, we describe a single institution’s experience with successfully shifting to the TBL model from a traditionally didactic curriculum. A faculty peer review program (FPRP) was instituted to assure that faculty developed quality TBLs and facilitated them according to their training. The transition from didactics to TBL was facilitated by (1) TBL faculty training, (2) development of a peer review committee, and (3) implementation of the FPRP. Following the implementation of the FPRP, students combined mean scores on major shelf exams in Biochemistry increased from 76.9 to 84.1%; Cell Biology, from 77.5 to 82.5%. Their National Board of Medical Examiners Biochemistry shelf exam mean scores increased from 52.4 to 60.8%; overall percentile ranking increased from the 59th to the 85th percentile. The FPRP proved to be integral to TBL faculty development and curricular change efforts. In a survey issued only to faculty who used the TBL model, they expressed appreciation for the FPRP and identified it as a contributing factor in the successful transition to the new TBL curriculum.