Introduction:

Team-Based Learning (TBL) is an active methodology that has shown to be effective for the training of health professionals. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, TBL utilization migrated from the in-person to the synchronous online mode.

Objectives:

This study aimed to evaluate the perception of health undergraduate students about online TBL and to analyze whether there is a difference regarding this perception between groups of students with different levels of exposure prior to in-person and online sessions of the teaching method, in addition to verifying whether such perception can be affected by the student’s behavioral profile.

Method:

This is an observational, cross-sectional, descriptive-exploratory level II comparative study with a quantitative approach, carried out in undergraduate Nursing and Medicine courses between September and December 2021. A questionnaire on sociodemographic data was applied virtually, in addition to the Assessment of Student Perception-Team-Based Learning (ASP-TBL) and the DISC Personality Test instruments.

Results:

Of the 241 participating students, most were females (81%), aged between 20.8 and 24.4 years, who had already attended more than 10 sessions of in-person TBL (90%) and online TBL (53%). Of the 24 ASP-TBL questions, 17 obtained an index equal to or greater than 75% in the sum of the answers “I totally agree”/“I agree”, values considered as a positive perception in this study. Students exposed to more than 10 online TBL sessions had a significantly more negative perception in three of the four dimensions of the ASP-TBL, when compared to less exposed students. The group that had participated in more than 10 in-person TBL sessions had a significantly more negative perception in only one dimension of the instrument, when compared to the less exposed ones. The main DISC Personality test factor found among the participants’ behavioral profiles was submission (“S”). There was no correlation between the student’s behavioral profile and their perception of the method in the online version.

Conclusions:

There was a favorable perception of health undergraduate students regarding online TBL. Previous prolonged exposure to the method, both online and in-person, represented a significant difference in the students’ perception of online TBL. There was no evidence of the influence of the student’s behavioral profile on their perception of the teaching method.

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