The wish to implement active teaching and learning methods in the curriculum of the Academic Centre for Dentistry in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has long been acknowledged. Last year team-based learning (TBL) was decided upon as the main teaching method and was implemented in the first year of the Bachelor’s programme in September 2020. More than with traditional teaching methods, TBL stimulates students to participate actively in their own learning process. This team-oriented method prepares future dentists for academic reasoning and clinical decision-making. In the webinar, we describe how we introduced TBL in the first year of the Bachelor’s programme. First of all we set up a TBL course for the teachers in order to prepare them for a new method of teaching. Subsequently, TBL teaching sessions for a total of seven courses were prepared by these same teachers. They received the help and support of four ACTA staff members, the so-called TBL team. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, TBL was introduced as an online variant, requiring close cooperation with IT-services. IT took care of the online test environment for individual readiness assurance tests (iRATS) and team readiness assurance tests (tRATS) and organised the breakout rooms. Since TBL was new to everyone, the TBL team was present at all TBL application sessions, providing feedback to teachers at the end of each session and offering advice if necessary during sessions. Half-way through the academic year, the implementation of TBL was carefully assessed by panel groups of students and teachers. This was then followed by an evaluation by all first-year students at the end of the academic year. Both these procedures allowed for further fine-tuning. In September 2021, we will be continuing with the implementation of TBL in the second-year Bachelor’s at ACTA. The webinar is of interest for those that want to pick-up ideas for how to set-up and implement a new teaching method in all courses of a curriculum.

At the end of this webinar, the audience will have knowledge on how to implement a new teaching method in all courses of a programme.