Assessing the Impact of Team Based Learning and the Examination Performance of Undergraduate Taxation Law Students

Abstract

A number of forces push towards innovation and the acceptance of new teaching methods in Australian university business schools. Large class sizes and diversity of the student population often characterised by a significant international student cohort, the increasing complexity of topics (such as taxation law) and the growing pressures on school funding and teaching resources. The move towards greater accountability for research outputs also places added time pressure on academics to maintain teaching quality. Additionally, with the rising use of teams in organisations there is a demand by employers for employees that can effectively work in teams (Eisenhardt et al 1997) . In this context team based learning (herein after referred to as TBL) was trialled by the author in undergraduate tax law tutorials in 2010. Given that there is no known research into the use of TBL in respect of teaching Australian taxation law to university business students in tutorials, this study aims to assess its effectiveness. This TBL experiment was conducted on final year business university students studying an introductory taxation law topic covering taxation policy, goods and services tax and income tax. First, this paper defines team based learning and examines the mooted benefits. The paper then provides a theoretical underpinning for the TBL experiment. The TBL experiment is detailed and then its findings are analysed.