Developing or delivering excellent or very good higher education is not rocket science. There is sound evidence on educational methods that are better than others, and on pedagogic concepts and principles that can be used to build successful learning and teaching. We start here by giving some background with examples of evidence based pedagogic principles and concepts. Naturally, these can be used in different educational methods, they are not exclusive to Team Based Learning. The benefit of Team Based Learning is its being a very good platform for combining and employing these principles. Note that the list is not in a order of priority nor preference, and successful teachers often employ even other principles and concepts.

Team Based Learning is a not a revolution in teaching; it is a way of re-organizing the teaching in a set order of learning Phases in the TBL module. Team Based Learning is directed and supported by teachers; but with the learning and supporting learning activities in focus. Some novel activities may have to be developed depending on the subject, but also previously used learning activities can be re-used, re-purposed and tweaked, such as lectures, discussions, quizzes, or self-study questions.

Pedagogic principles and concepts that provide deep learning with long term retention of knowledge and skills

create activities that enable learners to build Long-Term Memories (for retention of knowledge, skills and insights)
concentration (important to focus on learning task and process; reduce distractions; boost Work Memory capacity)
spacing and spaced repetition (space out the learning process over a few days, repeat and add complexity, revising lecture notes in a day-week-month intervall)
active recall, retrieval practice (train your brain to retrieve knowledge, by designing and exchanging questions, or training with mock-exams)
interleaving (it is good to study more than one different topic simultaneously, in a kind of a cross-fit brain training format)
calibration (create ways for students to calibrate their own learning progress, to develop insight on how they are doing)
the testing effect (testing in general aids learning, such as quizzes, SBA-excercises, written exams)
the hypercorrection effect (learning from mistakes, we tend to remember things where we were very wrong at some point or fostered a misconception)
adequately challenging (not too easy, not too difficult, but relevant/challenging/interesting at the appropriate level)
collegial/peer learning (clarity and learning is often gained from explaining to others, or discussing complex issues in a team)
application of knowledge (as in learning a lot about the Theory of Music does not turn you into a Pianist)
feedback (learning to give and receive feedback, on the learning results, and as a learner, individually and in teams)
not a fundament of TBL, but encourage your students to use real paper and real pens as a component in their study strategy

In the next step, you will learn about the basic structure of the TBL Module. You will learn about the concept for each Phase in more detail as you go through them.