How about including free-standing, open-ended questions for readiness assessment and application activities in team-based learning, in addition to MCQs?

In conventional team-based learning (TBL), readiness assurance test (RAT) items must be formatted as free-standing multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Even in the application phase of TBL, all teams must work on the same, significant problem and be required to make a specific choice and simultaneously report them to the whole class, which the MCQ format with predetermined answer choices allows. However, the founders of the TBL method rightly emphasize that the intended learning outcomes of a course using TBL underlie the design of the various components of TBL. The main point of this brief essay is to suggest that, if the ability to generate solutions to problems without predetermined answer choices is an intended learning outcome, it is advantageous to include carefully constructed free-standing, open-ended questions (OEQ) for both RAT and application activities in courses using TBL as the primary instructional method, in addition to the use of MCQs. Free-standing OEQs are OEQs not linked to an MCQ used for RAT or application activities. How this might be incorporated in what one may envision as TBL is discussed.