All of the different ideas for creating diverse teams are great!
Thank you everyone. I just wanted to add that we really need to consider
what we're working with when choosing how to divide up our teams. With
very few exceptions, my classes are homogeneous. I have 100 students of
the same race, age, major, grade--all taking the exact same classes at
the exact same time for 6 years of medical school here in Japan.
Since I teach them in their 2nd and 3rd years, I go with grades on the
TOEFL ( Test of English as a Foreign Language) that they took in their
first year here and the VARK for the 3rd year. When using TOEFL scores,
I distribute high, mid, and low scores into teams before the course
begins. I tell them how they are distributed, but of course I don't
tell them who is who. I just say, "All teams include students with
excellent English abilities, so tap those abilities and help each other!"
However, some of your answers have given me the idea to change my
explanation to: "There are students who really 'like' English in every
team and those who don't like English as much. Help each other so we'll
all LOVE English by the end of this course!" In my experience, most
people like what they're good at.
I've actually found (subjective observation) that I get better teamwork
with my TOEFL groups than my VARK groups, though I'm not sure why.
Christine
But, with the
On 2010/08/30 23:38, Levine, Ruth wrote:
> I actually put together teams with a pretty large class (66) in a lecture hall using a pretty unwieldy method (where they were born). It was chaotic but the students had a blast doing it and in the end we had good teams with good heterogeneity. I think transparency is fairly important and getting a little messy can be fun. You can go up and down the aisles of the lecture hall if you need to.
>
> The trouble with using methods like previous grades is that if the students find out you did that they will always wonder (or worse--find out!!) who the "smart one" and who the "dumb one" in the team is and that can be counterproductive to team cohesion in the long run. They might not trust a teammate (for stupid reasons like race, gender, or ethnicity--assuming a correlation between one of those qualities and "smartness"--"oh-that is the "dumb one") If they don't find out how you put them together they will always wonder what method you used.
>
> Even if you don't line them up--let them see and know (like the cart sorting method) that you are using a system that is relatively random or based on qualities that determine success (like previous experience in the subject). But I would hesitate to put them in based on things like test scores or course scores because people will always wonder who the group "low scorers" are. If your groups are large enough (5-7) then every group will have enough talent to succeed and in general no group should have a substantial advantage over another.
>
> That is just my opinion, for what its worth....
> Ruth
>
>
> Ruth E. Levine MD
>
> Clarence Ross Miller Professor of Psychiatry
> The University of Texas Medical Branch
> 301 University Blvd, Route 0193
> Galveston, Texas 77555-0193
> 409-747-9675 (Phone) 409-747-9677 (Fax)
> [log in to unmask]
> ________________________________________
> From: Team-Based Learning [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sweet, Michael S [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 9:05 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: team transparency
>
> Jennifer,
>
> When classes get over a certain size (50-ish, or so), doing the formation in class just becomes unworkable. Many teachers just assign students to teams and announce the team rosters.
>
> As long as you share why you made the teams as you did (to be fair across student backgrounds and give each team the best chance to succeed that you could) students seem to quickly forget the formation experience and get on with the business of the term.
>
> -M
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jennifer Imazeki
> Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 12:11 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: team transparency
>
> Hi all,
>
> How important do you think it is to do the creation of teams in class?
> I'm asking because I was planning to create teams in class by having
> students line up according to different characteristics and then
> counting off. However, I want to make sure that both 'good' and 'bad'
> students are distributed across teams and I'm not sure how to do that
> without identifying the less-good students (in my mind, I am defining
> 'good' and 'bad' students by how well they did in the lower-division
> prereq classes, which are important preparation for this particular
> course). On the first day, I am having them fill out a short survey
> that I will use to gauge how to create the teams and I *could* just
> create the teams myself and walk in the second day and tell the
> students which team they are on. Does anyone think this would be a
> terrible thing to do?
>
> thanks,
> Jennifer
>
>
--
*******
Christine Kuramoto, Assistant Professor: Medical English
Kyushu University, Department of Medical Education
Faculty of Medical Sciences
3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, 812-8582 Japan
Phone: (+81)92-642-6186 Fax: (+81)92-642-6188
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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