MAILING LISTS

I have encorporated some TBL into my traditional (biology) classes
for undergraduates, and with some degree of success. As a result, I am
thinking seriously about introducing a 100% TBL undergraduate course
this Fall for juniors and seniors. However, I have concerns about
attendance.

1. What do you do if a student has an excuse such as illness, athletics
or death in the family. I constantly get excuses, often from coaches
and deans, to which I am expected (and even told) to cater. Now, I
appreciate that outside-of-the-class group work can be rescheduled by
the students, but what happens if I am forced to excuse a student from
a scheduled class in which there is some degree of assessment?

2. Our drop/add period is usually a week into the course. Does that
mean that I will need to redo the groups? Surely, you don't wait a week
or so to get "going".
   There is often a waiting list for my course, however, most do not
take me up on my offer when they are a week (or more) into the class.

3. Now for the serious problem. Our students can WX (withdraw from a
course without any academic penalty) almost 2/3 into the course. For
example, the WX deadline for this semester (January through early May)
is in the beginning of April.  This means that students could simply
drop the course (and some in my traditional course do this if their
exam results are not what they want) with the result that the groups
could be completely disrupted. I am especially concerned because I plan
to run a semester-long group project. Perhaps this would not be a
problem if the students were last semester seniors (yet that may
produce a host of other problems), but I fear that running this course
in the Fall could mean this potential problem could be a real obstacle.

   Does anyone out there have any experience with this? Or even better -
any solutions!

Phil. Stephens