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Hello Jennifer and list:

My take on this issue:

I think that transparency for team formation is very important for the
principle of fairness; that is, students ought to be confident that the
teams have been created in a balanced way such that no one team will
have an inherent advantage over the other. 

However, I share the concern about the "counting-off line," even if the
line is determined according to a questionnaire that spreads assets
(such as experience and leadership) rather than grades (and I never use
grades).  A line still has a head and a tail, and students "feel" it. 
Instead, I simply collect the index cards that the students have used to
calculate their assets according to my questionnaire, and then I tell
them that I am going to distribute these evenly and explain how.  I do
this on the desk at the front of the room, and it takes me no longer
than 10 minutes for a class of, say 60.  I have never had a complaint or
challenge.

Regards,
Brent MacLaine










Brent MacLaine, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of English
University of Prince Edward Island
550 University Avenue
Charlottetown  PE  Canada
C1A  4P3
Office: 902-566-0955
Fax: 902-566-0363
>>> Jennifer Imazeki <[log in to unmask]> 29/08/2010 2:10 PM >>>
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