Gotta give you another perspective. In my first few years of TBL I tried to grade the application exercises but it was a huge effort for me to do (class size 100; condensed course so I was delivering all of it over 4 weeks and would have been the only one grading) and just led to more reasons to argue with students about grades. I find that attendance is high and students are engaged by the case-based material that forms the application exercises. I also explicitly link my mid and end of rotation assessment to the application exercises (did this when the course got spread out over about 14 weeks so could have midterm) - so you are much more likely to be successful in the short answer portions if you have worked through the TBL. Demonstrating this with a mid-term is very, very helpful.
It makes the point with only one or two questions to grade.
Lindsay
Lindsay Davidson M.D., M.Sc., M.Ed., FRCSC
Associate Professor, Pediatric Orthopaedics
Chair of Teaching and Learning
School of Medicine Clerkship Director Undergraduate MSK Course Chair
Queen's University, Kingston, Ont
(613)544-9626; Fax (866)-545-1519
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http://www.adventuresinteaching.ca
http://www.learningwithcases.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Team-Based Learning on behalf of Sandy Cook
Sent: Thu 6/17/2010 8:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Grading Application Exercises
Dear Jodi and all,
I think that most people DO give points and count the applications, for exactly the reason you expressed - if graded will they actually work hard for the answers. I would urge you to include them in the scoring mechanism in some fashion.
To be even more heretical and show how much we value the team portion of the learning - we stipulate that for all the 1st year basic science courses approximately 50% of the grade comes from individual work and approximately 50% comes from teamwork. Individual work scores come from the IRATs and any midterm/finals/projects that a course might have. There is some variation by course as to the individual components - ie. Some only use TBL - thus IRATs become the sole individual score. Some include other assessment - which will then impact the weight of the IRATS. If 50% of the grade comes from IRATS alone - they have a much higher weightage - and clearly paid attention by the students. The counter argument is that they still learn so much from the TRAT and application - that it is good to let them have another assessment to show their increase. Both are effective.
The team scores are made up of the TRAT, Application, and Peer. In fact, we insist that the peer have no less than 10% of the grade - so it is a significant component.
With the 50/50 distribution, obviously there has to be some parameters as to how much each component can be - thus there is a limit as to how much the students can adjust things.
As an example - if a course has only TBL - and if approximately 50% of grade comes from IRAT - then obviously each IRAT has to be no less than 50%/#IRATS.
Then, if 50% comes from teamwork and 10% is already assigned to peer - there is only 40% to allocate to TRAT and Application. We give the students some say in that distribution - 20/20, 30/10 - but again, with some limits - that say it cannot be less than x%. By the end of the year, the points don't mean as much to the students and the faculty have actually assigned the distributions - usually something like 50% IRAT, 20% TRAT, 20% Application, 10% peer.
If there is an exam that is 20% - then the IRATs can only be 30%/#IRATs - etc.
I hope that helps a bit.
Sandy
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-----Original Message-----
From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jodi Delfosse
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 3:28 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Grading Application Exercises
At the Medical College of Wisconsin, we are transitioning to TBL as the primary
method of student engagement as we are at the same time integrating our
basic and clinical sciences in the first two years. We've read what we can
from a variety of sources, including searching this listserve, but are still not
clear on whether institutions actually grade (or assign points) the application
exercises.
In most of the discussions around Setting Grade Weights, IRATs and TRATS
have individual line items, but the application exercises usually do not. Is this
because you do not provide grades based on the quality of the choice made
and/or the reasoining given by the team? The concern that has been
expressed is that if students know they are not "graded" on the application
exercise, they will skip that portion of the classtime. Is the Peer Evaluation
process really enough to ensure that students do not "skip out" on this highly
valuable activity?
Any suggestions/guidance will be greatly appreciated!
Jodi Delfosse
Education Innovation Office
Medical College of WI
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