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Hi Folks,

I attended professor Fink & Michaelsen's TBL workshop at the October POD
conference in Milwaukee and enjoyed it very much. I also just finished the
book and think the TBL approach is great.

My only concern is the many warnings against group writing assignments. I
agree, and see now the group papers I had assigned defeated team
cohesiveness. Still, I teach a writing class, "Web Content Development,"
for UMBC's English & Informations Systems departments, and wondered if you
have any advice for using TBL in a writing class, particularly the applied
group assignments after the RAP. Or if you have any examples from other
faculty who've used it in their writing classes, that would be great. For
what it's worth, my old syllabus is available at
http://www.umbc.edu/~fritz/engl387 (I'm working on revising my course
which I'll teach this summer).

I admit I turned to group writing projects to try to cut down on my
grading of individual papers on the same topics. Large writing classes (25
or more) are tough, but I see now I was focused on my convenience more
than the students' learning needs. However, I'd like to not have to do
away with writing altogether, since it really is important for the kind of
work students will find themselves doing when they're developing web
content for their employers.

Perhaps a related question: does a student's individual score in a TBL
course come ONLY (or usually) in the form of his or her performance on the
RAT? I could just assign the papers (maybe fewer of them) as an individual
exercise (perhaps with required peer review, which also earns points).
This would help me see if they can apply what they learn in groups. But
then I'm back to the volume grading problem. My class probably isn't going
to be that large this summer (about 15), so I can probably afford to go
this route as I transition to using TBL for the first time. But this
approach won't scale well when I get more students in the class next time.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

John

John Fritz
Director, New Media Learning & Development
UMBC Office of Information Technology
410.455.6596 or [log in to unmask]