Dear All,
I have been intrigued by this issue and by the recent comments. We give
group points for the applications work and the applications are
activities that are expected to be done by the team in the classroom
within a given timeframe. All team members will get the team grade (if
they are there or not), but team members who do not show up or stay are
likely to get lower peer evaluations. If the entire team is not there,
the, of course there would not be any scores.
Like Joanna, we also stress the process is more important than the
marks, and I would say that the application is the more fun part of the
exchange between the faculty and the students. We have not had an
attendance problem. And we have had sessions go late on Friday.
That said, however, our students have complained about being constantly
tested, they are under a great deal of stress, worry about missing
anything, and fight for every mark. We worried that it might be
distracting to the process and learning. So recently we have explored a
research idea to see the impact having or not having marks. What would
be the impact on performance, attendance, group dynamics, and engagement
of the students? If we get the grant, it should be a fun exploration
into these issues.
A side note, however, is that now that our first class is 9 months into
their 1st year of medical school delivered almost exclusively with TBL
(or some version/components of TBL), we asked the class what they
thought about just having the TBL as an experience and process versus no
grades except the main exams. Most were horrified. Comments ranged
from "no one would come" to "we'd be screwed if the grades were only on
the summative exams." Others remarked that the pressure of the grade
meant they kept up which was very important and they needed that
motivation. We thought it was an interesting change in attitude
considering their initial anxiety and stress with all the assessments.
Sandy
***************************************
Sandy COOK, PhD | Associate Dean, Curriculum Development | Duke-NUS
Graduate Medical School Singapore | W: (65) 6516 8722| F: (65) 6227 2698
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-----Original Message-----
From: Team Learning Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Joanna Rayner
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 5:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: TBL Question
Dear Karla,
I'm trying to overcome this kind of problem by placing a lot of stress
to
the students in terms of the process being as valuable (if not more so)
than the end result. We also struggle with the Friday afternoon
placement,
but I want them to be able to see that getting points shouldn't be the
only
motivator. By stressing what they're getting - critical thinking skills,
overview of relevant concepts (that are of course examinable), basic
communication and team interaction skills, etc., it seems to be possible
to
move - at least some of them - past the "I'm not getting points
therefore I
won't do it" type thinking.
In our Microbiology course, the TBL is a small, 5%, contribution to
their
final grade. During the TBL sessions, the students first work-through a
case-based exercise, where they have to order virtual lab tests to help
with the diagnosis, followed by a second exercise. From the second
exercise
they are required to submit material to the course management system -
be
it a concept map, poster-mockup, table in MS Word, etc. I then review
the
submitted material from the 56 teams and post the top five submitted
items
for the class to see. The incentive of being identified as "the best"
seems
to help with the motivational aspect. The class also identified
"regular
attendance" as part of the peer evaluation which additionally helps. In
a
class of 395 students, our attendance for the TBL sessions is probably
close to 100%.
Joanna
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
J.C. Rayner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Microbiology
Department of Microbiology,
School of Medicine,
St. George's University,
Grenada, West Indies.
Tel: (00) 1 473 444 4175 Ext. 2100
Fax: (00) 1 473 439 1845
Email: [log in to unmask]
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