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Hi all,

I will be trying TBL for the first time in the fall and am working
through lots of issues. One has to do with the structure, and
reporting, of the team application exercises. My students will be
using clickers for the IRATs (though probably the IF-AT forms for the
GRATs), and I was planning to start many of the team exercises with an
individual clicker question, to get students thinking about the issue
on their own before turning to the group. But I'm a little worried
about having all the team exercises set up as multiple-choice
questions because I wonder how that will impact the ensuing
discussion. For example, I can imagine a scenario where the majority
of teams selects one of the responses; even if a team that chooses a
different response has a good reason for selecting that, the other
students may just think they are 'right' because they are with the
majority, and not really engage in the discussion. Of course, with
many of the applications, there is not necessarily a right answer so
the key will be in their reasoning but still, I wonder if having
multiple-choice options will create an 'illusion' in students' minds
that there are right and wrong responses. I've thought about giving
them whiteboards instead and having them write a short response but
then I'm worried that, given the size of the room (70 students), not
everyone will be able to see what everyone else has written.

Any thoughts, experiences, advice?

Jennifer
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Jennifer Imazeki
Department of Economics
San Diego State University
homepage: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~jimazeki/
Economics for Teachers blog: http://economicsforteachers.blogspot.com