MAILING LISTS

I have found a very successful replacement of IF-AT forms. It requires that I person per team bring a computer to class and that you have a flash drive for every team. I have written about this in a chapter in an upcoming book on TBL in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Briefly here is what I do.

  1.  I create a regular test that student complete with pencil and paper.
  2.  I make a powerpoint presentation with each question, followed by a blank slide with a message telling students not to move forward until the question is answered. After the blank slide I put an answer slide. I make sure that the text and background on this page is a different color. I save the presentation as a show. This is an option in powerpoint that forces the presentation to open in show mode and keeps the user from making any changes to the slide or seeing more than one slide at a time. I copy this to each of the flash drives. This takes a little while the first one you make but after that you just change the questions, which I copy from my word file that made the test.
  3.  I give each team a paper copy of the test and an unusual colored pen (purple or green) and the copy. Teams are instructed to put away all writing instruments except the one that I gave them. (I put this and the flash drive in the team folder on the day of the rap).
  4.  Teams answer the question and then click to the next slide. I monitor this by looking at the screens. If they are writing when a answer screen is up, (which I can tell because I made it a very different color), then I know they are cheating.

This has worked very well for me for 4 semesters. I like hearing the students when they get a right answer, especially one they have struggled over.

Karen Milligan
Dr. Karen Milligan, Associate Professor
Carson-Newman College
Jefferson City, TN 37760