Hi TBLers,
I am incorporating TBL into my intro psychology class for the first time and it is mostly going very successful.
However, I have on student who will not engage with the material or team tasks. He claims I'm not teaching, he's not learning, etc. but in a sit-down with him it suggests more that (a) he's upset he has to take this GE class, (b) he is just waiting to transfer to another university, and (c) he was having difficulty reading the textbook. I tried to alleviate his concerns and thought things were improving. I emailed him about having another sit-down to discuss how things are improving, but instead he came to the next class, worked on his math homework until I told him to put it away, and was on his phone and chatting with the rest of his team. I can handle that to some extent, but the most problematic behavior is that he has seemed to encourage his entire team to not do the team tasks and instead have the quiet student do it by herself while they chat about everything but the course material. I felt like I had to babysit their team and encourage them to all contribute to their team task; as soon as I walked away, they would stop working and the student would continue doing the worksheet by herself.
I emailed the entire team to remind them that team tasks are to be done as a team, that I will take away team task points for that day if individuals are not participating, and reminded them what they wrote on their team charter about how they would alleviate these types of concerns. I haven't heard back from any of them, but that was Friday afternoon and quite frankly many of my freshmen/sophomore students have a tendency not to respond.
Do you have any other suggestions? I would like to get through this semester with at least a civil discourse where he at least somewhat participates, but given our in-person sit-down and his behavior afterwards, I do not feel like this is going to happen. I am worried his attitude is going to continue to negatively affect the rest of his team and perhaps go so far as to affect the rest of the class since I already have a much more difficult time getting this section to engage compared to my other section.
In the future, I plan on doing a better job of introducing the benefits of TBL at the beginning and emphasizing students should switch sections to another professor if they aren't up for this, but I'm near my wits end about what to do in the present situation for the remaining 12 weeks of the semester. Thoughts? Suggestions?
Dana Linnell Wanzer
Assistant Professor of Psychology in Evaluation
University of Wisconsin-Stout
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