MAILING LISTS

I actually put together teams with a pretty large class (66) in a lecture hall using a pretty unwieldy method (where they were born). It was chaotic but the students had a blast doing it and in the end we had good teams with good heterogeneity. I think transparency is fairly important and getting a little messy can be fun. You can go up and down the aisles of the lecture hall if you need to. 

The trouble with using methods like previous grades is that if the students find out you did that they will always wonder (or worse--find out!!) who the "smart one" and who the "dumb one" in the team is and that can be counterproductive to team cohesion in the long run. They might not trust a teammate (for stupid reasons like race, gender, or ethnicity--assuming a correlation between one of those qualities and "smartness"--"oh-that is the "dumb one") If they don't find out how you put them together they will always wonder what method you used. 

Even if you don't line them up--let them see and know (like the cart sorting method) that you are using a system that is relatively random or based on qualities that determine success (like previous experience in the subject). But I would hesitate to put them in based on things like test scores or course scores because people will always wonder who the group "low scorers" are. If your groups are large enough (5-7) then every group will have enough talent to succeed and in general no group should have a substantial advantage over another.

That is just my opinion, for what its worth....
Ruth


Ruth E. Levine MD

Clarence Ross Miller Professor of Psychiatry
The University of Texas Medical Branch
301 University Blvd, Route 0193
Galveston, Texas 77555-0193
409-747-9675 (Phone) 409-747-9677 (Fax)
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From: Team-Based Learning [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sweet, Michael S [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 9:05 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: team transparency

Jennifer,

When classes get over a certain size (50-ish, or so), doing the formation in class just becomes unworkable.  Many teachers just assign students to teams and announce the team rosters.

As long as you share why you made the teams as you did (to be fair across student backgrounds and give each team the best chance to succeed that you could) students seem to quickly forget the formation experience and get on with the business of the term.

-M



-----Original Message-----
From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jennifer Imazeki
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 12:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: team transparency

Hi all,

How important do you think it is to do the creation of teams in class?
I'm asking because I was planning to create teams in class by having
students line up according to different characteristics and then
counting off. However, I want to make sure that both 'good' and 'bad'
students are distributed across teams and I'm not sure how to do that
without identifying the less-good students (in my mind, I am defining
'good' and 'bad' students by how well they did in the lower-division
prereq classes, which are important preparation for this particular
course). On the first day, I am having them fill out a short survey
that I will use to gauge how to create the teams and I *could* just
create the teams myself and walk in the second day and tell the
students which team they are on. Does anyone think this would be a
terrible thing to do?

thanks,
Jennifer