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Hi Ken

This is often the problem with product based out of class assignments.

If you are an A student and I am a C student....why not sit back and let you get me an A.

We can add peer evaluation to the mix...but it usually doesn't have enough teeth to make sure the freeloader gets a fair..low grade

In the cooperative/ collaborative world this kind of team dysfunction is all too common.

The issue is often with assignments that focus on product generation and not decision making. Groups are often not very good at building large products but can make difficult decisions together (think of the work of a courtroom jury in a difficult case)

Maybe you could consider bring the assignment into class and changing focus to decision making/discrimination.

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You could probably use something like Sophie Sparrow and Margaret Sova McCabe showed at the great workshop at the TBL conference in Austin

It would look like this

students individually prepare 6-8 key topics

they bring 2 copies to class

you collect one (this is only cursorily marked....just check mark....you tried)

then you do an in class activity where teams distill all their individual work into a group compilation...maybe even with some focusing....top 4 topics and why

you collect the team compilation and mark it more carefully and add it to the cursory participation mark from having submitted individual

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You want to have class activities that build/incorporate their out of class work (the out of class work is most often individual)

For a short explanation of problem solving in TBL...you can visit my website at

http://learntbl.ca/what-is-tbl/structured-problem-solving/

take care

jim

________________________________________
From: Team-Based Learning [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Ken Gunnells [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 7:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Problem assignment in a new class

I have a problem with an assignment in my face-to-face Management Information Systems
class. At the end of each 2-week module, the current out-of-class assignment has student
teams creating a summary of the key topics from the chapters and cases in the module.
They are supposed to relate each of approximately 6-8 key topics to the theme of the
module, demonstrate an understanding of the topic, and give examples of how businesses
have used or can use the topics to compete in the market place. The goals are for students
to be able to separate the important from the less important, and to give them the tools to
make better decisions in the future. The problem with this assignment is that teams have
taken a divide and conquer approach, and freeloading has become a problem, even in the
face of impending peer evaluations. I am also getting brain dumps and summaries of entire
chapters and cases, instead of the summaries of a few key topics. In order to reach my
goals for the assignment and to eliminate the freeloading problem, I need your help to
redesign it while I still have 3 modules yet to cover. If I could somehow find a way to
revise the assignment then I am confident I could dramatically improve the class.

Ken Gunnells, Ph.D.
COLLAT School of Business, Management Information Systems & Quantitative Methods
UAB | The University of Alabama at Birmingham
205-222-0871
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