MAILING LISTS

My friend and I both teach TBL and we were concerned about the privacy
issue, since it is really easy for students to "figure out" who is who,
especially if a student misses a RAT (which happens in my large
enrollments often). We changed the folder cover to include for the iRATs:

Team High
Team Low
Team Average

I think this helps keep things more "private" but also helps keep the
motivation to do the work better since students can place their iRAT score
in the mix (they will know if they are the low score or bringing the team
down). I also give the class high/low and team scores in class for
comparison. I often get low scoring teams ("The RAT was too tricky and
hard! Waa!") and I think the overall comparison helps to show that it is
possible to do well -- kind of like, "Hey, your team averaged 40% but a
lot of individuals got an 80%. I don't think it is too tricky if you do
the reading and then work on the gRAT as a team."

I also have my students use a separate answer sheet for their iRAT answers
and I let them keep their question sheet for the gRAT so they know how
they did at the end of the gRAT on their iRAT. A big part of this is that
I don't have a TA and it is hard to manage a TBL RAT session on my own. I
just require that they turn in all their materials at the end of the
session in their folder.

Erica


-- 
Erica Hunter
PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
University at Albany