MAILING LISTS

My plan is to implement TBL for my upcoming Introduction to Philosophy
class. This class is designated "writing intensive," so writing formal
papers is required to be 40-60% of the grade. The class size is limited to
26 students. The class meets once per week for 170 minutes. We take two
10-minute breaks, for an effective class time of 150 minutes.

I have read the TBL book for college teaching (and have the social sciences
book on order). One of the key messages that I have understood is that doing
one RAT per week is a big mistake.

So, let's say that I have 6 2-week units. That implies that on half the
weeks my students have a double-sized reading load and on the other half of
the weeks they have no reading assigned. I recognize that on the "no
reading" weeks they should be rereading the texts in order to complete
assignments.

I am leery of giving my students a double-dose of reading when, in fact, we
probably won't get to the second half of the reading until the second week
of the unit.

Please let me know what would be wrong if I did the following:

1. Have students do iRATs weekly online using course management application
(Blackboard). They would not find out which answers were right or which were
wrong. Also, if I am able, I wouldn't even let Blackboard show them their
total grade for the iRAT until the tRAT was completed.

2. Have students do tRATs weekly at the start of each class.

My reasoning is that this would allow the reading to be assigned in smaller,
more digestible pieces. 

By the way, I have posted videos for every reading assignment. Before coming
to class they are supposed to do the reading and watch the videos. I have
concept mapped the readings and in the videos I walk them through these maps.

One possible answer to my question might be: the students can watch two
videos and do two weeks of reading so that they have a general sense of the
territory. It is better to do multiple, ever-deepening, passes over the same
longer material than fewer, shallower passes over shorter material.

I must admit that I am finding the task of restructuring the entire course
daunting.