MAILING LISTS

I ran into this, and we made the judgment call to put all the folks from the same cohort on their own team.  (To minimize cliques within other teams).

That team outperformed all the other teams from the outset, and all semester long.  While other teams were just warming up socially, this team was screaming ahead.  Not sure how fair that was to the other teams.

The issue here is whether to create cliques WITHIN or ACROSS teams.  You're going to have cliques.  :-(

-M


From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ross, Kathy
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 3:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Question about TBL team formation

We have a Team-Based Learning Special Interest Group (TBL-SIG) on our campus for faculty using or interested in using TBL. A question came up in a recent meeting that I would like to bring to this group for responses.

A faculty member who uses TBL in one course would like to expand to using it in another course but has a concern over a possible issues with team formation and cohesiveness. About 60% of the students who enter that course are from one academic program while the rest come from a variety of programs. The chance is very high that the students who are in the same program know each other by that time. The concern is whether TBL advantages would be appreciably reduced because students from that program could easily form sub-groups or cliques within a team, and it could impact team cohesiveness. Diverse teams would certainly include multiple students from this group placed in each team.

Has anyone had a similar experience and words of wisdom about how to form and develop group cohesiveness under this predictable condition?

Thanks so much!

Kathy

Kathy Ross, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment
Indiana University Kokomo
2300 South Washington KO-083A
P. O. Box 9003
Kokomo, IN 46904-9003
765-455-9392
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