Dear Paul, Don and othes,
I agree with those who point out that that it is not uncommon to get
some resistance to the pre-class reading. Even though it will be
standard practice to learn pretty much on their own once they finish
school, the unfortunate truth is that students' first encounter EVER
with being expected to prepare for class is when they are taught using
TBL. I also agree with the suggestions for reducing the resistence
(explaining why, reading guides, etc.). Based on my experience,
however, the degree of resistence sounds like it is high enough that I
would strongly suspect that it is a symptom of an underlying problem
with one of three things. The 2 most common are due to what does NOT
happen after the RATS. To use TBL you effectively, you have to make AND
LIVE BY a contract that: "If you [students] put in the effort to read
before you come to class, then I [the teacher] will use the class time
we save to help you gain some important understandings that we'd never
get to if I had to spend all the time lecturing." Said another way,
"You do some work before class and I'll pay you off by using class time
to give you the opportunity to REALLY understand why this material is so
important (e.g., how it can be used to solve the kinds of problems that
are important to STUDENTS).
The most common way that new TBL users break this implied contract is
by giving too many RATs (i.e., more than 6 or 7/term). When you give
too many RATs the "reward" for studing isn't a reward at all. Instead,
because you won't have time for enough well-designed application
activities to help the students understand why the ideas are important
ones, the "reward" appears to be the "opportunity" to learn more and
more details that don't really mean anything anyway. The other way that
new TBL instructors, break the implied contract is by using the time
"saved" by students' pre-class study for lectures over topics that you
never could get enough time to talk about before you started using RATs
to ensure that students come to class prepared. From the students'
perspective, this again amounts to, them doing more work so that you can
give them more work to do. Specifically, their pre-class preparation
gives you time to cover more and more meaningless "stuff" that they'll
have to remember for the mid-term and final exams. In either of these
situations, the solution is to develop some really good applicatin
assignments that, in fact, do "pay off" the students by enabling them to
see what they are learning and why it is important.
The third problem, and the easiest one to solve, is that students are
scared about getting a bad grade because the A students aren't getting
90's on the individual RATs (and if you are using good questions, they
shouldn't be). In this case, the solution is figuring out AND
communicating to students a grading system that they perceive as being
fair.
I'm not sure whether any of the above fit your situation, but I'd love
to know. Also, I may have some other suggestions, but I need to know
more about what you are actually doing. Thus, the following questions:
1) Are you using the IF-AT answer sheets? If not, you should be. I've
never heard of that level of resistence when instructors are using
IF-AT's.
2) Are the majority of your application activities designed around the
three "S's" (i.e., Same Problem, Specific Choice, Simultaneous Report)?
Keep in touch.
Larry
Larry K. Michaelsen
Professor of Management
Dockery 400G
Central Missouri State University
Warrensburg, MO 64093
O: 660 543-4124
F: 660 543-8465
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