Dear All,
Has anyone meddled with team composition at the beginning of a semester? We
just formed the teams in the last class meeting, and students have only
spent about 45 minutes in teams, introducing themselves and doing a practice
RAT over the syllabus.
I've used TBL only once before, and am now teaching the same course
again--Introduction to Hispanic Literature. In this second go-around, I used
the same group characteristics as I had before to organize the students into
a long line from which they counted off to form teams. But, when I later
looked at group composition in relation to the results of a diagnostic
writing exercise, I found a significant imbalance. One team is notably
stronger than the other three and one is significantly weaker in the
academic skills most important to achieving class goals. In past classes,
this writing exercise, which assesses analytical thinking and fluency in
Spanish, has been very predictive of students' individual success in the
course.
What I would like to do is take one academically strong student from the
stronger group and trade her/him for one academically weaker student from
the weakest group. I could explain to the class that, when I looked at the
personal information cards they filled out the first day, I found less
diversity of experience and identity in two of the four teams than in the
other two, and that it is important that all teams share the same degree of
diversity. The statement is true, but avoids stating that the imbalance has
to do with academic skills. The information cards ask for language history
[bilingual, heritage speaker, etc.], academic major, prior coursework in
literature, work experience, and experience living or studying in a
Spanish-speaking country. These are the criteria I used to form the
counting-off-into-teams line.
Any advice? Thanks!
Kathryn J. McKnight
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
MSC03 2100
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
Office (505) 277-3924
Fax (505) 277-3885
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