MAILING LISTS

I am putting together my first TBL course, which will be a hybrid course.
 It will serve 50-80 students.  The course is a sophomore-level nutrition
course designed for allied health majors, with the biggest population at
our campus being pre-nursing majors.

I have the content broken down into five 1-3 week modules to be delivered
over 15 weeks with 13 actual F2F class meetings.

I plan to give an online iRAT followed by an in-class tRAT.  Then for the
remainder of the 75 minute in-class session do application exercises.
 Students will be held accountable for pre-class preparation by their
iRAT's and by team peer reviews (using the CATME program) done at
mid-semester and at the end.  So students have the opportunity to get
feedback they can use to improve, I was thinking of weighting their two
peer evaluations as 25% for their first peer review factor and 75% for
their final peer review.  These scores will be used to come up with a
multiplication factor I apply to their tRAT scores to come up with a number
that represents 15% of their final grade.

Students will have 3 exams and a final plus some individual projects.

In this scheme I've got a lot going on, but no room for team accountability
for the application exercises.  I'm hesitant to award points for their
performance on the activities because I don't want to penalize them for
what should be a formative process.  And I don't want to grade on
participation because that is what their peer evaluations are for.  So how
do I get them to care about the quality of their work after the tRAT is
over?  My worst fears?  They will all get up and leave after it's over!

One thought I had was to use the weekly grid I had planned to put in their
team folders to record their team members attendance and their tRAT scores.
 What I would do is give them a sheet of gold stars- about 1.5 times more
stars than we have class meetings- and have them at the end of each session
consider who should get the gold star for the day for their pre-class
preparation and in-class contributions.  I will tell students two things:
1) the gold stars will serve as a record of how their team members are
doing which will be helpful when they sit down to do their peer
evaluations, 2) the gold stars will be considered when awarding letter
grades if a student is "on the border".

Can anyone see any problems this might create in the social dynamics of the
team?  Do I need to worry about them caring about the quality of their work
once the tRAT's end or can I count on the four S's to make this a non-issue?

-- 
Lark A. Claassen, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Maryland Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD  21250