Erica, you note:
"I feel like I have a hard time convincing my students about the benefits
of TBL. Half are on board and the other half make it hard. I'm discouraged
at times, my midterm evals had comments like "Stop the team stuff" and
"quit
teaching" in them. I feel the norm in my department is heavy based on
lecture and students are not expected to read (or at least are not held
accountable for reading). If you have any ideas for readings, activities,
etc that might help me out that would be great."
First, don't feel alone ... my class evaluations dropped substantially,
albeit student learning has increased, upon introduction of TBL for the
first time last spring in an undergraduate (natural resource, environmental
and ecological economics) class, 200-level (although lots of juniors and
seniors in the class, about 1/2 of them actually) of 45-students. To put
this in context, I have been teaching for over 2-decades!... and have never
had lower evaluations, but, also, I have never had students learn more.
More specifically, I have never had such extremely negative statements
about my teaching as I received with the introduction of TBL last spring,
along the same lines of "quit teaching", "didn't learn anything", "total
waste of my time", etc... from a small minority. There were also extremely
complementary comments, however...and we should not ignore those... I am
sure you also have them... like the best course they had ever taken! Yes:
about 1/2 love it, 1/2 hate it... the latter making things hard, like you
point out.
Second, we are trying it again this spring, with 58-students, 9-teams. This
time we followed the suggestions in the paper by Smith(2008; attached),
with better results so far, albeit one student wrote on the first Exam..
"you didn't teach us this" .. for a question in which they had to really
understand the construct in order to apply it... and he didn't even try to
answer it ... even though they had worked on the identical problem in a
Team activity, and, we had lectured to it, as well as used both the iRAT
and tRAT to work on the basic constructs needed. Actually, what he is
saying, it seems likely to me: "you didn't tell me what to memorize and
put back on the test." I honestly do not know what to do with students
like this... We (the TA and I) even offered to meet with him, try to
help... which was declined... we, instead, are "not teaching" ... it is
all our doing, not his. Yet, I am also hoping that our use of the Response
clickers this spring is helping, overall, and that we have reduced the
number of these students having issues like this. With the clickers, we are
much better able to react quickly, have discussion on issues/problem areas
in the material right away, and they can see class results on the screen...
etc. Hopefully the extra, better informed dialogue during class is
helping...
I am not overly confident that we have solved the problem... am not holding
out for a much higher evaluation... albeit we already know from the first
Exam and the first Team Case study they have so far completed, that,
overall, there is more learning going on... As an economist used to
thinking in terms of costs and benefits, the benefits of TBL > costs of
TBL, albeit how they are distributed among the students continues to be an
issue.
I look forward to comments by others, especially from those who have far
more experience with TBL. Still learning...
Gary D. Lynne, Professor
Department of Agricultural Economics and
School of Natural Resources
103B Filley
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68583-0922
Website: http://www.agecon.unl.edu/facultystaff/directory/lynne.html
Phone: 1-402-472-8281 Cell: 1-402-430-3100
"We are always only one failed generational transfer of knowledge away from
darkest ignorance" (Herman Daly)
"We do not just have our own interests. We share interests with others.
Empathy is neither altruistic nor self-interested. It rather exemplifies
the implicit solidarity of human nature" (Robert Solomon)
(See attached file: Smith(2008)FirstDayQuestionsTBL.pdf)
----- Forwarded by Gary D Lynne/AgEcon/IANR/UNEBR on 03/07/2009 01:52 PM
-----
Erica Hunter
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Team-Based cc
Learning
<TEAMLEARNING-L@L Subject
IST.OLT.UBC.CA> sample activities?
03/07/2009 01:06
PM
Please respond to
Erica Hunter
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Hi All,
I am hoping that you can help me with a problem. I have been using TBL for
three semesters in a couple different undergrad sociology courses (Soc of
Gender and Mass Media) with courses that are 120 enrollment and 25
enrollment. For background, I am a grad student instructor and I've been
teaching for 3-4 years. I am interested in pedagogy and use TBL because I
feel it is a good format for helping students meet course goals (working
with readings, being accountable for their learning, application of course
concepts in class, etc).
I am thinking about redesigning my fall courses (Intro Soc and Families) to
also be TLB but I feel stuck. My course evaluations are "in the middle" but
low for my department and I worry that there is something I'm "doing wrong"
with TBL. I've read the book and I went to a workshop that Larry Michaelsen
did on my campus. I talked to someone about this and she suggested I post
on
here for some examples of how others lay out their classes.
My questions and requests are:
1. For your units, how many do you have in the semester? What do they
"look"
like? I do about 5 units in a 16 week semester. Starts with a RAT (with
IF-AT forms), RAT Review/discussion of the reading, Activity or two, end
unit. I spend time framing the current unit and the activities as a part of
the larger course issue (i.e. "This unit we are talking about masculinity
and femininity. Today's activity will get us thinking about the
relationship
between the two"). Here, if you have a syllabus you would be willing to
share (any discipline) that would be awesome. I think it would help me to
"see" how others are successfully putting their courses together.
2. I would really like to see some sample ideas for activities that work
well. I generally follow the 4S of activity design but some fail. I also
feel like I do the same kind of things over and over. I would like to get
some ideas about different activities, esp ones that might involve working
with data, a film, or something other than a discussion question/scenario.
3. I feel like I have a hard time convincing my students about the benefits
of TBL. Half are on board and the other half make it hard. I'm discouraged
at times, my midterm evals had comments like "Stop the team stuff" and
"quit
teaching" in them. I feel the norm in my department is heavy based on
lecture and students are not expected to read (or at least are not held
accountable for reading). If you have any ideas for readings, activities,
etc that might help me out that would be great.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer,
Erica
Department of Sociology
University at Albany
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