Hi all. TBL instructors often wonder what they should do when one team
finishes a team exercise before the other teams. Like many of you, I try
to think of an additional activity or question for the early finishers
to work on while the other teams finish up. I tried something new
yesterday that seemed to work well, but I have some concerns and wanted
to see if you think my concerns are warranted.
One team in my class yesterday finished much earlier than I was
expecting, so I gave them a few additional tasks to work on while the
other team continued working on the exercise. Once the early-finishing
team had completed its additional tasks (and it was clear that the other
team was still going to be working on the exercise for a while), I
decided to sit down with the early-finishing team to debrief their work
on the extra tasks. I enjoyed this debriefing session, and it kept the
team members more engaged in the class and material than they otherwise
would have been. I got to cover some non-essential but nevertheless
relevant material with that team that I wouldn't have been able to cover
in the post exercise discussion, because I knew there would only be time
to discuss the essential material. Overall, I think this debriefing
session was valuable for the early-finishing team.
My concern, though, is whether it is problematic to spend time chatting
with one time while the other team is working on the exercise. I don't
think our chatting was a distraction to the still-working team, but the
team that I chatted with had an opportunity to "learn more" than the
team that was still working, which could be viewed as "unfair". On the
other hand, more learning is arguably better than less learning, even if
the the "more learning" is unevenly distributed across the students.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this issue?
Thanks,
Mark
--
Mark Stevens, PhD, MCIP
Assistant Professor, School of Community & Regional Planning
University of British Columbia
223-1933 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
SCARP bio: http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/people/mark-stevens
Planning Evaluation Lab: http://www.planningevaluationlab.ca
604-822-0657
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