Phil,
I don't have too many answers to your questions, but here's what I do in some of those situations...
...when a student has a (legitimate) reason to be absent that he/ she knows about in advance (e.g., a student athlete missing class for a competition or something like that), I require that they take the RAT or turn in their Individual Integrative Assignment in advance. That way, I can give their RAT or IA to their teammates and they have 'contributed to' and are 'eligible for' the team points.
...when a student is ill (or has something else that would be considered an excused absence... of the unexpected sort), I allow them to make up the RAT or IA and to receive the team points. The logic comes from something I think I read in Michaelsen's book... that 'work' goes on even if you're absent. If you're responsible and aren't absent too much, your co-workers will understand. If you're not, you will likely loose team maintenance points.
...I usually spend the first class or two (depending on whether it's a 50 min/ 3X or a 75 min/ 2X class) explaining team-based learning and concept mapping and giving some brief 'how to read a college textbook' hints. That way, I have a bit of lag time before I create my teams and they have a bit of time to begin reading the material for the first RAT.
...we have a fairly late WX date, too, and I do loose a student or two sometimes at that point. I don't have any strategy for dealing with that other than making the teams large enough (usually between 6 and 7) so that if there is a loss, it won't put the team too far down in terms of person-power.
Karla
-----Original Message-----
From: Team Learning Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Phil Stephens
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 10:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: TBL and attendance
I have encorporated some TBL into my traditional (biology) classes
for undergraduates, and with some degree of success. As a result, I am
thinking seriously about introducing a 100% TBL undergraduate course
this Fall for juniors and seniors. However, I have concerns about
attendance.
1. What do you do if a student has an excuse such as illness, athletics
or death in the family. I constantly get excuses, often from coaches
and deans, to which I am expected (and even told) to cater. Now, I
appreciate that outside-of-the-class group work can be rescheduled by
the students, but what happens if I am forced to excuse a student from
a scheduled class in which there is some degree of assessment?
2. Our drop/add period is usually a week into the course. Does that
mean that I will need to redo the groups? Surely, you don't wait a week
or so to get "going".
There is often a waiting list for my course, however, most do not
take me up on my offer when they are a week (or more) into the class.
3. Now for the serious problem. Our students can WX (withdraw from a
course without any academic penalty) almost 2/3 into the course. For
example, the WX deadline for this semester (January through early May)
is in the beginning of April. This means that students could simply
drop the course (and some in my traditional course do this if their
exam results are not what they want) with the result that the groups
could be completely disrupted. I am especially concerned because I plan
to run a semester-long group project. Perhaps this would not be a
problem if the students were last semester seniors (yet that may
produce a host of other problems), but I fear that running this course
in the Fall could mean this potential problem could be a real obstacle.
Does anyone out there have any experience with this? Or even better -
any solutions!
Phil. Stephens
|
