MAILING LISTS

I was looking at one of the teams in the class. One student had just
scored a 17 on the 18 question Readiness Assessment and another had
just scored a 5. This was typical of their scores. I thought, if I
was the low scoring student I'd just shut up and let the high scoring
student do all the work for the group Readiness Assessment. I
realized that the task I had given them didn't really require social
interdependence.

This problem got me thinking about the work I had done with Eliot
Aronson in the 1970's on his jigsaw learning approach to cooperative
learning. Great stuff but I'd never been able to figure out how to
apply it to college classes. The jigsaw approach involves cutting up
a learning topic into pieces (like a jigsaw) and students have to put
them back together in a cooperative learning group. For example in a
unit in 6th grade on George Washington's life, one student studies
his youth, another his war years and another his presidency. They do
this on their own or in groups that focus on this one part of his
life (a war years group, a presidential years group, etc.). Then they
form groups made up of one student from each topic--a youth student,
a war student and a presidency student. They then teach their parts
to each other and then get tested on it. Great for creating social
interdependence but not so good for in-depth knowledge of the topic.
I didn't see how one could achieve a decent same depth of learning
doing the same thing in a college classroom. How much are people
really going to learn about transformational leadership theory if
they learn all of it from another student in class. Reading about it
would be much better.

Then I thought of a way to combine it with Team Based Learning. It
occurred to me that perhaps I should have students in each TBL group
take part of the readings and become the expert on it. So, for
example, if a group of 6 students read six different articles for
this week, each one would read all of them (necessary for doing well
on the individual Readiness Assessment) but each would also be
responsible for becoming the group expert on one of the articles.
This way in the group Readiness Assessment, the students will be
encouraged to rely on each other's expertise in order to get the
highest group score. My low scoring student couldn't just sit back in
the group sessions, she would have to learn at least 1/6 of the
readings in depth, because her fellow students would be depending on
her.

Has anyone tried this? I'm thinking about trying it in my Monday class.

- Don

PS Why are they called Readiness Assessment Tests instead of
Readiness Assessments or Readiness Tests. Isn't "Assessment Test"
redundant?

Don McCormick, Associate Professor
University of Redlands School of Business
1200 E. Colton Avenue, Redlands, CA 92373-0999
(909) 748-6249    [log in to unmask]
http://newton.uor.edu/FacultyFolder/DMcCormick

"The end of all education should surely be service to others." -
Cesar E. Chavez