TBL colleagues, below is an important decision that must be made in preparation for a class that begins after Thanksgiving. I've put it in the form of an application exercise. Please discuss for 15 minutes and be ready to defend your answer to the other teams (just kidding on this last sentence:)). Seriously, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts. Feel free to write in an option C if you think it would help. Thank you! --Nick
In my Social Psychology class next quarter, I can expect between 5 to 15 deaf/hard-of-hearing students out of a class of 70 students. Given the constraints and background material below, choose the best team selection strategy:
A. segregate them (e.g., 1 or 2 deaf/hoh groups, and 8 or 9 hearing groups)
B. intermix them evenly (e.g., 1 deaf/hoh person in each/most of the 10 groups)
Note: I only get two interpreters.
Background:
1. RIT has 1500 deaf/hoh students because one of our colleges is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Most of my classes have a few deaf/hoh students, who usually sit clustered in front and an interpreter signs to them.
2. Most in the deaf/hoh community use American Sign Language, but many do not-they lip read, hear badly, can talk but can't hear well, have cochlear implants (not quite the same as hearing), or they can communicate in some other fashion, so the language abilities of the deaf/hoh students is quite variable. Occasionally it is difficult for even the interpreters to communicate with a student. In my experience, many deaf/hoh miss many of the course concepts-something is lost in the translation (I am hopeful that TBL will ameliorate this somewhat). Also they only have one primary sensory mode in which to communicate (vision) and so the process of communicating is often slowed down considerably.
3. A statistics professor here does group work (not strict TBL, but similar to the application exercises) where she spreads the students out intentionally, and they communicate with each other on large white boards-each team gets a large white board and each team member writes rather than speaks, even if they are hearing. Keep in mind that she has groups of 4 persons, two of which are deaf/hoh and two are hearing (this does not correspond to either option and I am not considering it because it seems likely to produce instant cliques). She reports success using this strategy, though some hearing students feel hampered because they have to write everything down on the white board and it slows the discussion somewhat.
4. The typical rule of thumb for team selection, as you know, is diversity with respect to the ability to solve the team problems (option B).
5. If option A is followed, I think the extensive discussion that occurs in the deaf/hoh groups will be rapid as everyone in the group signs, and I think they will be able to help one another-especially those who sign poorly, thus invoking the complex learning that is the aim of TBL.
6. I hate to segregate them (option A) yet one more time-they are always the minority in the class and creating a deaf team seems to reinforce the differences.
7.. I am fearful that if there is only one deaf student per group (option B) this student will participate less and when she does participate, will be resented for slowing things down, or worse-if communication fails, the group will be frustrated.
Nicholas DiFonzo, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology
18 Lomb Memorial Drive
Room 1-2363
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY 14623
Phone: 585-475-2907
FAX: 585-475-6715
Faculty Website: http://people.rit.edu/nxdgss/
Personal Website: www.ProfessorNick.com<http://www.professornick.com/>
Skype: nicholas.difonzo
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