I've been using team learning techniques for about 7 years now to teach
introductory statistics and a second course in statistics (mostly
regression) to graduate students in public health. (These students have a
wide range of experience and qualifications and experience, eg, physicians,
new graduates, old graduates.) I recently taught a class where the
enrollment was small and so I only had one group, a situation that is likely
to recur. In the past I have used teams with groups ranging from about 12
up to 70. I tend to use small groups, usually 5, simply because it seems to
work better with the kinds of problems the students are working on.
With a single group I found it difficult to focus the team on its tasks
during class. The tasks are usually solving one to three statistical
problems from the chapter at hand. These are actually quite standardized,
so the tasks represent a departure from many team learning classes. The
group generally would read the problem and at the first sign of difficulty
with its solution, turn to me for help, rather than discussing how to solve
the problem with other team members or using their resources, primarily the
examples in the text.
While this problem became obvious with a single group, it's clear in
retrospect that this phenomenon, strong dependence on the instructor, also
happens to some extent with two groups also and tends to disappear with
three groups.
I was only able to address this after about three or four weeks by leaving
the classroom entirely during the team work periods, telling the students
that I would be available in my office. I wasn't satisfied with solution,
but it did achieve the goal of making the team rely on its own membership.
The students may have seen me as avoiding my responsibility to teach them
during a scheduled class.
I would like to know if others have used team learning methods with only one
group and whether they have had a similar experience. If so, has anyone
found a way to clarify the need for the team to focus on the problem at hand
and use its own resources to solve it or identify what might be needed to
solve it.
Regards,
David Smith
David W. Smith, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor, Biometry
The University of Texas
Health Science Center at Houston
School of Public Health
San Antonio Regional Campus
mail address:
7703 Floyd Curl Dr., Mail Code 7976
San Antonio, TX 78229-3900
voice: (210)567-3560, fax: (210) 567-5942
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