MAILING LISTS

Members of the Team-Based Learning (TBL) Listserv:

In the last few weeks, I have had a couple of different phone calls or
emails from teachers using TBL who are experiencing various forms of
resistance from students.  It appeared that this might be a widespread
enough problem to warrant checking further into the situation and sharing
the question on this listserv.

What might be causing this?
      When I checked into the situations where this was occurring, I
sometimes found the following factors which seemed like they might be
contributing to the problem:
    * Teacher had not spent much time at the beginning of the course,
explaining to students how the course was going to be different and why the
teacher was choosing to teach this way.
    * Letting students pick their own team members.
    * No (or not many) application exercises between Readiness Assessment
Tests.
    * Giving application exercises to the groups/teams that required them
to meet outside of class.
    * Being uncertain or equivocal about how peer assessment was going to
work.
Of these, the third item (too many RATs in relation to application
exercises) seemed especially important in causing students to be
non-cooperative.  It is like we are telling students:  "Work hard so you
can do well on this test/quiz, and I will reward you with...another
quiz."  If the process is perceived this way, it isn't likely to generate a
lot of support and enthusiasm.  Student interest and perceived value is
likely to come more from seeing themselves able to use the knowledge in
challenging application activities.

Your Experience?
I suspect there may be value in letting everyone on this listserv share
their experiences and observations.

Does the analysis above correspond with your experience, or not?  What have
been your experiences and observations in terms of what seems to affect
student attitudes (positive or negative) toward TBL?

Dee Fink