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I'm currently teaching a class of 100, using clickers and TBL. Clickers are great for asking general questions and looking at immediate responses to prompts, but I find using them very frustrating for having a discussion, as I can't tell which team voted which way.  Clickers are great for opinion surveys, lousy for in-depth discussion - unless someone knows a way to identify who voted which way...

Judi Bradetich, M.S., M.M.
Lecturer, Development and Family Studies
Dept. of Educational Psychology
University of North Texas
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From: Team-Based Learning [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Bill Goffe [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 12:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Largest TBL Classes?

I'm giving a presentation about TBL to our STEM group in a few weeks. I'll
likely use the presentation package that Jim Sibley put together (thanks!) but
there is an obvious question that will likely come up that I don't know
the answer to. What is the largest size class one can use TBL in, assuming
you have a sufficient number of people in the classroom to help run it?
Class sizes of ~350 are common here and one classroom seats up to 700.

On "a sufficient number of people in the classroom to help," our STEM
group has an active "Learning Assistant" program where undergrads assist
with Peer Instruction and similar tasks. In some 500 student classes there
are 30 learning assistants. The semester before they go into the classroom
they go through a 1.5 hour course. It is modeled after the LA program at
the University of Colorado at Boulder.

On large class TBL I'm thinking that teams could report out with clickers.
Perhaps the most important aspect is the ability for LAs and the
instructor to be able talk to teams during class. Thus, every third row
might be vacated to ease access. But, that's more a guess than something
based on experience. Also, I'm thinking that in such a large class it
might be difficult to get a sufficient number of students to explain their
team's thinking.

Thoughts? Experiences?

    - Bill

--
Bill Goffe
Senior Lecturer
Department of Economics
Penn State University
304 Kern Building
University Park, PA 16802
814-867-3299
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http://cook.rfe.org/