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