Bill & others,
I would like to respond to Bill's specific situation, because it has so
many of the common challenges of team-based learning.
The Assignment: I looked at the material on the
website. Excellent materials, and enough to lay the foundation for
some real critical thinking.
However,
using short-answer essay responses (even though you have them write these
out on the board simultaneously) is probably part of the reason the
students are not responding better. Too many questions at once, too
many moving parts.
Instead, I
would suggest modifying these in the following way:
- Have the students read the material before class, and tell them to
read with certain issues in mind (but don't state your questions
directly).
- Then, when they come to class, have them address each of the
questions separately, one at a time.
- But, convert several of the questions into multiple-choice,
decision-based questions. For example: Which of the following
species concepts was used in this case? (and then give them a
choice of X, Y, or Z)
- If they are committed to one specific answer and other groups
disagree, this will usually generate some discussion between
groups. They want to be able to justify their answer (before you
have indicated what you think is the correct answer).
- After working through most of the questions this way, then you can
give them one of the more complex questions, e.g., Propose a biologically
reasonable scenario for the evolution of apple maggot flies. This
is sort of like a "culminating problem" where they start to put
the pieces of a bigger problem together.
- For this latter kind of question, have each group talk about the
question and then sketch out their answer on a piece of flip-chart
paper. Then have them post these on the wall, simultaneously.
Have all the groups review each other's posters. After they have
had time to do this, have each group put a BLUE post-it note on the one
they think is best (other than their own) (like a blue-ribbon, "1st
Prize") and a YELLOW post-it note on the one they have the biggest
question about. This stimulates some valuable critical analysis.
- For the debrief of this portion, have the groups (a) indicate why
they liked the ones they did and (b) respond to questions about their own
poster. => lots of good sharing of thinking, with lots of data
in front of them.
Student Reactions:
I too have often had students make the comments you report. I
have to remind myself that, for the students, this is a new and different
ways of learning. Students are not usually challenged to learn on
their own (they should be, in my view, but they aren't).
That level
of change is almost always going to generate some initial
discomfort. The challenge for us as teachers is then to help them
through that phase until they have time to adjust and find out the value
of this way of learning.
My
reaction: Talk these out with the whole class. You can be sure that
if some students voice these concerns, several other students have them
as well. So I want a chance to share my thinking with the
whole class on these concerns.
Some
possible responses:
- "We are forced to learn on our own."
- Yes and no. Yes, you have to do the initial learning on
your own - just like you will have to do in life after college. But
then look at what happens: You get lots of help from the other
members of your team and eventually from the other teams, in figuring out
what the correct answers are. This doesn't always happen in life;
enjoy it and take advantage of it while you can.
- "When are you going to lecture? I don't learn anything
from the others on my team."
- When I (the teacher) lecture, I am only telling you what you can
learn on your own by reading. But when we work on problems - in
class, in teams, you learn what the information means and what you
can do with it - something that cannot happen well in a lecture.
- As for learning from others in their teams, you (the teacher) may
need to give them a little time (a few weeks) and then ask them to
compare the scores of the teams with their own individual scores.
if you are doing it right, the teams will outscore the best individuals,
not necessarily on a given test, but over the course of multiple
tests. This says they are learning from others.
- Note: If the teams are NOT outscoring the best individuals, the
teacher probably needs to make the test questions and the team problems
more challenging.
- "I don't know what to study for the test."
- Again, after college we will all be confronted with the need to learn
on our own - without the benefit of study guides. I will try to
help you with study guides. But one of the hallmarks of a
well-educated college student is that they have learned how to figure out
what they need to learn. Let's get started with that process now.
So, to answer your basic questions: yes, there are some things
you can do differently to help the discussion phase of this process, but
this is a widespread difficulty of early users. On the other
hand, the initial responses of your students are also very common.
Help them think through what is happening and ask them to give the
process a little time, and then see what they think about it.
Dee Fink
At 02:13 PM 2/9/2004, William Bromer wrote:
Hi everyone,
Like Karla, I also just started team based learning this semester and
I
seem to have a similar problem with teams not willing to defend
their
answers. For example, last week they completed a case study
on
speciation of maggot flies
(http://www.sciencecases.org/maggot_fly/maggot_fly.asp)
and each of
the 6 teams wrote their short answers (without explanations) on the
board at the same time. It seemed to me that if 4 of the teams came
to
the same answer then the other 2 teams felt they must be wrong. I
even
tried to indicate that I thought the minority answers were better
but
the teams seemed content and felt they had finished. I am wondering
if
this part of the team builiding process and it might just take some
time. However, I still feel I could have done something
differently.
Some of my students are also making comments that may be common,
but
they do make me feel a little bit uneasy about the team-based
learning.
A few have said things like:
I don't like that we are forced to learn this all on our own.
When are you going to lecture, I don't learn anything from the
others
in my team.
I don't have any notes and I don't know what to study for the test
(
even after I explained that their notes during team discussions
were
their notes for the class and they will have open book tests)
Are these common or are they warning signs that I am not doing
something right???
Bill Bromer
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * *
L. Dee Fink,
Director Phone:
405-325-2323
Instructional Development
Program Email:
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Hester Hall, Room
203 FAX:
405-325-7402
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK
73019 IDP
Website:
www.ou.edu/idp
President-Elect of the POD Network [Professional and Organizational
Development] in Higher Education
Author of: Creating Significant Learning Experiences
(Jossey-Bass, 2003)
Dee Fink's Website:
www.ou.edu/idp/dfink.htm