Dear All:

I would be very interested in hearing about more experiences with TBL in literature or history classes. I also read the TBL book this summer, and am implementing TBL in my Introduction to Hispanic Literature class this fall. It is a course taught in Spanish, whose objectives include teaching the students rudimentary formal analysis and exposing them to a range of Spanish and Latin American literature. We use a well-known text called Aproximaciones that has four sections: narrative, drama, poetry, essay, each introduced by a discussion of literary devices, followed by a selection of literary texts.

I have focused the RATs on making sure the students master the definitions of literary devices: metaphor, simile, plot structure (exposition, complication, suspense, climax, denouement), etc. I include some textual examples of literary devices that students have to identify on the RATs. My struggle (in these quick first three weeks) has been to design good application exercises, particularly ones that have concisely reportable answers. I have tried the following with ok results, but not yet enough inter-team discussion (intra-team discussion is lively and fruitful):

1. Students read two short stories, one medieval (didactic tale from El conde Lucanor) and one 20th century (Borges, "The Ethnographer") and had to decide whether the medieval narrator (Patronio) and plot structure (closed ending, with explicit moral) could be used in the Borges' story (quest narrative with ironic twist and ambiguous ending). I didn't provide these parenthetical comments, but did provide 6 questions that led the students to analyze message, narrative perspective and plot structure in both stories before they answered. The weakness in the exercise was that by the time they worked through the the questions, the better answer was clear to all teams, so there wasn't much motivation to challenge each other.

2. I tried a more open-ended answer scheme the next class: Students took a 20th-century feminist short story with an open ending and had to articulate the message and then explain the effect that the narrative perspective and form (first person, interior monologue--in the form of a letter) had on the message and reader. The inter-group discussion was more fruitful, here, though the reporting was a little cumbersome.

3. On a third day, I gave students an anonymous essay on the same story (#2) written by a former student (provided with her permission). They were to identify the thesis, evaluate whether it was a good thesis (using guidelines from a composition handout) and find among three paragraphs the sentence that best addressed the effect of the narrative perspective (also the focus of the thesis statement). This discussion was a little livelier this time, as there were differences in identifying the thesis statement and best sentence.

Again, in all three, I have found that the team discussions themselves are rich and fruitful; it is in trying to get the groups to engage with each other so that they can compare their work that I do not yet feel satisfied. I have used a class website to post results of team discussions and my reactions for one of these three sessions.

I would love to hear other very concrete examples of team application exercises and exams. I am thinking that for the team exams, I will provide students with a short text a couple days in advance, one that they cannot find criticism of easily on the web, and have them work through a couple of formal analytical problems.

Kathy McKnight

Greg Dyer wrote:
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Hello all.

I stumbled across Team-Based Learning late this summer, and I've decided to integrate a condensed version into an American Lit. survey as something of a test run. While most class periods will remain the standard in-class discussion largely typical of English courses, one class period in each unit is dedicated to team-based learning. More specifically, the course is being taught as one of our designated critical thinking courses. Thus, the team-based sessions will tend to emphasize the CT content.

Apart from using TBL more as a teaching technique than a full-blown teaching strategy, I'm staying as close as possible to the suggestions outlined in _Team-Based Learning_. As a newbie, however, I'm hoping some of you may be able to address the following questions:

Thanks for any help you can offer.  I'm excited to see how all of this unfolds.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
Greg
 
 
Greg Dyer, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
University of Sioux Falls
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Signature Kathryn J. McKnight
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
MSC03 2100
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
Office: Ortega 419
Phone: 505-277-3924