Hi again,
I greatly appreciated all of the feedback last week about RATs and whether or not it seemed like mine were too difficult.  Many thanks.      
 
In considering your comments, I thought I should also say that I provide the students with a 'Test Blueprint' for each RAT (via Blackboard).  It's basically a sheet of about a dozen or so objectives.  It reads... "In order to do well on the RAT, be sure that you... understand x concept, can distinguish x and y concepts... understand and can apply x theory, etc.  Moreover, I allow the students to bring in a sheet of handwritten notes (one side per chapter) to use during the RATs.  Do others do similar (or different) things?  
 
Another question.  Do any of you do 'open book' RATs?  I did that on a whim last week (because I'd forgotten to post the Test Blueprint until the last minute) and the students had somewhat higher RAT scores than usual.    
 
Oh, as suggested, I implemented the '5-min rule' for the RATs.  I required all the teams to wait to start the TRATs (5 min after the first team finished their IRATs) and it worked quite nicely.
 
Finally, I did forestall the student's requests for me to start lecturing before the RATs and told them that if I did, we wouldn't be able to work as much in class on application as we do and that that's the most important part of the class.  I even got in the line about "I'd be doing you a disservice if I started lecturing on what you can read for yourself" in one class.  
 
Karla