Dear All,
I'm writing to reiterate a desire for responses
to Lion's question on the grade distribution, rather than with any wisdom
to offer.
I do have a suggestion for the IRATs, which I think
others have posted before. I use a 5-minute limit
rule on the IRATs, too. Everyone has 5 minutes from the time that one full team
has completed the IRAT.
In terms of grade distribution: I am in my second semester of TBL and have not had good
experiences with the grade distribution in either one, though other aspects of
the strategy have been great. The first semester, the class finally came to a
decision on grades, but took much more time than I had planned for. I think that
one main stumbling block is that they do not understand how the peer evaluations
will distribute the grade. And this is after I have shown them a sample like the
one in the book, where two students have identical individual grades, but one
contributes much more to the team and thus earns a much higher total grade. I
have also made this example available to them online before the grade
discussion. Yet in both semesters one or two teams have argued vociferously and
long that the individual grade must be higher, because otherwise those who don't
do the work will benefit unfairly. This second time around, one older student
--who is also a teacher-- kept his team from coming to consensus, arguing
that in the real world it is the quality of the intellectual PRODUCT that is
rewarded. Again, I think he did not understand how peer evaluations would reward
the intellectual product of those who most contribute, but I think also he may
have been objecting to the fact that the team grade rewards other types of
useful team behavior that are not strictly intellectual product. In this class,
there was clearly no resolution in sight--with two other teams arguing for 60
& 70% of the grade to the team work, another for 50/50 and this one team
utterly divided. So I made the final decision.
Any help? I'm about ready to take that piece of
student autonomy away.
Kathy McKnight