Hi Folks, I attended professor Fink & Michaelsen's TBL workshop at the October POD conference in Milwaukee and enjoyed it very much. I also just finished the book and think the TBL approach is great. My only concern is the many warnings against group writing assignments. I agree, and see now the group papers I had assigned defeated team cohesiveness. Still, I teach a writing class, "Web Content Development," for UMBC's English & Informations Systems departments, and wondered if you have any advice for using TBL in a writing class, particularly the applied group assignments after the RAP. Or if you have any examples from other faculty who've used it in their writing classes, that would be great. For what it's worth, my old syllabus is available at http://www.umbc.edu/~fritz/engl387 (I'm working on revising my course which I'll teach this summer). I admit I turned to group writing projects to try to cut down on my grading of individual papers on the same topics. Large writing classes (25 or more) are tough, but I see now I was focused on my convenience more than the students' learning needs. However, I'd like to not have to do away with writing altogether, since it really is important for the kind of work students will find themselves doing when they're developing web content for their employers. Perhaps a related question: does a student's individual score in a TBL course come ONLY (or usually) in the form of his or her performance on the RAT? I could just assign the papers (maybe fewer of them) as an individual exercise (perhaps with required peer review, which also earns points). This would help me see if they can apply what they learn in groups. But then I'm back to the volume grading problem. My class probably isn't going to be that large this summer (about 15), so I can probably afford to go this route as I transition to using TBL for the first time. But this approach won't scale well when I get more students in the class next time. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks, John John Fritz Director, New Media Learning & Development UMBC Office of Information Technology 410.455.6596 or [log in to unmask]