Dear All, I have been intrigued by this issue and by the recent comments. We give group points for the applications work and the applications are activities that are expected to be done by the team in the classroom within a given timeframe. All team members will get the team grade (if they are there or not), but team members who do not show up or stay are likely to get lower peer evaluations. If the entire team is not there, the, of course there would not be any scores. Like Joanna, we also stress the process is more important than the marks, and I would say that the application is the more fun part of the exchange between the faculty and the students. We have not had an attendance problem. And we have had sessions go late on Friday. That said, however, our students have complained about being constantly tested, they are under a great deal of stress, worry about missing anything, and fight for every mark. We worried that it might be distracting to the process and learning. So recently we have explored a research idea to see the impact having or not having marks. What would be the impact on performance, attendance, group dynamics, and engagement of the students? If we get the grant, it should be a fun exploration into these issues. A side note, however, is that now that our first class is 9 months into their 1st year of medical school delivered almost exclusively with TBL (or some version/components of TBL), we asked the class what they thought about just having the TBL as an experience and process versus no grades except the main exams. Most were horrified. Comments ranged from "no one would come" to "we'd be screwed if the grades were only on the summative exams." Others remarked that the pressure of the grade meant they kept up which was very important and they needed that motivation. We thought it was an interesting change in attitude considering their initial anxiety and stress with all the assessments. Sandy *************************************** Sandy COOK, PhD | Associate Dean, Curriculum Development | Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore | W: (65) 6516 8722| F: (65) 6227 2698 | -----Original Message----- From: Team Learning Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joanna Rayner Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 5:14 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: TBL Question Dear Karla, I'm trying to overcome this kind of problem by placing a lot of stress to the students in terms of the process being as valuable (if not more so) than the end result. We also struggle with the Friday afternoon placement, but I want them to be able to see that getting points shouldn't be the only motivator. By stressing what they're getting - critical thinking skills, overview of relevant concepts (that are of course examinable), basic communication and team interaction skills, etc., it seems to be possible to move - at least some of them - past the "I'm not getting points therefore I won't do it" type thinking. In our Microbiology course, the TBL is a small, 5%, contribution to their final grade. During the TBL sessions, the students first work-through a case-based exercise, where they have to order virtual lab tests to help with the diagnosis, followed by a second exercise. From the second exercise they are required to submit material to the course management system - be it a concept map, poster-mockup, table in MS Word, etc. I then review the submitted material from the 56 teams and post the top five submitted items for the class to see. The incentive of being identified as "the best" seems to help with the motivational aspect. The class also identified "regular attendance" as part of the peer evaluation which additionally helps. In a class of 395 students, our attendance for the TBL sessions is probably close to 100%. Joanna ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ J.C. Rayner, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Microbiology Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, St. George's University, Grenada, West Indies. Tel: (00) 1 473 444 4175 Ext. 2100 Fax: (00) 1 473 439 1845 Email: [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________