David and all:

I am most pleased that you said "the word"... in that I had never before experienced such (over?)reaction on the part of students, albeit a minority (but, sufficient numbers and direct enough to attract one's attention) from introducing a particular method into my teaching (and I have been teaching a very long time). Due to the several very helpful postings about the matter, I now realize that this kind of reaction is perhaps quite common and wide-spread... maybe TBL needs a Warning Label??... and, I am seeing ways from the various postings to diffuse and better address the problem in my next offering of the class. Thank you for that.

Due to my research focus being in behavioral/psychological economics, I think the point you make in this most recent post is also awfully important, assuming I am interpreting it correctly:

"Some students are remarkably amenable to the whole approach using TBL.... I would like to think that making a TBL team work well is just a technical matter, but I know better."

which to me means there are certain individuals, no matter how well one structures the teams, explains the procedure, etc., who will always resist the TBL approach. There is probably nothing that can be done (nor probably should be done; individuals do need the right to choose) about this, other than to be aware of it, and more consciously manage it.

On the latter, we actually did try, in the sense that we indicated early-on that we realized there were different learning styles and preferences (we offer them the opportunity to take the Myers-Briggs assessment the first week of class, and then do a class session on what it means for learning and teaching styles), so there would be variety in the way we approached the class (which is a 3-period class, all done in one evening, which also creates other challenges, in keeping attention to task). We indeed did provide variety, especially at the outset as we introduced main principles and ideas/ theories... albeit the TBL (RATs, IF AT forms, etc) approach gained a kind of momentum of its own, in that so many really liked it (including us, the TAs and me) that we did less lecturing as we went along... in retrospect, this was probably a mistake. It is now clear (we did not know it during the actual class offering), that those who absolutely dug-in on their resistance to TBL became quite irritated by the end of the semester, which blind-sided us... we were only hearing and seeing the positive feedback, and the Teams seemed to be doing just fine...smiling faces, laughing, etc., during team events during class, and better quality team produced products than from years past. Also exam grades were higher than in years past: More learning at work. We thought we really had a winner... until the end-class anonymous evaluations came in!

Next time, we will do an anonymous survey/evaluation in mid-stream... not only at the end of semester, when the hostility (does it help to use a smaller font!!??) got expressed by a few. Also, this may help the end of course evaluation: The overall "numbers evaluation" for the class (I am copying this note to my Department Head, hoping he will support higher student learning outcomes rather than higher numbers), dropped from the previous 7-offerings of it, even though in those offerings we always had used 6-7 person teams, and some team based efforts/learning, organized and balanced using Myers-Briggs personalities assessment data, majors, background training in the field, etc., to balance said teams. The big difference this time was the greatly reduced time spent in "sage on the stage/lecturing" efforts, the RATs, and the IF AT forms, and the improved problem sets/case studies (We applaud Prof. Michaelson for his insights here, on how to actually get a team focus on a case, rather than teams splitting up the tasks). So, we need to attribute at least the bulk of the reaction if not all of it, and the lower overall class evaluation, to the parts of the TBL we introduced.

Did the students also learn more? Yes, we believe they did: Even those who reacted extremely negatively likely learned more, albeit one proclaimed "Didn't learn a thing about economics using this bollshit (sic) method, actually it was horrible. I would rather listened to you talk and interact accordingly." Will we continue to work with the TBL model? Yes, definitely, we are encouraged by comments like: "Really liked the team based learning. It helped me learn more than I would have on my own." "Liked it; encouraged learning"... and, as noted above, the team products and exams were of of higher quality), although next time around we will better manage the downside.

I am wondering, too, if perhaps the reactions might be even stronger in economics classes... especially for economics majors... in that traditional economics (not mine!) classes are all about the "self-interest of the individual" (as the title of Stephen Marglin's new book proclaims, "...Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community" ... we might say, also, undermines community learning. I don't know if the negative reaction was from the economics majors (this class is quite interdisciplinary, in that it is at the 200 level, but we always have a handful of econ majors), but they could have been... and, it could be because my approach to economics is evermore about putting community back into economy (perhaps moreso this semester than in past years offerings)... seeing economy (the individual self-interest) embedded within the community (the shared other-interest), with each interest tempering and conditioning the other... which is another reason the TBL approach appeals to me... and may not appeal to econ majors. (On a side note: The sum is greater than the sum of the parts... i.e. community is important to economy, and to learning: The team RAT scores were always higher than the average of the individual RATs, and, like Professor Michaelson shows in his work, generally also higher than the highest individual RAT score... albeit I have only 1-year of data).

Again, thank you David, and all, for the insights and help in this matter.


Gary D. Lynne, Professor
Department of Agricultural Economics and
School of Natural Resources
103B Filley
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68583-0922
Website: http://agecon.unl.edu/lynne
Phone: 1-402-472-8281

"We are always only one failed generational transfer of knowledge away from darkest ignorance" (Herman Daly)
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Re: Hostility over TBL

Dear All,

I’m a little stunned. I didn’t mean to start this, but I did say the word first, so be it.

I first noticed this when I got course evaluations that that said my course was poorly organized. I had never been so organized before. I was over-organized, in my view. Obsessive-compulsive even. Nonetheless I had three students who checked one of two boxes, well-organized or poorly-organized. It was also clear that three or four students, but not clear that they were the same ones, since I only had marginal frequency tabulations, were giving me the lowest or next-lowest score for every item that had four or five points.

I was puzzled by this and, being at Oklahoma at the time, consulted with Dee Fink about it, who noticed the consistent pattern of low scores. I hadn’t realized the pattern was there until he pointed it out.

This made it clear that there were a few consistently and persistently unhappy campers. But only a fraction, by no means a large fraction.

I later learned from some other faculty that there was a group of students who avoided me when I taught Introductory biostatistics, a course which rotated among several faculty. I do know that there was usually a group of people who never came back for the second session of class. I filled up the first session with working through a sample RA, group selection, a sample problem session, and all the other ordinary business of organizing a class.

I later concluded that this was probably good for everybody involved. I do think I ended up with happier students.

We would like all our students to be just like those in Lake Wobegon, that is, above average. As a statistician I know this won’t ever happen.

Some students are remarkably amenable to the whole approach using TBL, other active learning strategies, and PBL techniques, a related but different technique common in medical schools. I have had several students from the air force and the Canadian military who have had training in how to make groups work well and they have plunged right in and their groups have soared. Other groups stumble interminably. I would like to think that making a TBL team work well is just a technical matter, but I know better.

Students come to us often because they are competent, at least at something, and have been successful, at least in some way. They must have expectations of success and want to be sure that they will be successful, in the same way they have been before. Something new and different must be very scary to many competent, successful people, especially if they have a risk averse personality. Their ability gives them improved capacity to express their dissatisfaction in writing and verbally.

The amount of learning that can go on with TBL is open-ended. I think that this, by itself, makes many students uncomfortable and insecure.

One of ways I have described the expectations of many students, facetiously, is that they want to sit back, let me tell them what is important in lectures, make sure I repeat the formulas from the text perfectly, and then repeat 70% of it back on an exam, with extensive errors in details and poorly organized, and then get a good grade. TBL does not permit them to sit back and relax for the first five weeks of class, not when I give an RA about three chapters at the second class session and plunge them into doing problems at the same session. I always wanted them to start doing their readings and problems the first week. With TBL, none of us have any choice in the matter.

I would never go back to lecture-recitation format. I took many classes this way, several times from wonderful lecturers who were also famous people in their field. This is no way to learn to do something, only a way to learn to listen to someone else explain it so well that I cannot repeat it three hours later. I learned much more from teachers who opened up the frontiers of research within 5-10 weeks of the start of class. The didn’t know about the modern terms of TBL, active learning, etc, but they used the techniques often enough to be clear to me that this is the way to go, whatever the format, procedure, or terms.

Regards,

David Smith



David W. Smith, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Biostatistics Division
San Antonio Campus
University of Texas School of Public Health
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(210) 562-5512