Along with general student reluctance to change, another aspect that can occur is that students who have been successful in studying individually and scoring on their assessments in a more traditional kind of class may think they will face a setback in performance/grades by having to change methods.

I think faculty can impact these students by using the TBL suggestion to collect the summary data during the course about each group's RAT scores compared to that group's top achiever's individual RAT scores. Typically, and in my own experience as well, data will show the group outperforms the top individual achiever in the group.

Sharing this information at the end shows those who had favored individual efforts that they did benefit from the group. Sharing previous class comparisons with a new class at the beginning can help the students who fear doing worse see that they are more likely to do better.

Kathy Ross

Kathy Ross, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment
Indiana University Kokomo
2300 South Washington
P. O. Box 9003
Kokomo, IN 46904-9003
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http://www.iuk.edu/ctla