Hi Henriikka My classes have been as large as 120 students and these are health sciences students. We have been using Blackboard-WebCT to handle the individual RAT - students do their own individual test on their computers, during the week before coming to class. This has turned out to be a very effective approach, which the students also like and they are diligent about getting the tests done. I know they aren't cheating because I can see the distribution of grades on each quiz (and the technology also shows me who wrote the test and when). Further to Michael Sweet's suggestion, we have also used TurningPoint clickers for the GRAT and that has been both fun and engaging for groups (and the software allows me to record all kinds of data about the group responses). I use the GRAT for competition as well. The GRAT also counts for points per right answer and I give out a prize at the end of semester for the group that accumulates the most points over the whole semester. Hang in there. TBL really does work! Technology can help! Best regards Gary ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- Gary Kapelus MBA, DSP Professor and Coordinator, Interprofessional Health Studies Centre for Health Sciences George Brown College of Applied Arts and Technology 200 King St. E. Toronto, ON M5T 2T9 Tel: (416) 415-5000 Ext 3508 Cell: (416) 450-8083 http://www.georgebrown.ca/healthsciences/ipe.aspx -----Original Message----- From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sweet, Michael S Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 10:54 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: How to make large 1st year TBL classes work? Henriikka, Oy. You have got quite a challenging instructional ecology there. I am a firm believer in adapting TBL to fit the context, so I am going to recommend something I usually don't: straight-up, inter-team competition. If you set up some form of competition among teams, teams will be motivated to huddle covetously over their IF-ATs and be sure other teams don't see them. You'd have to play with the idea to find a model that fits you--some kind of curve on the tRATs, I am thinking. (Be sure NOT to make the individual tests competitive, though!) The only reason I feel OK recommending competition among teams here is this: 1) You have tried lots of other things 2) It's a Business class, so competition is a familiar (and possibly enjoyable) context for your students in ways it might not be for others. If you give up on the IF-ATs, consider trying clickers before giving up on TBL entirely. Anyone else got ideas for Henriikka? -M ________________________________________ From: Team-Based Learning [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Henriikka Clarkeburn [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, May 17, 2010 9:59 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: How to make large 1st year TBL classes work? Hi, We have been running TBL successfully in many classes in our Business school, at both under and post-graduate level. The one area where we are still looking for a real success story is our first year cohort. To give you a bit of background: 1. Our courses have enrolments of 1200+ and run in several parallel streams with up to 50 separate tutorials a week. 2. Up to 70% of our students are non-native English speakers and many of them come from cultures where challenging knowledge and authority are traditionally not encouraged. 3. We teach in steep tiered lecture theatres seating up to 400 students, which are usually overbooked, so there are no spare seats and the rows are very long. As a result of this we lack a shared educational culture and a sense of community in the first year (these things improve in the later years!). We have found both distributing material in the class a time-consuming challenge and cheating has been common enough to undermine the entire process. For example, students have no difficulty seeing IFATs on the rows in front of them and have used phones to text each other correct answers. We have tried using different IFATs on different rows, which resulted in an administrative workload and chaos in class if even one student group was sitting in the wrong row. Taking the RAP into the tutorials/online led to questions leaking from tutorial to tutorial no matter how many ways we tried to fix that by changing question orders, requiring question sheets to be returned, alternating forms etc. So we are basically at the point of having to abandon TBL in our large first year classes before we burn out our staff and give TBL a bad name as a pedagogy that does not work. Any suggestions on how to make it work under these conditions, as we do believe in the value TBL would offer our students? Best Wishes, Henriikka ------------------------------------------ Henriikka Clarkeburn | Lecturer Office of Learning and Teaching | Faculty of Economics and Business THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Rm 386, Merewether Building (H04) | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006 T +61 2 3036 6156 | F +61 2 9351 6620 E [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask] u.au> | W http://sydney.edu.au/business CRICOS 00026A This email plus any attachments to it are confidential. Any unauthorised use is strictly prohibited. If you receive this email in error, please delete it and any attachments.