Hi Ron, It seems to me that case studies could be a great way to solve your dilemma. You could provide the students with an engineering problem (one with multiple correct solutions) that they would have to solve - supporting their proposed solution using the math you teach them in exercises like the one you describe below. Here's a database with tons of case studies: Engineering Case Studies from Carlton University http://www.civeng.carleton.ca/ECL/ Best, Tammy On 6/23/10 9:43 AM, "Ronald Giachetti" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi All, > > In the fall semester I'll be teaching a course titled, "evaluation of > engineering data" that involves probability and statistics. I want to try TBL > for this course, and I'm trying to think of good team assignments for in the > classroom. The problem I find is that the course material is usually > presented as black & white -- in other words, for a problem there is only one > correct answer. In all the courses that I've seen that use TBL, the team > assignments are such that there are multiple good answers and arriving at an > answer requires a team to discuss and negotiate the strengths/weaknesses of > different answers. > > I've developed classroom exercises to demonstrate ideas. For example, for > confidence intervals I have a bag full of numbers from a distribution. I have > each team pull a sample of numbers and construct a confidence interval. Each > team then draws their confidence interval on the board. I then draw the > actual population mean and show them that even though all their confidence > intervals are different, they all contain the mean. > > While I think the above exercise is better than straight lecturing, it doesn't > capture the team-based learning that I've seen in other classes. So, if > anybody has any experience in quantitative courses or can direct me to > literature on the area, I'll be interested in how they construct team > exercises. > > Thanks. > > Ron. > > > > > Ronald Giachetti > Associate Professor > Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering > Florida International University > http://web.eng.fiu.edu/ronald/ > [log in to unmask] > 305-348-2980