We do not tell the students how much time they have.  We use a "Done" sign on a stand.  When about 1/2 the teams have finished I announce that they have 5 minutes to finish.

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 19, 2012, at 7:40 AM, "Chris Burns" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

We typically do not tell students how long they have to complete application exercises (or other group work) because they will use the entire time, whether they need it or not. Getting the class together before the allotted time is up can be nearly impossible. Instead we ask students to work on the problem and use audience response clickers to monitor progress in real-time with a slide that says "1. I am done with the exercise". When most of the groups are finished, we announce a one or two minute warning and move on. Students seem to appreciate getting to the discussion efficiently.

Chris Burns

University of Virginia

---

Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:08:16 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Downtime between application and discussion
To: [log in to unmask]

I’ve been using TBL in my developmental psychology classes for the last few years.  I am struggling with what to do when some teams are done with the application activities before others.  I typically let the students know how much time they’ll have to complete the activity, and some teams take the whole time to complete it, while others don’t.  So then I have students who are waiting for others to complete the assignment so we can have our class discussion.  I'd love to hear suggestions for what I could have the teams who finish early do until we’re ready for the class discussion? 

 

Krisztina

--
******************************************
Krisztina Varga Jakobsen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology, MSC 7704
91 E. Grace St.
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
540-568-4301