My plan is to implement TBL for my upcoming Introduction to Philosophy class. This class is designated "writing intensive," so writing formal papers is required to be 40-60% of the grade. The class size is limited to 26 students. The class meets once per week for 170 minutes. We take two 10-minute breaks, for an effective class time of 150 minutes. I have read the TBL book for college teaching (and have the social sciences book on order). One of the key messages that I have understood is that doing one RAT per week is a big mistake. So, let's say that I have 6 2-week units. That implies that on half the weeks my students have a double-sized reading load and on the other half of the weeks they have no reading assigned. I recognize that on the "no reading" weeks they should be rereading the texts in order to complete assignments. I am leery of giving my students a double-dose of reading when, in fact, we probably won't get to the second half of the reading until the second week of the unit. Please let me know what would be wrong if I did the following: 1. Have students do iRATs weekly online using course management application (Blackboard). They would not find out which answers were right or which were wrong. Also, if I am able, I wouldn't even let Blackboard show them their total grade for the iRAT until the tRAT was completed. 2. Have students do tRATs weekly at the start of each class. My reasoning is that this would allow the reading to be assigned in smaller, more digestible pieces. By the way, I have posted videos for every reading assignment. Before coming to class they are supposed to do the reading and watch the videos. I have concept mapped the readings and in the videos I walk them through these maps. One possible answer to my question might be: the students can watch two videos and do two weeks of reading so that they have a general sense of the territory. It is better to do multiple, ever-deepening, passes over the same longer material than fewer, shallower passes over shorter material. I must admit that I am finding the task of restructuring the entire course daunting.