Hi Mark,

Good question. I have struggled with this situation a lot since I started to implement TBL a couple of years ago.

I don't think you should feel that you are treating other teams unfairly by discussing course material further with teams that finish early. Another way of saying this is I don't think we should penalize students who are ready for me before others; no sense in holding back students who are progressing faster than others. However, as an instructor we do need to keep our radar alert for other teams who may need our attention. As long as this is being done I really can't see a problem with sitting down with an early completing team.

A couple of suggestions to consider if there is a marked difference in completion time between teams:

1. Institute a five minute rule that others have suggested in this forum (which I intend to try when I next teach a TBL course).

2. Have bonus apps prepared for teams to attempt. I have used this approach extensively and it ends up serving two purposes. A) gives early completing teams something to do. B) provides an incentive for slower teams to focus a bit more because they are missing out on bonus material.

Cheers

Neil Haave

Augustana Campus, University of Alberta

On Wednesday, November 20, 2013, Mark Stevens wrote:

Hi all. TBL instructors often wonder what they should do when one team finishes a team exercise before the other teams. Like many of you, I try to think of an additional activity or question for the early finishers to work on while the other teams finish up. I tried something new yesterday that seemed to work well, but I have some concerns and wanted to see if you think my concerns are warranted.

One team in my class yesterday finished much earlier than I was expecting, so I gave them a few additional tasks to work on while the other team continued working on the exercise. Once the early-finishing team had completed its additional tasks (and it was clear that the other team was still going to be working on the exercise for a while), I decided to sit down with the early-finishing team to debrief their work on the extra tasks. I enjoyed this debriefing session, and it kept the team members more engaged in the class and material than they otherwise would have been. I got to cover some non-essential but nevertheless relevant material with that team that I wouldn't have been able to cover in the post exercise discussion, because I knew there would only be time to discuss the essential material. Overall, I think this debriefing session was valuable for the early-finishing team.

My concern, though, is whether it is problematic to spend time chatting with one time while the other team is working on the exercise. I don't think our chatting was a distraction to the still-working team, but the team that I chatted with had an opportunity to "learn more" than the team that was still working, which could be viewed as "unfair". On the other hand, more learning is arguably better than less learning, even if the the "more learning" is unevenly distributed across the students.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this issue?

Thanks,
Mark

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Mark Stevens, PhD, MCIP
Assistant Professor, School of Community & Regional Planning
University of British Columbia
223-1933 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
SCARP bio: http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/people/mark-stevens
Planning Evaluation Lab: http://www.planningevaluationlab.ca
604-822-0657

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Neil Haave, PhD | Associate Professor (Biology) | University of Alberta, Augustana Campus | 4901 - 46 Avenue, Camrose, AB T4V 2R3 | vox: 780 679 1506 | fax: 780 679 1129 | [log in to unmask] | www.augustana.ualberta.ca/profs/nhaave/

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