Hi Ken This is often the problem with product based out of class assignments. If you are an A student and I am a C student....why not sit back and let you get me an A. We can add peer evaluation to the mix...but it usually doesn't have enough teeth to make sure the freeloader gets a fair..low grade In the cooperative/ collaborative world this kind of team dysfunction is all too common. The issue is often with assignments that focus on product generation and not decision making. Groups are often not very good at building large products but can make difficult decisions together (think of the work of a courtroom jury in a difficult case) Maybe you could consider bring the assignment into class and changing focus to decision making/discrimination. ################### You could probably use something like Sophie Sparrow and Margaret Sova McCabe showed at the great workshop at the TBL conference in Austin It would look like this students individually prepare 6-8 key topics they bring 2 copies to class you collect one (this is only cursorily marked....just check mark....you tried) then you do an in class activity where teams distill all their individual work into a group compilation...maybe even with some focusing....top 4 topics and why you collect the team compilation and mark it more carefully and add it to the cursory participation mark from having submitted individual ############################# You want to have class activities that build/incorporate their out of class work (the out of class work is most often individual) For a short explanation of problem solving in TBL...you can visit my website at http://learntbl.ca/what-is-tbl/structured-problem-solving/ take care jim ________________________________________ From: Team-Based Learning [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Ken Gunnells [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 7:57 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Problem assignment in a new class I have a problem with an assignment in my face-to-face Management Information Systems class. At the end of each 2-week module, the current out-of-class assignment has student teams creating a summary of the key topics from the chapters and cases in the module. They are supposed to relate each of approximately 6-8 key topics to the theme of the module, demonstrate an understanding of the topic, and give examples of how businesses have used or can use the topics to compete in the market place. The goals are for students to be able to separate the important from the less important, and to give them the tools to make better decisions in the future. The problem with this assignment is that teams have taken a divide and conquer approach, and freeloading has become a problem, even in the face of impending peer evaluations. I am also getting brain dumps and summaries of entire chapters and cases, instead of the summaries of a few key topics. In order to reach my goals for the assignment and to eliminate the freeloading problem, I need your help to redesign it while I still have 3 modules yet to cover. If I could somehow find a way to revise the assignment then I am confident I could dramatically improve the class. Ken Gunnells, Ph.D. COLLAT School of Business, Management Information Systems & Quantitative Methods UAB | The University of Alabama at Birmingham 205-222-0871 [log in to unmask]