Greetings TBL colleagues - 

I could use some advice.

For the first time in the 8 years I have been using TBL, I have a team that is not working well. One of the team members (I’ll call him Jeff-not his real name) does not talk to, make eye contact with, or engage with the team unless they are working on a tRAT. When they are engaged in team applications during class, he does not turn to face the rest of his teammates, does not contribute and does not listen to them. As with all students, he knows that team contributions count for 15% of the final grade. 

Context: 

This is a first year graduate US law course, and I am working with teams of 6. 

On this particular team, half the students have come straight from undergrad,and  2 of the others have worked for a while before coming to law school. Jeff is a bit older than the others, has a PhD in science and was educated in EU in predominately lecture-based settings. In his team he has voiced his dislike of all the assessments in this course, and said that he wished it were like some other law school courses, where the only grade is on the final exam. 

Students in this class have given and received anonymous midterm peer feedback (now 2 weeks ago). Several of the members of the team have several times come to talk to me about how to engage this student. In the feedback he received, Jeff was asked to participate more. That has not happened.  The students had ideas about how to try to engage him more, and he has not been responsive. At this point, two of the students are very frustrated as they keep trying to get Jeff to work with them, but they are finding that they are spending a lot of time trying to get him involved when he appears to have no interest in doing so. They don’t want to “write him off” and not engage him during team applications, but they – and I – are not sure how best to handle this. A couple of team graded team applications are coming up over the next month, and we have 2 more tRATs to do. 

I am not sure how to respond to this situation, and would love your ideas and suggestions. 

Thanks much, 

~ Sophie