Hi All As you know from my earlier post I teach accounting and we have the same problem Alison has namely that the graded materials are passed on either by word of mouth or by surreptitious use of technology. Some others have commented that removing the graded aspect inoculates against this problem. So I did some investigation and found otherwise. That is, students have a collector mentality and seek out all available course materials whether they are graded or not. I found three simple tests for this. One: To what extent are lecture slides handed down? I found they were even if not necessarily used. Students using past semester slides is a real problem because we continuously refine or even rewrite them. We tell students this but still find some students with old semester materials. Two: Will reducing marks reduce cheating? We reduced the number of marks to negligible so cheating became high risk, low reward but it did not seem to matter. Three we provided explicit guidelines on what to study to remove fear of the unknown and ensure time was productive. Again it did not seem to matter and these materials were under-used. We are doubly lucky with our accounting materials because (a) we can reformulate the numbers used in calculations and (b) there is a close connection between the RAT knowledge and applying it in the application exercise. So we emphasise the need to possess the knowledge and weighted the application higher. All that happened here was the application exercise justifications were communicated from earlier to later classes. So yes, there is much more work when there are multiple streams which management does not recognise. And we are unlucky in the RAT because there are only a few basic concepts which we want to examine and we try to formulate the distractors so they correspond to known learning weaknesses which can be diagnosed. In summary, solving the hand-down problem is a work in progress but I don’t think the answer lies in the grading factor. Next year I am going to try a workbook approach. Warm regards/gary From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alison Hartley Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2015 5:56 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Grading In-class Application Activities Hello everyone, I have watched this thread with some interest. We use TBL on a full programme level for a large undergraduate pharmacy course at the University of Bradford in the UK, cohort size typically 150 students, typical age range 18-22 years. There is no question about the value of non graded application exercises and I personally favour that approach, I almost always perceive the greatest learning is happening when there is not really one best answer at all, I'm sure some of you would agree. However, I thought it may be useful to share our experiences, acknowledging that there may be some differences between students on different courses and in different countries, and also that whilst we all love TBL I think it is important to air some of the less comfortable issues I am sure we have all struggled with. We have almost 100% attendance at iRAT/tRAT sessions. We have had significantly worse attendance at application exercise sessions despite the fact that some are graded. This led to an increase in the proportion of marks allocated to application exercises within a set unit of study. Attendance improved. Great! However, this means that our grading processes need to be extremely robust and the administrative burden associated with this is significant. Were no exercises graded, staff would be able to focus their time on creating more high quality materials rather than on marking. Our feedback mechanisms still require some improvement but to give good quality feedback to teams again takes time. Significantly for us it also means that students pass on the materials to earlier years, meaning we cannot use that particular activity again for summative purposes, we tend to use our 'best' activities for the marked exercises and then by doing so we shoot ourselves in the foot as we cannot use again in the short term. Our students are engaged, enrolled on a professional health course and we spend time at the start of each year talking about the ethos of TBL, the ethics etc and yet between groups we continue to have low level 'sharing' of materials (or cheating, you could call it). So for the time being, despite the negatives associated with grading application exercises they will remain, if I'm honest I wish we were brave enough, and our students mature enough, to drop grading altogether. We still however encourage faculty to continue to use exercises with no 'right answer'. Example 1 (where this is one best answer) - max of 10 marks available * 2 marks for correct answer * 8 marks for rationale, including why discounted other options Example 2 (where this is NOT one best answer) - max of 10 marks available * all 10 marks for rationale Alison Hartley Curriculum Development Associate Faculty of Health Studies [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 01274 236397 Room 3.16 ________________________________ From: Team-Based Learning <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Massey, William V <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Sent: 09 September 2015 19:47 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Grading In-class Application Activities Hello TBL Community, I am a bit of a novice TBLer so looking for some advice if you would be so kind. I am working on a way to grade the in-class applications, as it is a substantial part of the course expectations and student work. I was thinking of doing this in a two-fold manner – 1.) having a “right” answer to the applications that the groups could scratch off on the IFAT form after they have discussed and debated across groups (I would likely make this open to appeals as well); and 2.) developing some type of process feedback form in which each group would get a score at the end of a session (assessing things such as team interactions/dynamics, engagement, sound rationale behind answers during simultaneous reporting, others?!?). I would love any feedback or resources if there are any out there. Many thanks! William Massey, PhD Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy School of Health Professions Concordia University Wisconsin Office: HS 143 262-243-2073 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the TEAMLEARNING-L list, please click here.<https://lists.ubc.ca/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=TEAMLEARNING-L&A=1> Further information about the UBC Mailing Lists service can be found on the UBC IT website. ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the TEAMLEARNING-L list, please click here.<https://lists.ubc.ca/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=TEAMLEARNING-L&A=1> Further information about the UBC Mailing Lists service can be found on the UBC IT website. ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the TEAMLEARNING-L list, please click the following link: https://lists.ubc.ca/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=TEAMLEARNING-L&A=1 Further information about the UBC Mailing Lists service can be found on the UBC IT website.