I’ve not had a team blow the t-RAT quite that spectacularly, but have had at least a couple of times where I was a bit taken aback by a lower team score here or there. As mentioned in another comment, I think that having this happen now and again can be a good thing in that it helps wake the team up a bit. It show them that it’s the combination of strong individual preparation and effective, well-informed team interaction and their shared knowledge that makes for good outcomes. If ALL teams were failing, then you might be looking at a different problem! My suspicion is that your students are quite a bit like mine: a wide range of experiences and age levels, diverse, and potentially underprepared? If so, they’ve got all kinds of things going on, and I’m not just talking about competing demands on their time. They’re just getting used to scholarly conversations, are fairly new to TBL, and may not have ever reflected in a careful, explicit, honest way about the ways in which their contributions (both task and social) influence the performance of a group. J

 

I’d use this kind of situation as an opportunity for a bit of metacommunication and team reflection. Perhaps you could take a few minutes for a quick check of group process and individual preparations without getting to a point of publically shaming one particular team? You might pose a couple of questions like the ones below. They could be assigned and pre-class work and brought to class for team discussion, or used as part of a quick activity. I used this kind of approach a few weeks ago in an upper division course I teach, though not in response to a bombed t-RAT; it was just a way for them to reflect on the group process and their role as an individual. I teach Communication courses, so we used it as a springboard for a discussion of the specific verbal and nonverbal skills that made for more (or less) effective team interactions. Feel free to copy, cut, paste, edit, and tweak this to suit your purposes. You could include things that are specific to the pre-reading, etc.  For instance, they could rate their level of understanding of the pre-reading, rate how much time they spent on it, their completion level (none, some, all). That could help you understand some other things about where they are as learners.

 

Reflection on Team Performance

Rate your level of satisfaction with your personal performance on the most recent iRAT:	very satisfied satisfied somewhat disappointed very disappointed
Rate your level of satisfaction with your team’s performance on the most recent tRAT:	very satisfied satisfied somewhat disappointed very disappointed
If you were somewhat or very disappointed in your own performance, what is the single most important thing you would have done to improve your performance?
If you were somewhat or very disappointed in your own performance, what is the single most important thing you would have done to improve your contributions to the team’s effort?
If you were somewhat or very disappointed in your team’s performance, what is the single most important thing you would have done to improve the team’s effort?
Together with your team, identify one specific action you will take to ensure that you and your team see your desired level of performance on future exercise.	Action I will take as an individual:           Action we will take as a team:

 

 

All my best,

 

Shawnalee

Shawnalee A. Whitney

Interim Director, Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence (CAFE)

Associate Professor, Journalism and Communication

University of Alaska Anchorage

3211 Providence Drive

Anchorage, AK 99508

[log in to unmask]

907-786-4645

www.uaa.alaska.edu/cafe

 

 

From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Herbert Coleman
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 11:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Shocked

 

 

To unsubscribe from the TEAMLEARNING-L list, please click here.

Further information about the UBC Mailing Lists service can be found on the UBC IT website.