Some Formative Results

After using TBL for a semester, I was able to look at some data and draw certain conclusions. This is from August, 2011:

The readings I have done while blogging led me to significantly change my teaching technique, as I began using team-based learning in my Writing 1311 classes in January, 2011. Now I am able to look back at the Spring 2011 semester and begin assessing the impact of team-based learning, at least informally.
Since the Fall 2008 semester, I have unofficially surveyed my writing students about my teaching strategies. Here are the questions I have asked:

• Question 1: Reading: Indicate your agreement with the following statement: “Mr. Woodward’s use of reading assignments contributed to my development of writing skills.”
• Question 2: Ideas: Indicate your agreement with the following statement: “Mr. Woodward’s emphasis on ideas (thesis and reasons) as the building blocks of essays contributed to my development of writing skills.”
• Question 3: Grading: Indicate your agreement with the following statement: “The bases for Mr. Woodward’s grading of my papers is clear to me before and after I turn them in”
• Question 4: Engagement: Indicate your agreement with the following statement: “The class is engaging (i.e., it requires my involvement and is stimulating).”
• Question 5: Group Activities: Indicate your agreement with the following statement: “Working in small groups with classmates has been productive and helpful.”

When I compare survey results from Fall 2010 (the most recent non-TBL semester) and Spring 2010 (the first TBL semester), I find some notable numbers:

• •Q1: 5% more students (74% total) agreed or agreed strongly that use of readings  increased their writing skills.
  •Q2: 8% more students (52% total) agreed strongly that emphasis on ideas increased their writing skills.
  •Q3: 18% more students (81% total) agreed or agreed strongly that they understood the bases for their grades.
  •Q4: 14% more students (64% total) agreed or agreed strongly that the class was engaging.
  •Q5: 21% more students (40% total) agreed strongly that group activities were helpful and productive.

My principal goals when I began using TBL were to increase student engagement (Question 4) and and the effectiveness of group activities (Question 5). It is good to see evidence that TBL can help instructors work toward a variety of pedagogical goals, such as integrating reading, emphasizing ideas, and helping students to understand how they are evaluated.
I consider these results formative, as they take into account just one semester of using team-based learning. I hope to see a continuation of the upward trend in student engagement and other factors.

Relinquishing Control

Here are some thoughts from 2011, 2.5 months into the grand TBL experiment:
Team-based learning is not for every faculty member. It takes a certain temperament. Faculty who are comfortable with students, who are willing and able to speak and act informally in a classroom setting, will find the transition to team-based learning relatively trouble-free. Faculty who already have their students work in groups during class will find team-based learning simply allows them to give more emphasis to collaboration.
Perhaps fifteen years ago, I taught for the first time in a computer lab staffed by an educational technologist (at another institution). I had to get accustomed to the presence of a non-student, a colleague who would be there listening to me as I taught, who would at times step in and assist students during class. With team-based learning, I have had to make another adjustment. There are times when the students are working productively in teams, and I have (dare I say it?) nothing to do. Well, not quite nothing--I keep tabs on the teams, ready to visit them when they have questions that no one in the team can answer. Often I work on handouts for the upcoming weeks or the next readiness assessment test, mainly so that I can keep busy while I wait for the students to finish teaching one another.
Like all faculty, I have a territorial instinct when I am teaching, that old this-is-my-classroom, this-is-my-class-period feeling, and only a certain amount of tolerance for straying off-topic/off-purpose. But team-based learning is teaching me to loosen up.

The Story So Far....

Here's a post from halfway through my first semester using TBL (March, 2011):
Poor neglected blog. Your blogger has been busy practicing a new teaching technique. Now that I am halfway through my first semester of using team-based learning, I can reflect on what I have learned so far:

• I'm learning to back off. My students have worked together in groups periodically since I started teaching back in the 20th century, and I had developed the habit of circulating while groups work together, checking on their progress and answering questions. Now I'm finding that if I do that, the students ask me things they could ask each other. I want them to ask each other questions, so that they teach one another. So no more unnecessary circulating.
• I'm learning that asking teams to practice skills by writing even brief texts can be counterproductive. Michaelsen points out that writing is inherently an individual pursuit and so team activities should focus more on making decisions than on producing texts, and that always made sense to me. But I thought I could ask teams to write a few sentences summarizing a three-paragraph passage (as a way of practicing summary for research papers) and get away with it. I have found that for such a task, each student will write their own summary with little input from teammates. So next time I'll provide a few summaries and ask them to decide which of them is most effective.
• I'm learning to put the Readiness Assessment Tests in perspective for my students. RATs dominated the first weeks of the semester, as we had a practice RAT the second week, RAT1 the third week, and RAT2 a couple of weeks later. However, there are just 5 RATs in all, and all together they count for just 20% of students' course grades (while the 5 formal writing assignments count for 70%). Students' attention, efforts, and anxiety were disproportionately directed to the readiness assessment tests. It didn't help matters that I used a 105-point scale to grade the 15-question tests. Next time: a 15-point scale and a preventative sermon on the role and value of RATs.

The Nuts and Bolts

Here's a post from early in my first semester of using TBL in ENGL 1311 (now called WRIT 1311):
In team-based learning, students take periodic "readiness assessment tests" to determine how well they have prepared (by doing assigned reading) for the next major unit/topic/assignment. It is important that the tests be graded and returned immediately so that the instructor can immediately clarify concepts/material that students had difficulty with.
To allow for immediate evaluation, RATs usually consist of 15-20 multiple choice questions. But even brief multiple choice tests take some time to grade, unless you have a Scantron machine in your classroom. TBL practitioners have come up with various solutions. Some use transparency overlays; others give students scratch-off answer sheets.
And some use a cordless drill. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

The student fills in a test answer sheet.

The instructor's key. Shaded cells are correct answers.

The primitive Scantron machine

A big stack of completed test answer sheets, with the instructor's key on top.

The instructor drills through the correct answers.

Instructor quickly grades student's test answer sheet.

How Students See Themselves

Here's another post from early in my first TBL semester:
Michaelsen and others are adamant that practitioners of team-based learning allow students to participate in the formation of teams at the beginning of a semester (although they are just as adamant about instructors controlling team formation, doing much more than telling students to create groups of a certain number). Teams function best when they are diverse so that "member resources" (such as work experience, college experience, access to technology, varying perspectives, etc.) are distributed among the teams.
I asked my ENGL 1311 students to brainstorm a list of factors that affect team performance. One class came up with about a dozen factors. After a complicated vote, we had our top five factors: personality (extroverted/introverted) gender, age, race, and parenthood. I asked students to privately give themselves ten points for each category (e.g., 10 points if you are male, 10 points if you are over 21, etc.). The students stood in a line, with those having the highest scores at one end and those with the lowest at the other end (and yes, I explained that the points were not meant to assign value to one or the other gender, age range, etc.).  The students then counted off (1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3, 4; etc.) and joined forces with those who had the same number.
I really didn't mean to get so bogged down in describing the details of the process. The point is that students did not form the groups themselves (which leads to groups that are too cohesive--friends stick together, for example, or the older nontraditional students find one another), and I did not form the groups myself (which makes students wonder what the instructor's ulterior motives are, even if the he or she explains the factors used to form diverse groups).
Of course the jury is still out on whether the teams are diverse enough to become lean, mean learning machines. But I can tell you that each team has exactly one male student.

Plunge Taken

Here's what I wrote in January, 2011, as I embarked upon TBL in the classroom:

Walking into my ENGL 1311 class today, I felt as if I were entering uncharted territory. I knew what my students would do in class today and next time, and I had a pretty clear idea of what they would do next week. The week after next is still just a rough sketch, and even though I have a plan laid out on a week-by-week outline, I can only dimly see the remainder of the semester.
Of course every semester is different, an evolution and refinement of the last. But this semester is more of a revolution for me. Every class period will be completely different. I'll have to come up with new activities, new ways of tackling reading assignments, new handouts, etc. I might even need new jokes.
So today when the clock in the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen said that it was time for class, I stopped trying to plan next week's classes and went to meet my new students. I didn't do the things I did on the first day of class last semester, instead doing new things.
One thing I did was tell my students about team-based learning. They listened politely, nodding occasionally. I told them I wouldn't just talk at them like this much anymore after today. When I was finished, I asked them what they thought of team-based learning. "It sounds good," someone said hopefully, and most of them nodded agreeably.
There's no backing out now.

The First Glimmer

Here's what I wrote in August, 2010, when I first read about TBL in L. Dee Finks Creating Significant Learning Experiences:

Fink distinguishes between teaching techniques and teaching strategies:

A teaching technique is a specific teaching activity. Lecturing is a technique, as is lab work, using small groups, assigning essays, covering case studies, and so on. A teaching strategy, on the other hand, is a particular combination of learning activities in a particular sequence. The goal is to find a combination and sequence of learning activities that work together synergistically and build a high level of student energy that can be applied to the task of learning (130; Fink's emphasis).

One of the teaching techniques Fink describes is team-based learning. Most of us have divided our classes into small groups to work together on some task or another. Team-based learning is a cohesive, semester-long strategy that "transforms groups into teams and then uses the extraordinary capabilities of teams to accomplish a high level of content and application learning" (132).
One of the advantages of team-based learning is that for the most part students acquire course content outside of class (typically by reading), allowing much more class time to be devoted to application. In class, students go through a Readiness Assurance Process (individually and in teams), and then work with their teams on tasks that require them to use/apply their new knowledge. The instructor eventually assesses the students on their knowledge and ability to use it. In the course of a semester, students may go through several cycles of knowledge acquisition, readiness assurance, team tasks, and assessment.
Note to self: check out http://www.teambasedlearning.org/ ASAP.