Creating Effective Team Assignments

1. Creating Effective Team Assignments Jim Sibley

2. Know Where You Want To Go Jim Sibley

3. Reporting Planning Discussion TBL Activities Facilitating Assessment

4. The Natural Strengths of Teams • Teams can be good at: • Making Decisions • Arriving at Consensus • Discussion of supporting rationales • Defense of their decisions Develop assignments that play to the natural strengths of teams.

5. Group assignments (3 S’s) • Same Problem. Individuals/groups work on the same problem, case or question. • Specific Choice. Individuals/groups must use course concepts to make a specific choice. • Simultaneous Report. Individuals/groups report their choices simultaneously. Visibility of student thinking.

6. SimultaneousReporting Complex Graded Intra-team discussion Inter-team discussion In-ClassProblems Simple Practice Individual Homework Readings and RAP

7. Four questions to consider when designing TBL activities • What should students to be able to do? • What will they need to know to do it? • What do they already know? (So I don’t have to teach it) • How will I know that they know it? Larry Michaelsen Video Clip From Larry Michaelsen

8. Assignment Phrasing • “Make a list” • Low cognitive skills • Low commitment to output • Low accountability • “Make a specific choice” • Focuses on ‘why?’ • Higher cognitive skills • Higher commitment to output • Higher accountability/cohesiveness

9. Pelley’s Backward Design • Develop case or scenario • Consider knowledge required to solve case • Write some RAP questions specific to case • Write learning objectives that pertain directly to the case or scenario • helps students focus and prepare • Select readings and create reading guides • helps students focus and prepare Adapted from Creating Application Exercises for Basic Sciences John Pelley

10. Code of Ethics A patient with a Brain Stem Stroke has collapsed a lung from intractable hiccups and feed-tube aspirates. He was admitted to intensive care to deal with the subsequent pneumonia. A few weeks later the PRN order for Baclofen has expired. The patient has begun to hiccup again and is growing increasingly distressed that nothing is being done. It appears to be a doctor oversight that it was not renewed. It is Friday night of a long weekend and the doctor on call is not returning their page. Patient Intimidation Doctor/Nurse Relationship As the Charge Nurse, you should: Hospital Policy Doing the “Right Thing” Charting Requirements • Do nothing, but continue to attempt to contact the doctor • Give the patient the pill and note it in the chart • Give the pill, chart it, and continue calling the doctor • Mark a pill as spoiled and leave it with the patient

11. Designing Exercises • Start with existing resources • NMBE, Case Banks, USMLE Review Books • Vary question complexity • Create opportunities that will encourage focused review of supporting material (webquests)

12. SimultaneousReporting Ideas Jim Sibley

13. Hand Paddles Important things is to make student thinking visible

14. Which assignment wording would best promote higher level cognitive skills, reporting discussion quality and team development • List the mistakes that writers frequently make that detract from their efforts to write in an active voice. • Read the following passage and identify a sentence that is a clear example of: a) active voice, and b) passive voice. • Read the following passage and identify the sentence in which the passive voice is used most appropriately. From TBL Book

15. Classroom Response Systems

16. A container of water rests on a scale. If you dip your hand into the water, without touching the container, what will happen to the reading on the scale? 1. Decreases 2. Increases 3. Remains the same Javed Iqbal, Physics, UBC

17. Whiteboards Karla Kubitz

18. Whiteboards What was the Most Important News Issue of 2006?

19. Stacked Overheads Francis Jones, EOSC, UBC

20. Push-Pins in Maps

21. Excel Charts Ostafichuk, MECH, UBC

22. Flip Charts and Gallery Walks

23. Hot Seat Answer Keying Larry Michaelsen Video Clip From Larry Michaelsen

24. Laptops ETH Lecture Communicator TurningPoint, PRS Web Quests Custom Search Engines

25. GoogleDocs Ostafichuk and Hodgson, MECH, UBC

26. Pocket PC Class In Hand ETH Lecture Communicator TurningPoint, PRS

27. ReportingDiscussions Jim Sibley

28. Same Problem Specific Choices Simultaneous Report

29. TBL Reporting Discussions • The Introduction • Call attention • Motivate students to discuss topic/idea • Clarify the purpose of the discussion • Explain importance and relevance of topic • The Body • Call attention to differences in student thinking • What questions will be asked to enable students to meet objectives (SWOT or ORID) • The Conclusion • Summarize major ideas developed in the discussion; tie entire discussion together • What are students supposed to take away • Preview how knowledge learned will relate to topics to be discussed in future classes. Derek Lane 2006

30. TBL Reporting Discussions 3 Questions • What? Descriptive • So what? Interpretive • Now what? Application 5 Questions • How do you feel? • What happened? • Do you agree? • Has this ever happened to you? • What if . . .?

31. TBL Reporting Discussions • Assemble teams • Build rapport • Encourage equal participation • Assign specific roles (facilitator, recorder, etc.) • Explain ground rules for participation • Provide a Clear Discussion Objective Derek Lane 2006

32. SWOT Analysis • Strengths • Weaknesses • Opportunities • Threats • Provide a Clear Discussion Objective

33. ORID • Objective – facts, external reality • Reflective – individual’s responses to facts • Interpretive – significance/meaning for group • Decisional – application, action, implementation, new directions The Art of Focused Conversation

34. Assessment Jim Sibley

35. Rubric for the Six Facets of Understanding •Criteria for each facet: • Explanation → accurate • Interpretation → meaningful • Application → effective • Perspective → credible • Empathy → sensitive • Self-knowledge → self-awareness Adapted from Wiggins and McTighe, 2000

36. Assessing TBL Activities • Pre-class preparation document • Reflective team summary • Team consensus document • Peer critique of solution • Peer evaluation

37. Reporting • Numerical Position • One page summary– principles and approach and not calculations (16 pt font or bigger) Ostafichuk, 2005

38. Exercise Objective: Prepare briefing notes for press conference - Should we approve GMO crops for use in Canada? • Individual Assignment - 2 page briefing notes for minister at press conference • Team Product - 1 page briefing note - 18 pt font • Advantages/Disadvantages • Risks/Benefits • Common Arguments and Answers Part Two • What would you recommend to the Minister? • Simultaneous reporting Student Individually Engages with Materials Teams Discuss and Distill with Clarified Structure For Response Students Get To Use What They Know and Discuss it Further

39. TBL Exercises Final Thoughts • Use authentic problems • Create choices that require the measured application of course concepts • Activate prior knowledge • Plan an effective reporting strategy • Plan the reporting discussion • Issues and aspects to be discussed • Planning for class consensus, optional milestones • Summation planning • Accept that some exercises will fail

40. http://www.learning.apsc.ubc.ca/tbl http://www.teambasedlearning.org Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching. jim.sibley@ubc.ca sophie.spiridonoff@ubc.ca