Hi, I’m using TBL for the first time this semester. Originally, the teams had 5-6 students apiece, but some students have since dropped out. There are now 2 6-person teams, and 2 4-person teams. It seems like the 4-person teams might be disadvantaged, so I asked if anyone would like to volunteer to join the smaller teams, but no one did. The other teams definitely do not want someone removed from their team to join the 4-person team. And there’s now some class uproar, with various students suggesting their own solutions to me. What would you all suggest as a potential solution here? I don’t want to disrupt the current teams, but also want to provide a good teams experience. I’m veering between dissolving the small teams & creating one mega-team of 8 people (potentially too large), and just dissolving all the teams & readjusting to create new teams for the rest of the semester (potentially too disruptive.) I really don’t feel familiar enough with the TBL approach to decide the best solution here. What would you suggest in this situtation?
Hi @AMG Based on the experiences of so many TBL educators, I would say don’t dissolve the teams – work with the current ones and re-set expectations. You can orient your students on TBL and why teams. I would highly recommend sharing this video with them: https://youtu.be/668t2QY03TM?si=pDPxyK2H51VsTwD7
@SandyCook @Sarada What do you both think?
Over the past 5 years, we’ve always built the 5-6 member teams and have about 20 of them for our year long course. I do dedicate time at the beginning of the course to discuss pedagogy of TBL and stress how benefits of a team grow over time. On occasion a team has gotten down to 4 people (I currently have one team in this situation now). At that point, I usually have a conversation with that team to see if they feel disadvantaged and encourage them to keep the lines of communication open, but so far none have desired a change or fix. Sometimes, it seems it helps them grow even stronger and more tight knit as they realize how an absence or lack of preparation has an even greater effect if the team is slightly smaller. It seems like a team of 4 at least in our course also still offers enough diverse perspective. I try incredibly hard not to ever change our teams, but to help teams adapt to conflict, absences, etc. and stress how important this is in the “real world.” I did have to change a team once and it was quite disruptive to both teams which had been together for a full semester. Good luck with your decision!
I think you have gotten some great feedback. Of course, it would have been ideal if a couple of the “6” teams were open to switching, but I agree with the others that if there are no volunteers - best stick with 6 & 4 sized teams. I would not advise making teams of 8.
In the future, you might want to consider not setting the “final” teams until after the drop out period - and perhaps have them mixed up for each session until you are clear of the final class size - and then make make the final team make-up.