Increase your wait time. Talk about how you think discussion is better when many students participate. Get students to discuss what makes participation a valuable learning experience for them. Don’t let some students participate too ...
Good teaching often relies on productive classroom discussion. However, many of us have experienced dynamics in which our discussions take a perilous turn and a palpable tension settles over the class. The precipitating comment may ...
It's another of those phrases frequently used and almost universally endorsed but not much talked about in terms of implementation. What does facilitating discussion mean? How should a teacher do it? Two faculty researchers, Finn ...
The life of a faculty member is filled with noisy busyness—planning class sessions, grading, meeting with students, advising, committee work, research, scholarship, and publications. We are consumed by the swirl of activities and the need ...
In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke urged the younger correspondent to learn to love questions, even those that were unanswered. This admonition has stuck with me for several decades, especially in ...
Most teachers would answer yes. It's one of the reasons they want students to participate. Whether they're paying attention because the teacher may call on them, or whether the questions and answers being exchanged have ...
I once heard class discussions described as “transient instructional events." They pass through the class, the course, and the educational experiences of students with few lingering effects. Ideas are batted around, often with forced participation; ...
The life of a faculty member is filled with noisy busyness—planning class sessions, grading, meeting with students, advising, committee work, research, scholarship, and publications. We are consumed by the swirl of activities and the need ...
Frequently, in our beginning accounting course, some of our students find a topic or procedure completely incomprehensible. Since these topics are discussed and illustrated in the textbook, our initial reaction was that these students simply ...
Most students find it difficult to think of famous historical personalities as real people. They also read texts without realizing that there are tangible personalities behind them. I have found one of the most ...