36 Facilitating engaged discussions

A student holding a copy of a book by James Baldwin in an English class.

Preparing for a discussion

Before the discussion, identify objectives and main takeaways for the students. Consider arranging the classroom space in a way students can collaborate, feel included, and see each other when they are speaking (review the chapter Becoming Familiar with Your Classroom).

Discussion isn’t something you should introduce midway through the semester. Students will grow these skills across the semester, and it’s helpful to acculturate students to discussion as part of the course from day one. Decide on and share your expectations for individual student participation, group work, and general contributions.

Think about how you will communicate goals and expectations to students and consider employing community guidelines. It is important for students to know whether they are expected to raise their hands and be called on by an instructor, or whether they can enter the discussion more informally. Similarly, as the instructor, you’ll want to anticipate how you will equitably engage quieter students. Determine your objectives and create a lesson plan, choosing the quotations, videos, or texts that you would like to focus on during the discussion. Be mindful of any additional context that may be helpful to your students and address/acknowledge their responses from prior feedback activities.

When you draft the main prompts of the discussion, make sure they are open-ended questions connected to the unit’s learning objectives. You could use the ICON discussion forum, where students can post their questions and prompts to guide the upcoming discussion. Here are some examples based on the cognitive categories from the revised Bloom’s taxonomy:

Remember:

  • What surprised you the most when you were reading this text?
  • What was your initial response as a reader?

Understand:

  • What is the main idea of the reading? What arguments and evidence support it?
  • What is your favorite quote from this reading? Explain why.

Apply:

  • Can you apply this method to solve a similar problem?
  • How would you relate this book to current world events?

Analyze:

  • How would you compare this article to last week’s reading?
  • Is the narrator reliable? Whose point of view are we hearing? Whose points of view are left out? Why does it matter?

Evaluate:

  • If you were writing a review of this work, how would you approach it?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of the method described in this article?

Create:

  • If you were interviewing the author of this work for a podcast, what questions would you ask, and how would you design the interview?
  • What would be an example of a counterargument to the author’s point of view?

To see more questions, check our website.
It might be helpful to distribute questions to the students before the class or at least to give the students a little bit of time to look at/process the questions and think about what they want to say. You’ll get more thoughtful answers that way; this may also help engage quieter students since they can prepare what they want to say. You could also provide the questions on paper or on a projector (with a font size that everyone can see) so that students can refer back to the questions. This can also be helpful if students didn’t hear the question initially.

💡 Please reflect:

Think of the next discussion session that you are teaching. Decide on who will produce the prompts—you or your students?

If you want your students to lead the discussion with their questions, write down instructions (including concrete guidance about how to develop useful questions) and post them to ICON. If you plan to guide the discussion with your prompts, write down three main questions that address your goals based on Bloom’s taxonomy.

 

 

Starting a discussion

We recommend you begin your class by sharing your goals and agenda and revisiting community agreements.

You can start a discussion with a low-stakes warm-up activity such as an icebreaker, entry ticket, concept map, KWL grid, freewriting, or the YxN activity described in other sections.

Some instructors use a misconception check activity, where the instructor shares common misconceptions and asks students to agree or disagree and explain why. This activity helps students uncover their assumptions and unlearn incorrect and incomplete knowledge and beliefs.

Another activity that can help set the tone for discussion is what, how, and why outlines. In small groups, students analyze a course material (reading, film, artifact, etc.) from three lenses: “what” (content), “how” (form), and “why” (function).

Facilitating a discussion

During the discussion, encourage active listening and building on each other’s comments; it can be helpful for your students if you write their comments on the whiteboard or a shared document. To promote equitable participation and establish an inclusive environment, allow for processing time and a “pedagogical pause” after sharing a prompt or a question. Make sure you pause and check for understanding with your students, giving them a moment to write and structure their thoughts (e.g., through reflective activities or write-pair-share). Some instructors wait to call on someone to answer until they see at least three raised hands.

To allow everyone to participate actively, use group work, such as think-pair-share, jigsaw, debates, and role play activities. In the previous chapter, we shared some important considerations regarding group roles (e.g., discussion facilitator, notetaker, presenter, etc.). Here are some additional active learning ideas that can support productive discussions.

Socratic Circles: The students divide into two groups; one group talks about a topic, the other listens. After two to three minutes, the first group stops, and the second group comments on the discussion and provides feedback. The groups then discuss the topic together and generate a shared understanding. The groups then change roles with another related topic.

Pass the Baton: Divide students into groups of three or four. Ask them to have a piece of paper and a pen. After the instructor shares a prompt and starts timing, each member writes whatever comes to mind and quickly passes the paper to the next person in the group. They do this for two to three minutes. When the time is up the instructor asks the groups to stop writing and share what they produced, and writes their answers and thoughts on the whiteboard. The result of this activity is a collection of ideas from all groups.

For more ideas on group work activities, explore the Activity Database at ABLConnect, an extensive collection of resources and activities managed by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University.

Closing a discussion

It is important that students can identify clear and accurate information generated by the discussion. At the end of the discussion, you can ask your students to share their takeaways and write them on the whiteboard. You can also revisit small group contributions to discuss and convey how today’s materials and findings will inform future discussions. Self-assessment activities can nurture students’ metacognitive awareness of their participation and learning. You can use reflective activities such as the exit ticket, the muddiest point, or closing reflection freewriting, or students can complete the KWL grid they started at the beginning of the session (what I know about the topic, what I want to know, and what I have learned). Consider inviting your students to summarize the central points and reflections and pose new questions for future discussions.

💡 Draft a plan for an upcoming discussion:

Outline a short agenda for the next discussion you will be teaching, including approximate times for activities.

 

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