Discussions

[Langue_doc]

My freshpeeps go over these six rules on the first day of class--excerpted from America Now: Short Readings from Recent Periodicals, ed Robert Atwan.

Participating in Class Discussion: Six Basic Rules

Discussion is a learned activity. It requires a variety of essential academic skills: speaking, listening, thinking, and preparing. The following six basic rules are vital to healthy and productive discussion.
1. Take an active speaking role.
Good discussion demands that everyone participates, not (as so often happens) just a vocal few. Many students remain detached from discussion because they are afraid to speak in a group. This fear is quite common—so common that psychological surveys show that speaking in front of a group is generally one of our worst fears. A leading communications consultant suggests that people choke up because they are more worried about how others will respond than what they themselves have to say. It helps to remember that most people will be more interested in what you say than in how you say it. Once you get over the initial fear of speaking in public, your speech skills will improve with practice.
2. Listen Attentively
No one who doesn't listen attentively can participate in group discussions. This may sound obvious, but think of how many senseless arguments you've had because either you or the person with whom you were talking completely misunderstood what was said. A good listener not only hears what someone is saying, but also understands why he or she is saying it. One of the most important things about listening is that it leads to one element that lively discussion depends on: good questions. When the interesting questions begin to emerge, you know good discussion has truly begun.
3. Examine all sides of an issue
Good discussion requires that we be patient with complexity. Difficult problems rarely have obvious and simple solutions, nor can they be easily summarized in popular slogans. Complex issues demand to be turned over in our minds so that we can see them from a variety of angles. Group discussion broadens our perspective and deepens our insight into difficult issues and ideas.
4. Suspend judgment
Class discussion is best conducted in an open-minded and tolerant spirit. To fully explore ideas and issues, you need to be receptive to the opinions of others, even when they contradict your own. Remember, discussion is not the same as debate. Its primary purpose is communication, not competition. In discussion, you are not necessarily trying to win everyone over to your point of view. The goal of group discussion should be to open up a topic so that everyone in the group is exposed to a spectrum of attitudes. Suspending judgment does not mean that you shouldn't hold a strong belief or opinion about an issue; it means that you should be willing to take into account rival beliefs or opinions. An opinion formed without an awareness of other points of view—one that has not been tested against contrary ideas—is not a strong opinion, but merely a stubborn one.
5. Avoid abusive or insulting language
Free and open discussion occurs only when we respect the beliefs and opinions of others. If we speak in ways that fail to show respect for differing viewpoints—if we resort to name-calling or use demeaning and malicious expressions, for example—not only do we embarrass ourselves, but we also close off the possibility for an intelligent and productive exchange of ideas. Contrary to what you might gather from some popular radio and television talk shows, shouting insults and engaging in hate speech are signs of verbal and intellectual bankruptcy. They are universally the last resort of someone who has nothing to say.
6.Come prepared.
Discussion is not merely random conversation. It demands a certain degree of preparation and focus. To participate in class discussion, you must consider assigned topics beforehand and read whatever is required. Develop the habit of reading with pen in hand, underlining key points and jotting down questions, impressions, and ideas in your notebook. The notes you bring to class will be an invaluable aid in group discussions.

[MarathonRunner]

I like these! Thankfully my students respect these in my third/fourth year courses, but they've gone through at least two professional practice courses by the time they get to me, which include these concepts, plus some additional ethics stuff for our profession.

Good concepts to keep in mind, even when not teaching.

[eigen]

I like these a lot.

Have you experimented with having the class work together with coming up with behavior guidelines?

[Langue_doc]

I like these a lot.

Have you experimented with having the class work together with coming up with behavior guidelines?

I haven't had to, so far. It's a SLAC where several of the students have jobs in addition to coming to class, so there haven't been any issues with classroom behavior. Attendance & Participation counts toward 10% of the overall grade, which also helps forestall disruptive behavior.

[eigen]

I've found sometimes having the class be involved in building behavior rules can make them more invested in them, but it isn't something I've done a lot, since it takes a good bit of extra time.

[Langue_doc]

Our students, especially freshpeeps (in this institution as well as previous ones) want instructors to "get on with the program" as most of them have jobs and other commitments and therefore expect the instructors to know how to be in charge of the classroom. Having the class come up with behavioral rules makes the instructor seem incomptent as well as waste of time. Infractions in my previous institutions have resulted in calling security, much to the relief of the class, as I discovered a couple of times. About 10 years or so ago I had a group of three disruptive students who would come prepared to disrupt the class. Once I had them under control (individual emails first, followed by emails copying the chair) I learnt that some of the other students expected me to have thrown the offenders out of class because they dreaded coming to class.

[apl68]

Our students, especially freshpeeps (in this institution as well as previous ones) want instructors to "get on with the program" as most of them have jobs and other commitments and therefore expect the instructors to know how to be in charge of the classroom. Having the class come up with behavioral rules makes the instructor seem incomptent as well as waste of time. Infractions in my previous institutions have resulted in calling security, much to the relief of the class, as I discovered a couple of times. About 10 years or so ago I had a group of three disruptive students who would come prepared to disrupt the class. Once I had them under control (individual emails first, followed by emails copying the chair) I learnt that some of the other students expected me to have thrown the offenders out of class because they dreaded coming to class.

It can be hard to strike a balance between allowing the disruptive a chance to straighten out, and putting one's foot down about not letting them ruin things for others.  I've had to ban several disruptive patrons from the library over the years.  By the time I finally canned them (After multiple warnings), I usually owed those they'd been making miserable an apology for not doing it sooner.  But that's a pretty serious step to take, and I'm really reluctant to take it.

Do forumites generally find getting discussions going a challenge, or are today's classes generally not too hard to draw out?  In my teaching assistant days, I found facilitating discussion sections by far the greatest challenge.  The occasional section that wasn't hard to get started was wonderful.  Elsewhere it was like trying to teach a class of the living dead.  And drawing out a reluctant class was something I was very poor at doing.  Occasionally students could be pretty cruel about calling that out on their end-of-semester evaluations....

[ciao_yall]

Our students, especially freshpeeps (in this institution as well as previous ones) want instructors to "get on with the program" as most of them have jobs and other commitments and therefore expect the instructors to know how to be in charge of the classroom. Having the class come up with behavioral rules makes the instructor seem incomptent as well as waste of time. Infractions in my previous institutions have resulted in calling security, much to the relief of the class, as I discovered a couple of times. About 10 years or so ago I had a group of three disruptive students who would come prepared to disrupt the class. Once I had them under control (individual emails first, followed by emails copying the chair) I learnt that some of the other students expected me to have thrown the offenders out of class because they dreaded coming to class.

It can be hard to strike a balance between allowing the disruptive a chance to straighten out, and putting one's foot down about not letting them ruin things for others.  I've had to ban several disruptive patrons from the library over the years.  By the time I finally canned them (After multiple warnings), I usually owed those they'd been making miserable an apology for not doing it sooner.  But that's a pretty serious step to take, and I'm really reluctant to take it.

Do forumites generally find getting discussions going a challenge, or are today's classes generally not too hard to draw out?  In my teaching assistant days, I found facilitating discussion sections by far the greatest challenge.  The occasional section that wasn't hard to get started was wonderful.  Elsewhere it was like trying to teach a class of the living dead.  And drawing out a reluctant class was something I was very poor at doing.  Occasionally students could be pretty cruel about calling that out on their end-of-semester evaluations....

If I put them in small groups and gave them a defined question or task,they were pretty engaged.

[Langue_doc]

I have small-group discussions, where each group is assigned one of the four or five questions from the current reading. A student from each group writes out the response, and another student presents the response to the class. There are follow-up questions/comments to the responses from the other groups. Topics for group discussions also include paragrahps to check for errors in style, formatting, and/or sentence structure. Groups spend no more than 10-15 minutes on their assigned discussions. Discussions come under "Attendance & Participation" which counts for 10% of the overall grade, so students find the six rules of discussion that I posted upthread to be quite helpful. I've never had students refuse to join a group for class discussions.

[MarathonRunner]

In third and fourth year courses, we come up with a class charter together, on how we will treat each other and how we want to be treated. It works very well. My upper year students are very engaged in course discussions and small group work. Students consistently say they have to study less for my exams as they already know the material due to all the active learning and small group discussions. They do have to report back to the entire class afterwards, and everyone has to contribute. Works for my program at my uni.