Teaching graduate seminars

[Hegemony]

I've been teaching since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, and at my place, graduate seminars have always been run the same way.  They meet once a week for three hours, you assign a big chonk of reading, and the graduate students are professional enough to do the work and come prepared.  In my own seminars I divide up some of the theorists by student, so that everyone reads a bit of the theorist but one student takes on a heavier load: "Jason, you explain the Lacan in depth to us in week 4, Julia, you explain the Levinas to us in week 5," etc.  And being conscientious and ambitious enough to get into graduate school, they read dutifully (even if they might have skimmed a bit, which is understandable), they came with ideas and questions, they discussed.

But last year when I did this — the same way I have done it since the dawn of time — it was a disaster.  By the third week I could tell that they weren't even doing enough of the reading to fake it.  Running the discussion was like pulling teeth.  Nobody wanted to say anything.  They sat there listlessly.  When it came their turn to explain Lacan and Levinas, they gave a minimal 5-minute account and then nobody said anything.  You'd have thought someone had forced them at gunpoint to go to graduate school and they were striking in silent protest.  I was tearing my hair out.  In my office they complained that I wasn't making them talk.  And that the material wasn't interesting enough.  And the readings were too long.  And that since their fellow students weren't making an effort, they couldn't be expected to discuss all on their own.  One of my colleagues reports with despair that the same thing happened in her graduate seminar.  I gather that the times have changed and more structure and coaxing is needed. 

So now I am living in dread of this year's seminar.  What do you all do in your graduate seminars?  Should I just be running it like an undergraduate class?  What if even that doesn't work?  I need a better sense of how graduate seminars are run these days, since clearly my notion of them is outdated.

[PTonTT]

Are these graded?  I think grad students are still very "A" grade motivated.  Could you include a participation grade that would impact their final grade?

[Caracal]

Are you sure this wasn't just a dud group? Maybe you just got a weirdly untalkative bunch. Is this a doctoral program? If so, I can't imagine having a participation grade. Grad students should do the reading because they care about it, or at least because of their terrible imposter syndrome. If you need a participation grade to motivate you, you should go do something else.

[Kron3007]

Are you sure this wasn't just a dud group? Maybe you just got a weirdly untalkative bunch. Is this a doctoral program? If so, I can't imagine having a participation grade. Grad students should do the reading because they care about it, or at least because of their terrible imposter syndrome. If you need a participation grade to motivate you, you should go do something else.

I have a participation component in my grad proposal seminar course right now.  This is to ensure attendance more than anything since in my lab/field based STEM field their research is the top priority and coursework is seem by many (including myself to some extent) as a distraction from their main objective.  I suspect if I didn't have this, some would only show up for their own presentation so they can keep their research on course. 

That being said, I find most of our students quite engaged in discussion based courses, so I dont know that it is necessarily a product of the times the OP is experiencing.     

[Puget]

For may mixed grad/advanced undergrad seminar, they have to answer a "thought question" or two in a CMS forum based on the assigned readings, posted by 5 PM the evening before so I can look at them-- they are graded on a incomplete/half-assed/good enough scale and I sometimes comment on their responses a bit to clear up a point of confusion or answer a question (they also have the option of also asking a question). They are worth 15% of their grade so they can't blow them off. 

This works well for ensuring that at least most of them have done the reading, gives me a good idea about what they understand and don't, and gives a jumping off places for discussion in class. I find this more useful than open ended "reading responses" which are easy to BS without doing much reading and don't get them thinking about the key things I want them to get out of the readings. A lot of students comment in their course evaluations that they resented doing them at first but realized that they kept them honest with doing and thinking about the readings and came to really value them.

I also intersperse mini-lectures with discussion questions and student presentations on papers not read by the rest of the class (the students then are responsible for posing discussion questions and leading discussion on their paper). I can't imagine just a three hour block of unstructured discussion working well for me.

[nonntt]

It could just be a bum cohort. Maybe a lot will drop out, and the few who are motivated will stick around.

Or another thought. Has the number of applications to your grad program declined? Has the department been admitting students it would have declined in the past? This might be your new normal in that case.

[KiUlv]

I'm teaching a graduate seminar this year, and my set-up is similar. This is my first year at this university, so I am generally following the format from the previous professor. We do the reading, have a "lecture/conversation," and then students lead small group discussions. They have to turn in a proposal for how they'll run the discussion ahead of time for my approval. I model how the discussion should go during the first few sessions. So far, it seems to be going ok, but they were not a very participatory group in the beginning. They wanted to sit and take notes. It's gotten a bit better. But the type of classes I'm teaching have graduate students from very different places in life (age, experience, socioeconomic background, race/ethnicity, etc.), so I think it takes some time to feel comfortable.

[dr_codex]

I've been having long conversations about how to replicate this kind of seminar format in online courses. "Discussions" that are really dissections of position papers aren't anywhere near the same thing.

As I've reflected on this, I realize that almost none of my own grad profs actually did the "free-wheeling" discussion of Lacan et. al. Some did versions of the micro-assignments, which I also resented but which taught me a lot; sometimes these encouraged all of us to focus on the same things, others were designed to distribute the work around. Other courses had student-led class portions; one did group/team teaching. Only one professor gave formal lectures, mostly reading chapters of a book in progress. (He was new to teaching, and I hope he's given that up. They were deadly.) But all of them had "mini-lectures" ready to hand, either typed up or ready to go at the appropriate moment.

The trick, as always, was to look like the conversation could go anywhere, but to provide enough nudging that it didn't go too far off into the abyss.

At some point, graduate students have to take responsibility for their own work in courses. This is true of all seminars. At the very least they should be able to formulate questions that distract the prof into digressions. Or, to steer conversations towards more familiar terrain.

One factor that makes a difference, everything else unchanged, is the size of the group. 4 students or 16 makes a huge difference.

dc

[apostrophe]

I think (hope) you just had a dud class and recommend you change nothing, unless you really want to put in extra work, or you can plan a guest lecture or something to break up the monotony if you fear it might happen again.

If they are this unprepared to meet expectations again, you can cancel class. I have no sympathy for graduate students in the humanities who can't handle a basic seminar format. I might be mean.

[Golazo]

I think coercion is in order, as others have suggested, in terms of graded responsibilities--say 15%. It might help to give students a couple of specific questions--ie what is the most and least convincing part of Simone de Beauvoir's critique of Levinas? rather than just "present on chapter 4-6. Give the first couple of people who give worthless presentations 0s or at least 50/100 and then given the an opportunity to do it over toward the end of the semester. Word will get around.

One of my professors, the best scholar at PHDu, once remarked that the difference between a PHD student and a random person on the street is that the student is ready to have an informed discussion because they are prepared. If you are not willing to do this, you can always be a person on the street... 

[nescafe]

I haven't been teaching long enough to offer a graduate seminar (yet, my first one is scheduled this year), but my PhD seminars were arranged in exactly the same way you describe, hegemony. With two key differences: 1) we also submitted 500 word reading responses (graded largely on completion) each week, and 2) the presenters were also responsible for writing 10 discussion questions to lead the class with after their presentations.

It sounds like more work (and it is) but it forces them to think through the readings before class. If they are quiet once they get to seminar, then you can always make recourse to "so, what did you all write in your responses this week?"

[Parasaurolophus]

I'm very late to the party, but here goes!


I don't teach graduate students, and I don't have any solutions in my back pocket, either. Your group of students was probably just an anomalous blip.

My graduate classes were mostly run as (I think!) you describe yours. Students were usually responsible for presenting one reading each, and fostering discussion; sometimes there'd be a lecture, followed by student presentations of supplementary material. A few classes included weekly reading responses, which were meant to be read to the class to initiate discussion.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think it's a great model. My experience of those classes was that they were almost all pretty marginal in terms of quality, and generally lacking in instruction. It worked best when the class was on a specialized topic and everyone in it was interested in that subfield, but the more students who were taking the class to fulfill requirements, the worse it got--and the more undergraduates were in the class, the worse it got (note: I'm not against having some UG participants, but when the grad students are outnumbered by UGs, it's just not the same class any more).

If I were teaching graduate students, I think I would try to address some of these issues by having different assessment tracks based on the different kinds students in the class. It would be a fair bit of work to set up, but I do think it would do some good.

So, for example, the undergrads might have to produce a couple of review articles and a final paper, and complete a final exam, while those who intend to claim the subfield as an area of teaching competence would have to produce a couple of detailed sample syllabi (and present them to the group for input/critique), and take the lead on teaching content for a couple of classes. Students who intend to work in the subfield might have to give a conference-style presentation on a conference-length paper, give a conference-style comment on someone else's paper and presentation, and generate an article-length final paper. And for students just taking the course for the distribution requirements, there could be an exam track with a review article and a few exams.

My other thought for sprucing things up would be to shift the class's focus somewhat. It sounds like the course is built along a "great man" model that focuses primarily on theorists. Maybe a topic-based approach would be more engaging instead; you can still get the theorists in there, but they'll be more obviously part of a scholarly discussion, with lots of applied cases to refer to and room to expand the discussion to contemporary takes on the subject.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't say it (but I know it's a bit feather-ruffly, hence the smaller print): I don't know much about the current state of literary theory as a discipline (if that's what this is), but I do know that the philosophy of literature is in a boom period (and has been for some time, really), and that there has not been much uptake outside of philosophy. Literary theory, in particular, sort of abandoned it just before things started getting interesting in the analytic tradition in the 1970s and 1980s (started: it's all waaaaaay more interesting now). Honestly, contemporary philosophy of literature is smart and sophisticated and relevant in ways that really put those other aged theorists to shame. So, you know. You could always get new theorists! Or, rather, more theory and fewer theorists. :)

[Hegemony]

I was actually making up my examples — it's not in a field that has any theorists that anyone bothers to discuss, mercifully.  I mean, it has scholars, but the attention is on the topic (a quirky subfield of history) rather than on theory. 

I have met some of the students for the seminar (which starts in January) in a different context this fall, and they are very much wet behind the ears — all just starting out.  So it seems increasingly clear that they'll need some direction.  The apprehension is not pleasant, but maybe it will work out...

[dr_codex]

I was actually making up my examples — it's not in a field that has any theorists that anyone bothers to discuss, mercifully.  I mean, it has scholars, but the attention is on the topic (a quirky subfield of history) rather than on theory. 

I have met some of the students for the seminar (which starts in January) in a different context this fall, and they are very much wet behind the ears — all just starting out.  So it seems increasingly clear that they'll need some direction.  The apprehension is not pleasant, but maybe it will work out...

I've started teaching in a multi-disciplinary MS program. There's no guarantee that students are even familiar with the norms in my broad field, let alone in the chronological period, to say nothing of the sub-fields of the courses. My approach is to send out some suggested readings, depending on where they thought they most needed some grounding. I don't know if any of them did it, but it makes me feel better about starting from a more advanced position. Also, because my students are less advanced (no PhD, not specialists in my field), I find myself giving a lot more direction upfront.

I have to say, I never knew as a student what I was supposed to "get" out of an assigned presentation reading. In some ways, that made for more interesting classes -- students' readings weren't filtered through a particular lens -- but it could also lead to some very diffuse and meandering discussions, as has been pointed out by Parasaurolophus. If the course is a Voyage of Discovery, that's great; if it's aiming in some direction, that's not so great.

[apostrophe]

I was actually making up my examples — it's not in a field that has any theorists that anyone bothers to discuss, mercifully.  I mean, it has scholars, but the attention is on the topic (a quirky subfield of history) rather than on theory. 

I have met some of the students for the seminar (which starts in January) in a different context this fall, and they are very much wet behind the ears — all just starting out.  So it seems increasingly clear that they'll need some direction.  The apprehension is not pleasant, but maybe it will work out...

Yikes. Maybe you can structure the seminar on a trajectory of increasing independence, frontloading the term with guidance and then turning them loose toward mid-term.