Facilitating Classroom Discussion 101

by Steven S. Vrooman

“Leading productive classroom discussions is difficult, as any one knows who has tried. Teaching future teachers to lead them is doubly difficult” (Parker & Hess, 2001, p. 273).

Me leading discussion at CalSAE 2019. I generally don't have photographers in my classrooms, so here's me at an educational session at a conference instead. Photo by Steve Pate-Newberry

Discussion-based teaching has repeatedly been demonstrated to achieve better learning outcomes than lecture or lecture + slidedecks (as typically measured as scores on exams), and we have known this pretty clearly since the 1950s (Gall & Gillett, 1980). For each university discipline, you can usually find research studies that show this for their content and learning objectives; for example in medicine (Costa, van Rensberg & Rushton, 2007) and nursing (Johnson & Mighten, 2005).

But it can be hard to do, and many instructors are a bit anxious about the method, as it seems to give over a lot of control of the classroom to the students. Plus, how do you know when you are prepared?

This document is intended to be an introduction to the method, with some tips for how to do it effectively.

1.      Introduction to the discussion method

The idea is that you keep the discussion focused on your learning outcomes while not stifling the participants, especially because they might just go beyond your preparatory thinking. In the best cases both you and the participants can learn something new. You also want to help participants feel supported and valued at the same time as they are intellectually challenged. Here are some key things to think about in that:

a.      The structure

i.                    The overview

My favorite professor in college, Dr. Hanink, would be writing his lecture notes on the board while we walked in. When class started, he’d perch on an empty student desk near the front and give us a short overview lecture or never more than 5 minutes. Then he’d turn to discussion. It is imperative that you keep any introductory lecture material as short as possible, so as to keep student energy up for discussion. We’ve all been in a “discussion” class where the instructor took the first half of the class on a lecture and then broke to “what do you think?” It’s never quite as good. That means you will often have to leave off important information or reflection for throwing in as the discussion goes on or in pre-planned mini-lectures.

ii.                  Mini-lectures

These should be about 2-3 minutes and should ideally be placed right when the conversation in class seems to need them, to help “deepen the focus” (Jacobs, Schimmel, Masson, & Harvill, 2016, p. 173). For example, there may be a historical or research example that will help clarify an issue the class is discussing. If you’ve planned and lead the interaction well, you will know you will need to give this information to the participants, but you are giving it “just in time,” instead of dumping it all out at the beginning of the session. Careful! Too many of these or if you go on too long and the participants will begin to think the discussion is just a sham to “decorate” a pre-planned lecture. There should always be a place for shared feelings of discovery.

iii.                Summation

It is important to help pull together the important ideas that came up in class at the end to 1) reinforce the content and 2) demonstrate to the students that you really were listening and that their ideas mattered. How do you remember all of this? You can take notes yourself as the discussion goes on (helps if you are sitting down, which is great way to shift the visual environment of the class to one of collaboration). I’ve also done it where you write the big ideas on the chalkboard as the discussion goes. This serves to really reinforce students who make the board, but it can also be demoralizing for others, so this is a riskier approach.

b.      How to listen

i.                    Nonverbals & verbals

Look and seem interested. It helps to do this if you are interested! Nonverbals like head nodding, eye contact and quick verbals cues like “hmm” or “yes”

ii.                  Decentering yourself

Sometimes you want the group to just discuss on without you. It is a great moment when they take control of the discussion and ownership of the ideas and begin to respond to each other. To get there, you have to avoid the habit of chiming in a comment or a summary after each participant speaks. If you can’t do that, Dr. Hanink’s approach was to shift the duty of response to another in class he knew would have something to say about it based on their previous comments: “Steve, you argued for a different explanation of xxxxx a few minutes ago. What do you think of Tiffiny’s comments just now?” This had the added benefits of 1) demonstrating that he was listening to everyone closely and 2) keeping the students on their toes (you never knew when you’d be called upon to comment on someone’s idea!).

iii.                Silence

If it’s not awkward, it’s not learning. Students very quickly, like within a few minutes, learn whether or not you are serious about their participation. If you ask a question, look around the room a bit and then answer it, they will get the timing down. They will know how long they need to wait to make it so that you will just ramble on. Use looooong silences. Like it begins to feel like no one will ever talk again. Don’t break it. Someone will say something. Usually, “What was the question again?” Then you can tell them that you will not answer your own questions, etc.

iv.                Summary and reflection

In a few cases, though, you need to intervene in a conversation. Two common reasons are 1) If it is going off the rails in terms of content, or 2) if people are beginning to feel uncomfortable, perhaps because conflict or argument is developing. The first step in these cases is to begin summarizing people’s contributions and then reflecting them back to the participants who said them. As Jacobs, Schimmel, Masson, & Harvill (2016) point out, this is often to help people become more aware of what they are saying as well as the impact that is having on the room. I have often had moments in class when I do this and the student immediately says something like “I didn’t say that . . .”, to which the class often gently laughs or corrects. That’s when you can chime in, “Sometimes it is easy for a comment to get away from us, right? Let’s backtrack a bit and clarify what we really want to say…”

v.                  Questioning

Sometimes we need to prod students for more. Perhaps they just said something awesome and we want them to say a bit more. Perhaps they said something terrible or wrong and we need to mark that as such and move on. Perhaps something is confusing, either in terms of “What did that person just say?” or in terms of the ideas (remember, sometimes discussions will go beyond the realm of what you know, and you might need to ask a question to keep up and to learn, as well). Perhaps you see this as the opportunity for a great segue into something you really wanted to talk about. A specific question is sometimes really helpful. Here’s a few things to try to liven up your Q&A game (all taken from Spradley, 1979):

·         Example/experience questions. “Can you give me an example of that in real life?” “Can anyone tell me about an experience like that for them?”

·         Language questions. “Steve just called something ‘lit.’ Can someone define that for me?”

·         Cover term/included term questions. “Are there different kinds of ‘trolling’?” “Are ‘defensiveness’ and ‘passive aggressivness’ the same kind of thing, or not?”

c.       Managing difficulty

i.                    Silent participants

The fear of being called on is real. Many of us have it. As a discussion leader, we often overaccomodate this kind of thing. Some research which has escaped my memory is that turn-taking is often the primary fear for nervous students. Getting the bravery to talk in class and making sure you know the material and what you are going to say is hard enough, but figuring out how and when to raise your hand and take your turn and think of how it relates to what came before is sometimes paralyzing. Calling on a quit student helps with this. Additionally, “cold-calling” students, especially when you establish that precedent early, students all begin to participate more voluntarily over time and report greater comfort with class discussion over time (Dallimore, Hertenstein & Platt, 2013). Those authors’ further work (2019) indicates that cold-calling helps the instructor level the playing field in classroom discussions that are dominated by straight white men, by both purposefully calling on underrepresented folks in the discussion and by the impact of that, that everyone feels more emboldened to own the space. Because we’ve all seen what’s next…

ii.                  Quieting the stage hogs

I once had a straight white male student who always was the first with something to say. One day, toward the end of the semester, his girlfriend, who sat next to him, elbowed him in the middle of one of his comments and said, loud enough for the whole class, “Quiet, you haven’t read or even picked up the book since Ferbruary.” How do you shut down a student in such a way that they keep wanting to participate and don’t feel attacked? It’s hard. You have to base it on your relationship with the student. Something like an email or a conversation after class can work with some. Actually interrupting them works for others. One of my old professors, Dr. Olsen, who taught us to teach in grad school, told us to always walk away from students who are speaking. Our tendency is to walk toward them, unconsciously, and this does encourage people to speak a bit more, but we usually should fight this and start walking away. And if we can walk away very close to students who are not talking right at the moment, especially if we know they will want to comment on what is being said when the stage hog quiets, it emboldens them to step up and interrupt. Obviously this doesn’t work if you are all sitting in a circle, but this is such an effective technique it is one of the key reasons I don’t use the circle thing in my classes.

iii.                Handling the horrible

This is when someone says something sexist or racist or homophobic or etc., etc., etc. Sometimes the class will respond. Sometimes it leads to conflict, which is the next section. But, often, students will get silent and all look up at you, the discussion leader, like “So what are you gonna do about that?” You should prepare students for this in a syllabus, that you might have to shut a person down for the good of the class if it gets disruptive. Hopefully you have the kind of environment where you could say things like, “You can see how people might think that sounds racist, right? How would you respond?” But that is hard to get to. I find it helpful to tell stories at that moment about how I said something awful in a class, but not everyone is comfortable with that. What is important, though, is that if the students aren’t stepping up, you have to handle it on your own. I once saw a teacher in a high school setting turn and ask the women in the class what they thought when a student said something misogynistic. That is not okay! These are the moments when you need to assert your control.

iv.                Managing conflict

Often things will work out if you are applying a good dose of the previously outlined techniques. But sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes you have to shut things down. Keep in your mind the idea that you might shut down a conversation and lecture through the rest or just dismiss class early for everyone to cool down before we continue. If you know you are ready to do those things, you actually rarely have to do them. After the 2016 election, I had some heated exchanges happen between my students in a class when politics came up. At a certain point I had to raise my voice to be heard and said, “Stop! Xxxxx, I need you to stop interrupting and shouting over people. What are you trying to do here? I just did the same thing to you. I’m sure you don’t like how this feels. This is a class, not Twitter, and I know you can make your point a little differently. I then emailed the student after class to try to mend fences. These are hard moments. But I have been teaching for 25 years and only have had to do this 3 or 4 times, so don’t let the specter of this haunt you. That student and I are still in contact, and that moment and how we talked afterwards were real learning experiences.

2.      How to prepare topics/questions for discussion

There are no easy steps to this. It depends on the material you are covering from the reading. My typical version of this is to use the opening small lecture to remind them of a key idea or two and then to give them 1) an interesting story or example, 2) a debate or controversy, or 3) an object and ask them to respond. Your stories can be personal or come from your research and preparation. *This* is what you are doing to prep for class instead of making a 137 slide PowerPoint. Examples can be pop culture or social media and you can use slides for those. Debates are an easy way to start a class, but you can’t just stay in that mode, which is about argument and conflict. You have to use that to break the ice and then move on. Objects. I have used all kinds of weird toys and things from my office. I have used really old books. Anything that relates to the matter at hand. Your goal is just to get them started.

In any case, even if you have a list of learning outcomes or questions in front of you, you never want them to just feel like you are burning through an agenda and they have to be along for the ride. They will begin to shut down so you can get through your list faster. It is never fun to feel pulled on the tide of an instructor’s goals.

3.      Reporting

i.                    Ideas

If you are to be evaluated for your discussion work, it is useful to return to your questions or goals, though, and to be able to give a quick representative summary of how it went. For example:

“On the question of how social media feeds are like scrapbooks of old and of their 1998-2008 revival, they noted ways that we were like the old, and bit how we were different. But no one had enough experience with the later scrapbooks, so we will need to get back to that with some examples to help.”

ii.                  Process

You should also be able to describe how it went on the above detailed elements, “b. How to listen” and “c. Managing difficulty,” as well as their sub-parts. For example:

“I was good on nonverbals and decentering and silence, but I talked too long in summary/reflection and questioning, which I then used to spring into mini-lectures that went on too long. I need to bring out more student participation next time by talking less. For the other stuff, very little bad happened, although I did have a few more silent students than usual, probably because *I* was the stage hog! I just need to work a bit harder to get better discussion going. It was good, but not great. We needed more depth.”

The discussion method of teaching is one of the most effective, most rewarding pedagogies we can use. But it is scary. In a lecture, especially with PowerPoint, it is hard to tell whether or not they are really learning. They may be taking notes, but how do you know what that means?!? But in a discussion you can tell how it is going almost all the time, and when it is not great, it is hard to deal with. But I’d rather know now than find out after the exam that they weren’t paying attention!

You will make mistakes. And they will see them. So you have to have some humanity, some humility and a decent approximation of a sense of humor. Good luck!

References

Costa, M. L., van Rensberg, L., & Rushton, N.  (2007). Does teaching style matter? A randomized trial of group discussion versus lectures in orthopaedic undergraduate teaching. Medical Education, 41, 214-217. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2929.2006.02677.x.

Dallimore, E. J., Hertenstein, J. H., & Platt, M. B. (2013). Impact of cold-calling on student voluntary participation. Journal of Management Education, 37, 305-341. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1052562912446067.

Dallimore, E. J., Hertenstein, J. H., & Platt, M. B. (2019). Leveling the playing field: How cold-calling affects class discussion gender equity. Journal of Education and Learning, 8(2), 12-24. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1207291.

Gall, M. D., & Gillett, M. (1980). The discussion method in classroom teaching. Theory Into Practice, 19(20), 98-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405848009542881.

Jacobs, E. E., Schimmel, C. J., Masson, R. L., & Harvill, R. L. (2016). Group counseling: Strategies and skills. Boston, MA: Cengage.

Johnson, J. P., & Mighten, A. (2005). A comparison of teaching strategies: Lecture notes combined with structured group discussion versus discussion only. Journal of Nursing Education, 44, 319-322. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16094791.

Parker, W. C., & Hess, D. (2001). Teaching with and for discussion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17, 273-289. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0742-051X(00)00057-3.

Spradley, J. P. (1979). The ethnographic interview. Fort Worth: Harcourt.