Discussions

From Brock University Teaching Wiki

Getting students to organize and integrate the ideas and concepts they have learned from readings and lectures is the central goal of a discussion. A good discussion requires participants to engage in the higher cognitive functions. In a lecture, the students are passive receivers of information; in a discussion they should be active participants in an intellectual endeavor. This central goal and the student behaviour expected should be stated at the beginning of the discussion session. The success of a discussion session relies on the quality of the professor/student relationship and requires an honest and open interaction between students and professor. The benefits of a discussion are the promotion of independent thinking, student motivation and student participation.

The dynamics of a good discussion require the leader to follow a disciplined procedure until students become comfortable enough with the discussion format for the leader to improvise. To attain the objectives of the discussion session, students should have the data necessary for the discussion, the leader should have planned a series of questions related to the content of the course, and the leader should respond to students' answers in such a way as to encourage participation. This last point is most crucial, since your response will probably influence both the student offering the comment and those observing the interaction. There are other considerations to be aware of when using the discussion format:

• allow students to react to each other's responses
• after posing a question and before calling on a respondent, wait a few seconds so all the students can formulate a response
• don't require students to raise their hands before speaking if the class is small
• never belittle student questions
• never belittle student responses
• don't get sidetracked by individual students: when students wish to plead special interests, they should be invited to stay after class or stop by during office hours
• don't lapse into lecture; this is one of the single greatest obstacles to student participation
• when you have a large class, it is best to separate students into small groups: after the students have considered the questions in small groups, it is easier to obtain full participation during a whole-class discussion.

The use of discussion requires that you develop good communication skills. It also requires that you sense the mood and climate of the class. To be effective, discussion should be used for an intended purpose, not simply because it provides a voice for the students. The use of discussion should also be weighed against certain constraints such as time, number of objectives to attain, and physical space. For instance, discussion is not an effective means for transmitting information. It can be very effective for fostering application and exercising critical thinking and communication skills. The time factor is the most imposing constraint on discussion. Trying to provide "air time" for all the students and covering the course content may prove difficult.

A balance between lecturing and discussion often serves best, since this meets the needs of both the dependent and independent students and, at the same time, facilitates both knowledge acquisition and comprehension, as well as fostering the higher cognitive objectives.