Discussion in the College Classroom

Getting Your Students Engaged and Participating in Person and Online

Jay R. Howard

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118571743
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Keep students engaged and actively learning with focused, relevant discussion

Second only to lecture as the most widely used instructional strategy, there's no better method than classroom discussion to actively engage students with course material. Most faculty are not aware that there is an extensive body of research on the topic from which instructors can learn to facilitate exceptional classroom discussion. Discussion in the College Classroom is a practical guide which utilizes that research, frames it sociologically, and offers advice, along with a wide variety of strategies, to help you spark a relevant conversation and steer it toward specific learning goals.

Applicable across a spectrum of academic disciplines both online and on campus, these ideas will help you overcome the practical challenges and norms that can undermine discussion, and foster a new atmosphere of collaborative learning and critical thinking. Higher education faculty are increasingly expected to be more intentional and reflective in their pedagogical practice, and this guide shows you how to meet those expectations, improve student outcomes, and tackle the perennial problem of lagging engagement.

Thoroughly grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning, this book gives you concrete guidance on integrating discussion into your courses. You'll learn to:

• Overcome the challenges that inhibit effective discussion
• Develop classroom norms that facilitate discussion
• Keep discussion focused, relevant, and productive
• Maximize the utility of online student discussions

The kind of discussion that improves learning rarely arises spontaneously. Like any pedagogical technique, careful planning and smart strategy are the keys to keeping students focused, engaged, and invested in the conversation. Discussion in the College Classroom helps you keep the discussion applicable to the material at hand while serving learning goals.

Chapter 1
Introduction: Why Bother with Classroom Discussion?

The class session has been moving along nicely as you cover important material in your lecture when your students' body language tells you that you are losing them. Some are propping up their heads with arms and hands. Others have stopped making eye contact as they gaze off to the side. Faces glaze over while students shuffle distractedly in their seats. It appears a few are texting—only semi-covertly. Others appear to be surfing the web on their laptops—probably checking Facebook again. Yours has been the only voice heard in the classroom for at least 30 minutes now. So, on impulse, you decide to switch gears. Instead of pointing out the pros and cons of the competing perspectives you have just summarized for the class, in hopes of waking them up and getting their brains back into gear, you ask students to compare and contrast the perspectives.

But your worst fears materialize. You are greeted by blank stares, if the students look at you at all. You pause, hoping at least one student will speak up and venture to offer a comment. You rephrase the question to give students a little more time to consider their views on the matter. You notice the hum of the fluorescent lights as you begin to feel the uncomfortable silence. It's clear now that most are trying to avoid eye contact with you lest they be called upon. Some are thumbing through the textbook looking for clues as to how they should respond. Internally, you are shaking your head. Isn't it obvious that the question calls for students to compare and contrast, to weigh the merits of the two perspectives, identify strengths and weaknesses, and bring their own values and judgments to bear on them? There is no single “correct answer” to be found in the pages of the text. After a seeming eternity, you give up and begin to offer your own assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the competing perspectives, hoping that at the least you are modeling the process of comparing and contrasting.

After class, you find yourself asking, why is this discussion stuff so difficult? With all the talk at faculty development workshops about the need to engage students in the classroom and how students supposedly both enjoy such pedagogies and learn more effectively when they are utilized, why doesn't it seem to work for you when theory meets the hard realities of classroom practice? Why not simply stick to the lecture? You can cover more material that way. Why struggle to get students talking when you're not convinced they will have anything worthwhile to say? Is the effort required to engage students worth it?

Yet, there are other times when students take you by surprise. A thoughtful discussion erupts in class seemingly spontaneously. Students get excited about a topic and engage with energy and enthusiasm. They may not always be the most well-informed on the topic, but at least they are showing interest. Of course, some students speak up more than others. In fact, it would be nice if a couple of them spoke less frequently, and what about Tameka sitting in the second row toward the side? She turned in what was easily the best paper in the class on that last assignment. Why won't she share her insights? Still there are enough students participating to have a thoughtful, well-rounded conversation on the topic. Sometimes students take the class on tangents that are particularly insightful. Where did that come from? It's clear that a number have actually read the assignment by their references to the book. This is what makes college teaching so rewarding! It's one of those moments when students “own” their education and seize opportunities to learn—not just from you, the faculty member, but from each other. You leave class energized, affirmed, and renewed in your commitment to facilitate student learning and to develop their critical thinking skills.

On the walk back to your office, you ponder, what can I do to ensure exciting, helpful conversations like these happen more frequently? They seem to be spontaneous, not easily created. Sure, sometimes you succeed in igniting such beneficial discussions, but you're not getting any younger. It's getting increasingly hard to predict what topics or what aspects of a topic will grab the attention of students and spark that exciting moment of learning in your classes.

If you have found yourself in similar situations, both times when discussions fall flat and times when they succeed in unexpected ways, you are not alone. The majority of college and university faculty members take teaching and learning seriously. We want to do well by our students. We want them to learn and we want to help. We find intrinsic value and excitement in our discipline's content and we want our students to share in that excitement. Igniting the spark that creates the blaze of engaged learning and critical thinking is one of the great rewards of being a college professor. Yet it sometimes seems like a one-way street—we do all the work in the attempt to make learning happen as our students sit by passively waiting to be spoon-fed.

Facilitating an effective discussion in class feels like hard work sometimes. Is it worth it? Are the benefits sufficient to justify the effort? How can discussions be managed in such a way as to increase the likelihood of success and avoid those painfully awkward silences or one-word answers that do nothing more than barely scratch the surface?

Yes, effective discussions are hard work—all good teaching requires significant effort. Great teachers are made, not born. In this book I will argue that while facilitating effective discussions takes forethought, planning, and structure, it is well worth the effort and makes the experience of teaching much more enjoyable. However, too often faculty members assume that worthwhile discussions merely happen spontaneously in class. And sometimes they do. But just as an effective lecture takes preparation, planning, and structure in order to facilitate student learning, so does an effective discussion. An effective discussion in the college classroom is much less frequently the result of a lucky happenstance. It is more likely to be the result of forethought and intentional planning.

Benefits of Engaging Students in Discussion

The first and most important reason to tackle the hard work of facilitating an effective discussion is that students learn more as a result. This is a rather bold claim that will be supported as the book unfolds, but I want to point out here that discussion is one way in which faculty members can actively engage students in the classroom. And over the past 30 years with the expansion of scholarship of teaching and learning research in higher education, there is an abundance of evidence that points to the value of active learning and student engagement in facilitating learning (see, for example, Pascarella and Terenzini 1991, 2005).

Chickering and Gamson's (1987) summary of the research on effective classroom practices is one of the first and most influential efforts to draw attention to the value of active learning—one of their seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. Since that time scholars in many disciplines have been investigating and articulating the benefits of active learning. Kuh et al. (2005) conclude that student engagement is a key to academic success. They note that students learn more when they are intensely involved in their own education and have the opportunity to think about and apply what they are learning.

Prince (2004) in his review of the research concludes there is broad support for all forms of active learning. As an engineering educator, Prince (2004) notes that despite a tendency in his field to “push through as much material as possible” (p. 229), students will learn more if lectures are interrupted with brief activities that engage students. In their review of the research, Bonwell and Eison (1991) conclude that active learning strategies are comparable to lecture in terms of promoting mastery of content, but are superior to lecture in promoting the development of thinking and writing skills. To be engaged in active learning, students must do more than passively listen in class. They need to read, write, discuss, and solve problems while engaging in higher-order thinking skills such as evaluation, synthesis, and analysis (Bonwell and Eison 1991).

Discussion versus Participation

While active learning can take many forms, our primary focus here is on students' verbal participation in class discussions. While some faculty define participation as including things such as attending class or actively listening, when students verbally participate they maximize their engagement and their learning. Students can and do learn simply by attending class and absorbing what they can, by being prepared for class—having completed homework and reading assignments, and by being active listeners—carefully adhering to the presentation of ideas and insights by their professor and their classmates (Howard 2005). While Reda (2009) argues that some students value speaking and silence differently than does the contemporary culture of American higher education, when students verbally interact with the material, the professor, and their classmates they are most actively engaged and most likely to be learning and developing thinking skills. Nonetheless, as Reda (2009) cautions, speaking does not automatically result in learning. And some students may perceive demands to speak out in the classroom as a high-stakes, anxiety-inducing form of verbal testing. Therefore, it is important to remember that discussion occurs in many forms.

Participation in discussion can take the form of occasional questions or comments in the class as a whole, interacting with others in a small group or even pairs, or making more formal oral presentations to the class. Whereas large-group discussion might be perceived as quite threatening, participation in smaller groups or pairs may be perceived as safe by our more introverted students. The benefits of this participation in class discussion, whether in large or small groups, are well documented.

When students are actively participating in discussion they learn more than when they merely listen (Kuh et al. 2005). In two national surveys, Umbach and Wawrzynski (2005) found that students reported greater learning when faculty utilized active and collaborative learning pedagogies. On a smaller scale, Murray and Lang (1997) in their study of students in a psychology course found that students who participated more frequently in class discussion earned higher exam grades and students generally learned more when topics were taught using active participation compared to topics taught strictly by lecture. Kuh et al. (2005) stress the importance of students interacting with faculty, both inside and outside class, for development of thinking skills necessary for solving practical problems. In an intriguing study that utilized an experimental design in two zoology courses with pre- and post-test assessments, Bodensteiner (2012) found that students in the course that utilized discussion learned and retained information better, as well as felt more confidence in their answers, than students who received content-only instruction. Numerous additional studies have found that active participation in classroom discussion leads to greater student learning (Astin 1985; Johnson, Johnson, and Smith 1991; Kember and Gow 1994, McKeachie 1990).

In addition to increased learning, participation in class discussion also leads to the development of thinking skills. Smith (1977) found that student participation, encouragement, and peer-to-peer interaction was consistently and positively related to the development of critical thinking skills. Crone (1997), Garside (1996), and Greenlaw and DeLoach (2003) each found that active participation in discussion led to improvements in students' critical thinking.

Other benefits to students resulting from participation in class discussion include greater motivation (Junn 1994), improved communication skills (Berdine 1986; Dancer and Kamvounias 2005), and, not surprisingly, higher grades (Handelsman et al. 2005). In many cases, utilizing classroom discussion versus lecture alone makes class more interesting and enjoyable for both students and faculty. It also makes students co-creators in their own learning and promotes a more democratic classroom (Brookfield and Preskill 2005).

Brookfield and Preskill (2005, 21–22) summarize the many benefits of effective classroom discussion for student learning in 15 arguments.

1. It helps students explore a diversity of perspectives.
2. It increases students' awareness of and tolerance for ambiguity or complexity.
3. It helps students recognize and investigate their assumptions.
4. It encourages attentive, respectful listening.
5. It develops new appreciation for continuing differences.
6. It increases intellectual agility.
7. It helps students become connected to a topic.
8. It shows respect for students' voices and experiences.
9. It helps students learn the processes and habits of democratic discourse.
10. It affirms students as co-creators of knowledge.
11. It develops the capacity for the clear communication of ideas and meaning.
12. It develops habits of collaborative learning.
13. It increases breadth and makes students more empathetic.
14. It helps students develop skills of synthesis and integration.
15. It leads to transformation.

At a time when, judging by talking heads on cable TV and by partisan bloggers, many Americans seem to have lost the ability to engage in reasoned, respectful debate and dialogue, encouraging the development of skills and dispositions necessary for civil discourse is particularly important. College classrooms can and should be a place where the skills necessary to be an effective citizen are developed and practiced. Yet, as Brookfield and Preskill (2005) acknowledge, these benefits are not accrued automatically.

Challenges in Utilizing Classroom Discussion

Effective discussion that generates these rewards requires a set of classroom norms to facilitate them. When sociologists discuss the idea of norms, they are referring to unwritten “rules” that guide our behavior in social situations, that is, when we are interacting with other people. Typically, norms are taken for granted to such an extent that typically we notice them only when they are being violated...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• About the Author
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Why Bother with Classroom Discussion?
• Chapter 2: Is Anyone Really Paying Attention?
• Chapter 3: The Challenge of Dominant Talkers
• Chapter 4: Students' Differing Definitions of the Classroom
• Chapter 5: Making Online Discussion Work
• Chapter 6: To Grade or Not to Grade? And Other Conundrums
• Afterword
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement