Teacher articles
Ted Talk on Khan Academy 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB40AC55D5CB1BC06&feature=plcp
khan academy US History http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghgPq2wjQUQ
Reconstruction to Depression http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmBV87XA52Q&feature=relmfu
WWII to present Khan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2eKaxU-8kA&feature=relmfu
http://chronicle.com/article/Getting-Students-to-Talk/126826/
Teachinghistory.org http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/teaching-guides/24299
March 21, 2011
Getting Students to Talk
By David Brooks
I like to eavesdrop when I’m on campus. And there’s usually plenty of opportunity. I overhear pairs and trios of students chatting as they walk between buildings, or I try to pick out bits of conversation from the cacophony of voices that professors have to cut through to commence class in a big lecture hall. Doing so reminds me that students have plenty to say.
Yet once a dozen or so of those same people sit down in a “discussion” section, silence prevails. As teaching assistants, we are supposed to get students to reflect on what they’re learning, to give them a chance to talk instead of be talked at, and to share with them a first taste of the graduate-school seminar experience.
So how do we stimulate the kind of vibrant conversation in the classroom that we hear every day outside of it?
Require students to recite passages. The first time I walked into a discussion section as a new teaching assistant, I told students they were going to have to memorize and recite a passage from one of the course’s weekly reading assignments. They gawked at me. Once I explained that their essay exams in American history required evidence from both lectures and readings, they understood that memorizing a passage was like having one piece of proof, at least, in the bag.
It was impressive to grade exams that included direct quotes from Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Frederick Douglass. But I had other reasons for that exercise in parroting. For one, most students memorized some of the key portions of the documents we read. Which meant that they kicked off each discussion by sharing the crux of the reading with the rest of the class. Nailing down the thesis or main points early made it easier to tackle questions of evidence, rhetorical style, or connections to lecture material.
For another thing, making students face their peers and recite passages written hundreds of years ago was about the most nerve-racking thing I could imagine requiring, without inviting complete mutiny. Once the blushing, flustering, and staring at the floor subsided and students got through the ordeal, simply talking from the safety of their seats was, if not a relief, much easier.
I forced memorization on students more than once in the four years I served as a TA in my history department, but I also tinkered with other ways of spurring discussion sections. Those one-credit requirements accompanying our department’s survey courses were fairly common at our university, as well as at many others.
My fellow TA’s in the sciences oversee weekly one-hour labs or discussion periods. When I’ve asked them and my peers in history about guiding discussion sections, we’ve shared the struggle of getting undergraduates to talk. For me, making them recite from memory was a good beginning.
I maintain that memorizing someone else’s words or thoughts is not much different from a musician’s committing melodies to memory. It is the precursor to improvising.
Have students give talks. Having students prepare and deliver short, extemporaneous talks related to the assigned material improved our class discussions as well. Because I let students pick their own topics for those talks, they owned the material. Sometimes I knew nothing about their topic, such as when one young lady discussed the cultural and political influence of 19th-century Swedish immigrants on frontier life in the United States.
At best, the exercise put students in the role of teacher, giving them a chance to ask and field questions. It associated a sense of authority with talking in class. Every single time I’ve required such talks, both the presentations and the questions that followed have exceeded the time I allotted. And they’ve done so because of genuine student interest.
Hand out questions in advance, and ease in to discussion. When it comes to fostering good discussions about assigned reading, it is essential to give students questions or themes to think about before they read. When I’ve failed to do that, class discussions are usually a disaster. Without reading prompts, students seem to retain less of what they’ve read, for lack of focus. And unprompted reading leaves students, literally, on different pages: Some recall specific details, others, overarching arguments, while most come to the discussion with an unorganized smattering of recollections.
Even when I’ve provided prompts, I like to ease into discussions. Starting on familiar ground helps students begin speaking confidently. For a few weeks, I tried in one of my courses to help students situate Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the context of what they were learning in lectures about early-19th-century America. But our discussions around questions like how Northerners viewed slavery continued to bomb.
So, to begin our next meeting, I asked students to summarize the novel’s plot. The act of starting with something basic, like plot summary, warmed them up to analyzing themes in the book with much greater assurance and clarity. I’ve seen similar results by having students recap our previous meeting, recount a bit of the most recent lecture, or answer a simple question, like what surprised them about the week’s reading.
As questions have arisen spontaneously in a discussion, I’ve carved out time for students to think before answering. I’m a slow thinker. I walk away from plenty of conversations and uncover my clearest thoughts on the topic minutes, sometimes hours or days later. Expecting students who might be grappling with unfamiliar material to have quick and ready answers is often unrealistic.
I’ve found it worthwhile for students to spend five minutes jotting down their thoughts. Many feel more comfortable contributing to a discussion if they have a crib sheet of their own creation at hand. I never go into discussion sections without one.
Set rules for discussion. In addition to always having my discussion notes with me and encouraging the same of students, I try to abide by a few simple rules. Anyone who speaks has to wait until three others have had their say before he or she can comment again. Along with spreading the conversation around, that discourages hasty rebuttals. The rule applies to me, too, which promotes peer discussion rather than a back-and-forth approach in which I’m the inquisitor and they’re the contestants.
Kind of like eavesdropping, it’s satisfying to hear students challenge one another, even to the point of good, levelheaded arguing. I’ve even pushed arguments on occasion by following the comments of a particularly outspoken student with a challenge such as, “Does everyone really agree with that?” Or, “Does Jane really speak for all of you?”
But I don’t always interject a comment to spur dialogue. In fact, my favorite method of stimulating discussion during a lull is to not say anything and let the lull lengthen. I don’t pretend that a minute or so of quiet in a discussion section is the monastic “solitude and silence,” the “empty room” that Thomas H. Benton envisioned in a recent column, “Getting Medieval on Higher Education” (The Chronicle, January 28). But much like giving students a reprieve to jot down their thoughts, a little silence offers them space to think.
At the very least, the awkwardness of an elongated pause in a room full of undergraduates, with a question hanging over their heads and a TA looking on, goads even the most reticent student to talk. Eventually someone will sacrifice herself or himself, and others will soon commiserate.
Have a chat. Finally, I’ve discovered that if I want my discussions to be as lively as the conversations I hear outside classrooms, it’s worthwhile to let some of that chatter through the door. Rather than waltzing into class at the last minute and using my first question like the rap of a gavel to stifle energetic talk about last weekend (or the next one), I like to show up early and socialize.
When it has been appropriate to enter and steer those preclass chats toward the material at hand, I’ve found that students appreciate mingling their lives with what they’ve read.
Similarly, when students veer off-topic during a discussion, rather than turn them back to where I want us to be, sometimes I indulge a bit of ranting, then ask someone to make the connection between the day’s intended topic and the tangent. I’ve heard fascinating links between the two. Besides keeping lips moving, allowing those diversions can help students see the relevance of our discussion to their lives, or provide another point of view from which they can reflect on their personal experiences.
Such reflections not only make history more vital, but also are what many students want—to understand why they should care about what they are studying.
Of course, all of those tools, techniques, methods, or whatever you might call them threaten to be a bit gimmicky when used like a bag of tricks into which I reach and grab at random. It can get tiring overseeing three, four, or even half a dozen discussion sections every week, facing the same combinations of students with the same list of readings and questions.
When I’ve tried to run multiple sections in cookie-cutter fashion, I’ve rarely savored the results. Using my set of tools effectively has meant applying each one to an appropriate problem, and with the force of real curiosity.
Because, tools aside, it’s hard to make people want to talk if you don’t want to listen.
David Brooks is an A.B.D. doctoral candidate in history at the University of Montana. If you would like to contribute a First Person essay to the series on graduate-school work and life, please e-mail your ideas and essays to denise.magner@chronicle.com.
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wrappedupinbooks 2 weeks ago
Excellent advice. I, too, am a fan of elongated silences, and tell my students as much at the beginning of the term. I’ve found that the longer the silence persists after a question or comment, the more likely students are to offer up well-reasoned responses.
Flag 4 people liked this. Like abcde1234 2 weeks ago
Great article. I had a lot of success running a discussion-based upper level biology class. For most of my students, this was their first science class that was not a 200+ student lecture hall. Still, it took me a year of trying to get my much smaller group to say something in class to realize the simple solution-require them to say something, and help them out by giving them something to say.
We are all busy, including students. When we have a million things to do, we will do those which are most essential. If a grade depends on verbal contributions, students will verbally contribute. If you give them a reading assignment and a written assignment and make it due before they come to class (electronic submission is great-you walk in to the class room having had a chance to look over the homework papers!), they will not only do what you’ve asked, but they will also have something to talk about.
I would require each student to make two verbal contributions to each discussion to get full credit. At first I told them that any contribution, even “could you repeat that?” or “I don’t understand Figure 2″ would count, but if they abused that, it would stop counting. They never abused it. A few got off to a slow start with contributions of that nature, but within a few weeks they were making very serious contributions to the discussion.
And here is another tip-let them, even encourage them, to work together on their homework, so long as everyone hands in a unique document. The get used to talking to each other, and they bring that into the class room. I would get comments like “We were talking about this on Sunday and one question that came up was…..”. Really, it was an excellent experience.
Flag 2 people liked this. Like 20ahabs 2 weeks ago
Following a couple of disastrous class discussions earlier this semester in a lower-level English class composed on non-majors, I decided we needed to have a rap session in class; I was tired of asking open-ended questions meant to generate conversation that only resulted in shifty gazes and silent students. My first response was the usual, “How many of you did the reading?” All of them raised their hands (and their reading quiz subsequently proved that they did, indeed, do the reading.) So we talked about how to run the class differently, and ways to have them be more engaged, and one student offered up reading questions. I’ve always resisted them because I didn’t want to limit readings into literary Easter egg hunts, but I gave them a try, and I’m happy to say they’ve done wonders. I guess I unconsciously fell into the mistake of addressing my students as grad students, who would be attuned to certain themes and such right out of the gate.
Good article!
Flag 1 person liked this. Like 11301218 2 weeks ago
Once upon a time decades ago when I was a graduate student in one of the
physical sciences, we had recitation sections of 25 – 30 students. The usual
procedure was to assign students to put solutions to the week’s homework
assignment on the board (blackboards were on every wall) and then present
their solutions to the class. At the end of the period, the TA administered
a quiz. This had the advantage of giving students experience in oral
communication, in writing down an organized solution (and preparing ahead
of time in case called upon), and sometimes generating discussion in case
there was a mistake on the board or someone in the class had an alternative
approach.
It seems that this has been lost in moving towards online homework sets
where the software grades the students’ responses. We are substituting
capital for labor. Of course, recitation sections are labor intensive, and
it is hard to provide enough faculty and TA’s in a regional comprehensive
university that may often lack a graduate program at the MS level. Surely,
no one in the administration would approve hiring additional teaching staff
at the instructor level to teach these sections.
In a regular (freshman level, general ed. science) class with 70 students
(all the room will hold), it is like pulling teeth to get a response from
students when I pose a question in class — even when I put my lecture
notes out on the class web site well in advance of class. No one has
attempted my examples; no one has even caught the typographical
errors. However, they do communicate a lot — texting
each other on their cell phones in their laps.
Flag 2 people liked this. Like richardtaborgreene 2 weeks ago
A while back (quite a while back to tell the truth) I had some MBAs interview 150 people in 41 nations and 63 diverse professions who were nominated as “the most effective people in my field”. After a lot of analysis a book Are You Effective? 100 Methods from Highly Effective People (youpublish.com) was produced. It needs work, as reader will readily agree, but, even rough hewn as it is, the 100 methods in the book include dozens that are DISCUSSION IGNITERS—stratified responding, response to response matrices, demystification types, democratic rules of order, scientific rules of order, social automata. By having a written protocol already specified and an origin, purpose, output format, and use examples, in the book, I can assign a chapter/method and in 10 minutes have 6 active discussions in a class of 30 going on simultaneously among subgroups of 5 each (with 2 free riders per subgroup of 5). Not perfect but better than me imposing some vague general —- discussion —- on people already unclear about nearly everything in life.
Flag Like missoularedhead 2 weeks ago
I once tried to have pairs of students lead the discussion each week, but it devolved into endless rounds of ‘Jeopardy’ like games. While I’m all for bringing such things into the classroom, it got old, and made me acutely aware of the superficiality of their reading, and probably of their learning. Now I have a policy in which coming to class and sitting there is a C…they have to actually participate to get an A. I offer lots of ways to do this, such as group work, presentations, ‘mud cards’ (in which they write down something they don’t understand, and we discuss it as a group), etc. Also, poker chips. Give students poker chips (or something similar) and when they talk, they get one taken away. It keeps the talkative ones from overtaking the class, and the quiet ones a goal.
Flag Like philosophy 2 weeks ago
Very helpful post. I liked the comments on the contrast between student chatter before class and silence in class. One additional approach might be to point-blank ask them why that is?
One problem I have with discussion-prompts especially for small-group discussions is that often the students come up with short responses to the prompts, then move on to chatter as they did before class, about things having nothing to do with the class!
Flag Like torshi 2 weeks ago
My students have mostly been talkers, although promoting and managing the conversation is different in a class of 30 and a class of 100. I don’t use many formal techniques any more, but to the previous suggestions, I’d add that most students have something to say if you ask the right questions, give them a task or let them gather their thoughts (e.g., writing an answer to a general question in their notebook), show them that you can be trusted, talk less, and show or explain the value of discussion (some students think it’s pointless otherwise). I’ve found that grading participation has no impact on its quality or quantity.
Flag Like Ashley Weeks 2 weeks ago
I really liked this article. As a student that hopes to become a professor, this is very helpful. I especially like the last point made – a professor should make the occasional effort to socialize with students before class begins. From my experience, that is a rare occurrence.
Flag Like shawnpatrickdoyle 2 weeks ago
Nice suggestions. I especially like that you ended with the advice that instructors need to understand what tool to apply to what situation. That’s the best piece of advice given.
I’ve got two to add to the pile of suggestions -
1. Find a constructive way to let students let off some of their nervous energy early in the class. When I taught a class that had a speech component, I gave student an assignment to give a one-minute practice speech on the topic of their choosing. They composed the speech overnight, but when they came in the next day, I told them that I forgot to tell them that they weren’t aloud to make any noises while speaking. Instead, they had to mouth the words and convey with their facial expression, posture, and gestures the emotional tone of their speech. The practical thing this did was teach the students that speeches are more than words. The added benefit is that we all got to giggle at each other and when students gave their actual speeches later in the class, they knew they’d already stood in front of this group of people and looked a little silly.
2. Seconding 20ahabs, sometimes the meta-discussion can help out if there’s a lot of silence in a class, but I’d also suggest it before things reach that point. Have students get into groups and discuss the reading with the primary goal of developing a list of questions that are going to do three things – 1. get students talking, 2. produce a discussion that helps understand a part of the text, 3. produce a discussion that links the text to the larger themes or objectives for the class as stated on the syllabus. You can have students write their questions on the board and then ask students which questions they think are the best questions and which they feel would fizzle. The bonus of this method is that it lets you also talk about what kinds of things make good paper topics (i.e. papers that provide a consistent discussion and reveal something complex about the text) and which make poor paper topics because what you’ll find is that the poor questions would also be terrible papers and the good questions provide an opportunity for being a great paper.
Flag 2 people liked this. Like birdseyeview 1 week ago
This is a lovely, useful piece, David.
From a different place and time…
do you now love this place you’ve come to??
Flag Like litdawg 1 week ago
Great article–took me a much longer apprenticeship to realize some of the insights contained herein. Mr. Brooks, I greet you at the beginning of successful teaching career.
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