Since I will not be lecturing online we will spend most of our class time in discussion. Full participation in discussions is crucial for learning in this online format and will allow students to process what they have learned independently from the website. Additionally everyone will be placed into peer groups based on location and preferred time of meeting. These peer groups will be set up to meet more frequently than the entire class so that individuals can process their learning and ask questions while being supported by other learners. At the end of the May Term each group member will hand in an evaluation on their group's functioning. Below are some strategies we will use for Zoom discussions.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides additional information.
Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers’ ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn’t happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group’s conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.
Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic or used to reach consensus.
A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. Zoom has this functionality in the chatbox where you can send a chat to the entire class or send a personal message to an individual or group. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the discussion. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent parallel discussion, one that doesn’t have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia’s Beth Holland.
Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Here is a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.
This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. This simple method can generate some of the richest conversations!