Evaluate
Defend or critique a particular claim or choice.
Defend or critique an ethical theory.
Defend or critique their own personal values, principles, virtues, or choices.
Select a strategy below to see more details.
Student-Directed Questioning: Before section, ask students to prepare questions about or objections to important claims or theories from lecture or readings. You may identify specific topics or subjects to narrow students’ focus or let them draw on anything from course materials. In section, ask students to raise their prepared questions or objections, and invite students to provide (partial or complete) responses or ask for specific clarifications. Invite other students to elaborate on or ask questions of other students’ responses.
Well-suited for:
Defending or critiquing a particular claim or choice.
Defending or critiquing an ethical theory.
Defending or critiquing their own personal values, principles, virtues, or choices.
Strengths:
Tailors discussion around students’ interests. By allowing students to raise the questions and objections around which section discussion is centered, you can help ensure the class discussion addresses materials and topics that students find more interesting and more compelled to defend or object to.
Helps create interest in and value for ethical discussion. By letting students take charge of the focus of discussion, you can put students in position to appreciate ethical discussions as an exercise with real practical and intellectual value. Students can work through ethical ideas or problems that were of personal interest to themselves, while getting firsthand experience of discussion as both a collaborative, effective tool for that work, as well as a satisfying, worthwhile activity in itself.
Encourages student-student engagement. Turning over the reins of class discussion to the students gives them the chance to hear and contend with the often wide variety of ethical views, claims, and concerns of their peers, while also encouraging them to see these peers as valuable sources of insight and feedback. This encourages students to see ethical topics as a lively subject of ongoing debate, as opposed to dry subjects of primarily academic interest.
Great for discussion sections later in the term. The Student-Directed Questioning format relies on students being able to process course materials well enough to identify discussion-worthy questions and objections. Naturally, this works best when students are relatively comfortable with course materials and academic discussion (specifically on ethical discussions). Ideally, you can build this comfort up through coursework and other discussion formats before jumping into student-led discussions.
Debate: From issues raised in class or in readings, select an ethically-charged decision, a response to a given ethical dilemma or hard case, or an ethical theory or claim. Assign students to argue different sides of the issue (e.g., for and against a “medicare for all plan,” defending and objecting to Rawl’s conception of justice, and so on), and use section to facilitate a debate between the relevant views.
Well-suited for:
Defending or critiquing a particular claim or choice.
Defending or critiquing an ethical theory.
Strengths:
Can help energize discussion. Debates need not be competitive per se (at the end of the day, students should be working with their classmates to grow their understanding), but investing in one side of an issue (artificially or otherwise) can get students actively involved in a discussion for which they might otherwise feel disconnected.
Can help flesh out less popular views. It can be tempting, even for trained academics, to quickly move past positions we find intuitively implausible (or even intuitively immoral). Your students are also vulnerable to this, and less popular opinions can often receive insufficient critical attention in free-flowing discussion. The debate format forces all relevant positions to be thought through (whether or not the thought-through position is any more convincing).
Great for digging deeper. Debates work best when both sides have had some time to consider the relevant issues and develop their thinking on the matter. As such, in-section debates often work best once students have already spent substantive class time with the relevant material. A debate can be a great way to re-energize discussion on a subject you have already spent some time on, but isn’t an especially great way to introduce new material.
Reading Response Presentations: Ahead of section, assign one or more students to prepare a question about or objection to a recent course reading. Ask presenting students to explain any relevant context from the reading needed to understand the question or objection. Invite students who are not presenting to ask follow-up questions or offer responses to the question/objection.
Well-suited for:
Defending or critiquing a particular claim or choice.
Defending or critiquing an ethical theory.
Strengths
Develops presentation skills. By asking students to present a response to course material to their peers, students are pushed to not only question or evaluate the material on their own, but they also must consider how to articulate those questions or evaluations clearly, so that others might follow their thinking. As skills, preparing responses for presentation not only trains presentational skills, it also naturally encourages to think their responses through more carefully than they might otherwise.
Invests students in section discourse. By tasking a student (or students) with providing lead-in questions or objections to the material, you can create a discussion centered around student contributions. Moreover, the students or students assigned to present are given extra reasons to become especially invested in at least one piece of course material. This helps encourage a section culture of student-student discussions and can give students a real sense of control and ownership over section discussions.
Great for preparing for papers or other assignments with an evaluative component. Many assignments, especially in courses focused on ethical subject matter, ask students to put forward some kind of evaluation of material presented in the course. Asking students to prepare reading responses throughout the course gives students a head start on such assignments. Consider collecting student responses over the term and making them available to all students, so they can draw on them for ideas when such assignments come up.