Identify and remember specific ethical concepts, questions, claims, and theories (from class or readings).
Learn context around ethical claims and theories.
Learn a range of ethical views on a given issue.
Identify their own personal values, principles, virtues, or choices.
Select a strategy below to see more details.
Teacher-Directed Questioning: Before section, prepare questions or prompts on key concepts, claims, or theories from lecture or readings. Try to identify points that are central to understanding the material, as well as points that are likely to confuse students. In section, raise questions/prompts and invite students to provide (partial or complete) answers, or ask for specific clarifications. Invite other students to elaborate or ask questions of other students’ answers.
Well-suited for:
Remembering specific ethical concepts, questions, claims and theories (from class or readings).
Learning context around ethical claims and theories.
Learning a range of ethical views on a given issue.
Strengths:
Allows you to determine and narrow the focus of discussion. This can be very helpful when you are trying to use discussion to review specific course material in an active way.
Provides a strong structure for your discussion. If you are concerned about managing the discussion or worried about keeping discussion moving, this strategy can build in an underlying skeleton for your whole discussion section.
Great for reviewing for a test or exam. Tests and exams require students to identify and recall relevant information in accordance with a pre-determined (by the test/exam writer) way. Teacher-directed questions allows students to prepare for this mode of information identification and recollection but in a lower-stakes setting where they can rely on you and their peers for help.
Student-Directed Questioning: Before section, ask students to prepare questions on key concepts, 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, and invite students to provide (partial or complete) answers, or ask for specific clarifications. Invite other students to elaborate or ask questions of other students’ answers.
Well-suited for:
Remembering specific ethical concepts, questions, claims and theories (from class or readings).
Learning context around ethical claims and theories.
Learning a range of ethical views on a given issue.
Strengths:
Tailors discussion around students’ needs and interests. By allowing students to raise the questions around which section discussion is centered, you can help ensure the class discussion addresses materials and topics that students are most concerned with (whether that is because they find it especially interesting or because the find it especially challenging).
Provides a built-in opportunity for feedback: By having students prepare questions, you can get a sense of some of the issues surrounding class materials that students are struggling with, as well as the issues they find most interesting.
Great for introducing or reviewing new material from lectures or readings. Often times, the critical first step to understanding new material is articulating points of confusion or concern. Student-directed questioning pushes students to start articulating those points, which in turn allows you to build a discussion around those points, clarifying and developing them as a class.
Lecture Walkthrough: Using detailed notes (or a recording, if available), discuss key moments from a recent lecture with students. Highlight important concepts, questions, and theories raised in the lecture. Then, bring students in by asking them follow-up questions about the highlighted portions, or asking them to ask their own follow-up questions. Use these questions as the basis for further discussion.
Well-suited for:
Remembering specific ethical concepts, questions, claims and theories (from class or readings).
Learning context around ethical claims and theories.
Learning a range of ethical views on a given issue.
Strengths:
Focuses discussion around specific topics from lecture. The Lecture Walkthrough format provides built-in structure to keep section discussion relatively focused on specific ideas and issues raised recently in class.
Makes explicit the sometimes implicit content and structure of a lecture. Effectively learning and processing information through the lecture format is a learned skill, one which students will struggle with to varying extents. Talking through the ways a particular lecture is structured and emphasizing what information is being prioritized by the lecture, as well as how that priority is communicated by the lecturer and the structure of her lecture, can help students in the process of acquiring this skill.
Great for discussing new information. A lecture walkthrough provides extra time and support for students to process the flood of information they can receive in a single lecture. This can be especially useful after lectures that have introduced a new topic or section of the class, when students are likely grappling with a set of new ideas all at once.