Panels: Ahead of section, divide students into small groups and assign each group a particular ethical theory or question. Ask each group to prepare a brief presentation explaining their assigned theory or answering their assigned question. In section, ask each group to present and then field questions on the presented material from the other students.
Well-suited for:
Articulating differences between distinct ethical questions, claims, and theories.
Recognizing the reasoning and motivation behind ethical claims or theories.
Strengths
Builds students’ confidence. Students in each group develop a level of expertise (at least relative to other students) on their assigned question or theory. The panel format then gives them an opportunity to contribute in section, speaking from a position of (relative) confidence. This is a good way to get students more comfortable with publicly sharing views and ideas on complex ethical topics.
Encourages active listening to peers. In order to ask effective questions, students must pay close attention to other students’ presentations (on topics they did not prepare). This can help students get into the habit of listening to one another in discussion and relying on their peers as sources of knowledge (as opposed to solely relying on you, the course head or some other pre-established authority).
Great for reviewing material at the end of a course segment. The panel format work great for surveying and discussing a varied range of ethical topics all at once. By assigning specific theories/questions to groups, no one student will be tasked with becoming an expert on some overwhelmingly wide range of ethical topics. Meanwhile, the panel format provides an inherent structure to discussion so that multiple topics can be organically covered within one discussion section.
Potential Challenges and Solutions
Students are unprepared or reticent to ask meaningful questions to peer panelists. Students may avoid asking questions to panelists, especially questions that they feel are difficult or will otherwise complicate their peers’ presentations.
Share all assigned theories and questions ahead of section. Give all your students a chance to know what topics will be discussed in section ahead of time, even if they don’t need to prepare a presentation on all those topics. This is especially useful if you are using the panels format for review purposes.
Review discussion norms and purposes. Before discussion begins (or in an email, etc.), take a moment to review and explain the importance and function of question-asking in academic discussion. Emphasize that the Q&A section of any real panel discussion is not only often the most informative part for attendees of the discussion, but is also extremely useful for the panelists as well (as it provides immediate feedback on the effectiveness of their presentation as well as an opportunity to think about the material in question in new and interesting ways).
A group of panelist-presenters struggles with their assigned theory or question. Sometimes, an ethical theory or question can prove uniquely difficult to a particular group, and they may struggle to effectively present on it. They may even accidentally misrepresent the assigned view or provide a misleading answer to the assigned question.
Before section, review discussion norms and purposes. In particular, emphasize that all discussion sections should be understood as efforts to collectively improve our understanding of the relevant material, and encourage students to respectfully ask for clarification about any presented material they are unsure of/confused about.
In section, provide a soft intervention. If some presented material is straightforwardly misleading (especially if the panel discussion is being used as review), consider stopping discussion and gently (but directly) clarifying the error yourself. If the error isn’t straightforward, consider saving your intervention for the “Q&A” segment of the panel format, and, instead, raise the point of confusion as a clarificatory question which the panel and other students can collectively work to untangle.
Reading Presentations: Ahead of section, assign one or more students explain a significant section or passage from a recent reading. Ask presenting students to explain any relevant context from the reading needed to understand the section or passage. Invite students who are not presenting to ask presenters follow-up questions.
Well-suited for:
Articulating differences between distinct ethical questions, claims, and theories.
Recognizing the reasoning and motivation behind ethical claims or theories.
Strengths
Develops presentation skills. By asking students to present material to their peers, students are pushed to not only analyze the material for their own understanding but break it down in such a way that others can also understand. Moreover, thinking through how to present analysis clearly to others pushes students to be especially precise in their analytic work.
Puts students in charge of their own learning. Tasking a student (or students) with presenting some part of the day’s materials allows students to share in the experience of leading and directing section. This puts students’ in a position of (limited) academic expertise, allowing them to develop confidence in their analytic abilities without having to take on the full stress of teaching a class or section.
Great for reviewing weekly course materials or reading assignments throughout a term. Regular reading presentations throughout the term can help reinforce reading expectations, and ensures that students will be forced to think deeply about at least one part of the course materials or readings.
Potential Challenges and Solutions
The student(s) assigned to present has misunderstood a significant part of the assigned reading or reading section. There is an inherent risk in asking students to present course material: academic texts can be challenging and analyzing them is often difficult. While it can be good to let students work through these challenges, you don’t want your section to be misinformed about the contents of some relevant material.
Meet with the presenter(s) ahead of time. Before section, schedule a meeting with the students assigned to present. Have a conversation about the material and encourage them to ask any questions they have. This will give everyone a good chance to catch any major confusions before they make it into the class presentation.
Provide the presenter(s) with guiding questions. When presentations are assigned, provide the presenters with questions about the relevant materials. Use these questions to direct the students’ attention to key ideas, distinctions, arguments and so on which are worth presenting. Questions like this can help provide structure to a student’s analysis of a section without doing the analysis for her.
Gently intervene. If a misunderstanding does make it through to the in class presentation, you can address the error as a useful opportunity for clarification or elaboration on difficult academic material (rather than presenting the error as a flaw in the presenter’s work). Consider phrases like, “Oh, that’s actually a tricky part to follow, we should clarify what the author says,” “We should pause here to elaborate the author’s view,” and so on.
Students are especially nervous about presenting. Many students are already uncomfortable participating in group discussions, and the idea of being the center of attention for some portion of a discussion section can feel especially nerve-wracking.
Do group presentations. Assign students to present in pairs or small groups. This will not only keep anxious students from having to be alone in the spotlight, but it will also provide students with an opportunity to engage in collaborative analysis and interpretation as they prepare their presentations.
Meet with students ahead of time. Pre-presentation meetings can not only help clear up any misunderstandings about the material, but provide you with an opportunity to help students think through and structure their presentation ahead of time. Having a solid, TF-approved plan for presenting can help cut down the anxiety of public academic presenting.
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.
Potential Challenges and Solutions:
Some of my students don’t feel comfortable responding to my questions/prompts. You may find that some students are reticent to put forth answers to questions/prompts in a discussion setting. This can keep these students from being active, engaged learners and make your discussion section less inclusive.
Provide discussion questions/prompts ahead of time. Put up your questions/prompts online, or send them out via email. This allows reticent students to prepare and feel more comfortable participating in section. (Plus, students can use these questions as a review guide later.)
Write key material on the board or provide a handout. By reducing the amount of note-taking students feel the need to do, you increase the amount of attention they can direct towards the discussion. You can also use this to provide a baseline conceptual structure to the relevant topics.
Give students time to think. Be comfortable with silence. Students, especially those less comfortable with open discussion, won’t always be ready with a response as soon as you finish laying out a prompt or question. Even enthusiastic students can need time to think through new material. Even allowing just 10-15 seconds before letting anyone answer can give more students a chance to get involved. If you’re writing key material on the board, writing questions/prompts on the board can naturally create this time buffer.
Provide multiple ways to respond. This can be done by creating additional response modes outside of your discussion section: creating an online forum where students can write out and post their responses, creating meeting times for students to discuss questions/prompts in a one-on-one setting, and so on. But it can also be done by making clear to students how many shapes a useful response can take: signaling a point of confusion, asking you or another student to rephrase something just said, trying to restate a claim or position just put forth in order to check understanding, and so on.
Some of my students dominate the responses. You may find that some of your students are more comfortable and more enthusiastic about providing answers to your questions/prompts. This is not bad in itself, but, if unchecked, it can prevent less comfortable (oftentimes already marginalized) students from getting involved, and thus make your discussion section less inclusive.
Gently intervene and invite less comfortable students to respond. You can direct discussion opportunities towards less comfortable students without reprimanding or otherwise discouraging a more comfortable student. Try qualifying invitations to respond by using phrases like, “Let’s hear from someone who hasn’t had a chance to respond yet,” or asking other students to respond to points made by the more comfortable students (thus giving the more comfortable students credit for their contributions, but also giving time and space for the less comfortable to make a contribution of their own).
Establish inclusive discussion participation norms. Explicitly and implicitly work to create and enforce discussion practices that allow all students to feel comfortable getting involved. This can be done through relatively commonplace practices like hand-raising (allowing you to call on less comfortable students) and avoiding interrupting and talking over others. But you can also use specialized classroom discussion norms: evaluate positions and not people, wait 10-15 seconds before answering, and so on. Consider taking time to explicitly go over the discussion section expectations and practices with students.
Students are responding only/mostly to me, and not to one another. As the name suggests, Teacher-Directed Questioning puts you, the teacher, at the center of the discussion. This strategy can lead to many student-teacher-student or teacher-student-teacher interactions while constraining the number of student-student interactions.
Combine Teacher-Led Questioning with other strategies. Make Teacher-Led Questioning only part of the agenda in a given section. For example, follow up the questioning by breaking into small group discussions. Different activities can shake up classroom social structure, functionally removing you from the immediate section interaction, and thus force students to rely on their peers more.
Explicitly incorporate students’ responses into your own responses. When students turn to you for information and feedback, explicitly rely on questions and answers put forth by other students: collect questions/answers on the board or in an online document, use students’ questions, answers, and particular phrasing to frame discussion topics, call out and connect related points made by distinct students, and so on. Even if you are, functionally speaking, at the center of the discussion, you can still make the discussion clearly student-driven. Also, whenever possible, try to give students explicit credit for their contributions.