First, it gets their student’s experiences with the readings less dependent upon my framing of the reading, getting them to have the experience of taking a crack at primary texts. (This is perhaps, a good step prior to the ‘restating’ method olderwoman mentions, since you–the instructor–have an idea of where the class, individually and collectively, is at.)

Second, it gives me yet another way to assess students who do not feel comfortable speaking in class (or who don’t do well on essays, or whatever), but feel comfortable in the virtual realm. These issues, of course, are not necessarily age-related but can intersect. Perhaps there is a relationship between the second issue and age, than the first…

Just some more thoughts. Sorry I’m so long winded… You’ve caught me being pensive at the end of the term…

As I stated, I do know how to get people to “discuss” in a generic sense, where you are just interested in nurturing their opinions about issues or open-ended responses to the readings. And so I’ll share one tip that has not been mentioned. If your goal is to just get people feeling comfortable talking, the best thing is simply to restate what they have said in other words. This is rather like Rogerian therapy or what we educated parents do with our little children. It is almost guaranteed to get students chatting like magpies. Whether the chatter goes where you want it to go is another thing, but if you have a class that just isn’t talking, this is the way to open them up.

1. Great topic, it’s something a lot of (if not most folks struggle with.

2. A couple techniques:

a) I do a variation on what Brayden does, in that for classes with 50-75 students, they have to come in with one well thought out comment and question for each reading. For the first 15 minutes, they break into small groups and I give each group another students comment and question (which I also use to mark attendance). These tend to be more thoughtful questions and comments, as they know there’s a chance other students will be reading them with their name on them, and also relying on them. Essentially they’re just conversation starters for the small groups. We then get back together, and a pick one of the groups at random to tell the rest of us about what they talked about. After a couple minutes, if the other groups haven’t self started and gotten involved in the talk, a simple “any similar topics or contrasting topics in the other discussions?” will get them going.

b) It took me a long time to realize that the discussion stalls out when I answer student questions. Instead, a good tactic is the simple “great question!” or “yeah, huh?” followed with a “what do people think about that?”

c) If students are hesitant to talk about the concept/theory, ask them for explanations of that thing in action in their personal life? Follow that up with other stories, combining how the stories relate, what other things might be happening, questioning what other concepts we could apply to the story, etc.

d) When students simply won’t talk, get them up and moving around, engage them in activities that relate to the text. In one example, I’ve made a whole class (about 75 students get up from their chairs and line the walls simulating specified jobs in an industrial factory while we talk about Marxism. The lesson plan has developed into something too complicated to relay here (breaks every year, the exchange of money between the factory owner and workers, etc.) but it gets students up and participating even if they won’t speak initially. After that, they’ve all laughed a bit and are usually more comfortable with talking.

Thanks for the link, Jessica. I’ve avoided calling on students in the past, but I keep on getting closer to doing it. I’ll try it for my next class.

The issue with a lot of students is that they like to hide in many ways. Even with obvious questions, they will toss out “I don’t knows.” The readings are hard and they feel like giving up. It’s only compounded by the fact that many instructors just lecture at students, not require them to actually think.

So when you actually require them to rummage through the knowledge that they have, it helps a lot. And yes, it is a cross examination, but it shows that you are willing to make them think, as long as you aren’t making them too uncomfortable. Ideally, I’d love to directly jump to open, free flowing discussion without cross-examination, but you really have to push sometimes. Also, don’t push them too hard. If they truly don’t know something, even something simple, let them off the hook. But come back to them.

PS. I do memorize names eventually, but in the beginning I am more than willing to pick on students with non-embarrassing visual characteristics. In some cases, with lecture size > 100, I’ll never know all the names and I have to stick with cross examination. If you pick on people in very gentle ways, it lets people relax.

I am particularly struggling with getting students who are participating by telling stories to move in the direction of thinking through the concepts. Follow-up questions that are too direct shut down the discussion altogether, but more gentle questions don’t work to help them move from “at my cousin rachel’s wedding” to “social rituals create and reinforce gender norms.”

There’s an old chapter I use in my social psychology class that I’ve just moved from the end (when we talk about stages in the lifecourse) to the beginning of the semester (when we talk about the social significance of mundane behavior, and when students might actually use it) called “Why College Students Don’t Participate” (from Karp and Yoels. 1976. “The College Classroom: Some Observations on the Meanings of Student Participation.” Sociology and Social Research 60:421-39.).

Students love to read it because most of it resonates with them and they begin to understand why they don’t participate. The most important take-home point for me is that in a Gladwell “Blink” sort of way, students know from the very beginning of a class how much a professor really wants them to a) read and b) participate in discussion. You need to set those standards high at the very beginning for students to live up to them.