Leading Discussions
Ideas for Effective College Teaching | Faculty and Staff

Discussions can provide students with the opportunity to express their opinions about a topic, analyze important issues, evaluate arguments, and synthesize information. Consider how discussions can further your goals for your course (in general) and the class session (in particular) as this teaching method can be an effective teaching tool.

Some faculty members report that they have experienced difficulty initiating discussions in their courses. Common concerns include a silent class, overly talkative students who "hijack" the conversation, or the perception that the discussion frequently meanders away from the topic at hand. Here are some suggestions that may help you maximize the success of discussions in your class.

• Establish ground rules and expectations for discussions at the beginning of your class. I'd recommend beginning this conversation by explaining your hopes for classroom discussion to your students (e.g., "I want to hear your thoughts on the important issues in this course. Contributing your ideas during discussions is critical if students are to learn from each other.") Be sure to set some guidelines so that students know whether they are performing well during discussions; students are generally willing to collaborate in this process as well.
• Attend to the lay-out of the classroom during discussions. It can be difficult to have engaging conversations when you are talking to the back of someone's head. You may want to re-arrange the chairs in your room to ensure that students can see and hear each other.
• Begin discussions with an interesting launching point. Many discussions will die because students really don't have much to say on the topic. Similarly, sometimes the starting question is too vague and not amenable to in-depth discussion (e.g., "What do you think about democracy?"). Productive discussions often start after you conduct an interesting demonstration, pose a provocative or controversial question, present a case study or a hypothetical problem, or even allow your students to nominate topics for discussion.
• Be sure that you are assuming an active role during the discussion. Instructors become the "traffic controllers" during the discussion. You can accomplish this by periodically summarizing students' contributions, connecting and reconciling different points, explicitly bridging students' comments with the course material, involving quiet students, and containing overly talkative students.
• Don't be reluctant to set limits during a discussion. You can find many more suggestions about managing difficult student behaviors during discussions here.

Would you like to read more about leading effective discussions? Check out http://ctl.unc.edu/fyc12.html for more information.