UPDATES are in Red below
After talking with Dr. Nicole Muscanell in Fall 2017 about her PSYCH 424 Applied Social Psychology course, we decided to create a support session for students on how to lead better discussions. As a 400-level course, students take turns leading discussions on important topics in the course. Dr. Muscanell wanted to make sure that the level of rigor and critical thinking was present in the discussions, so I’ve been tasked with developing a series of sessions for them about developing good critical questions! We plan to meet in class three times:
- First session, Dr. Muscanell is leading the class discussion based on readings from a textbook chapter and an article from a popular trade magazine. Students submitted discussion questions prior to the session. Dr. M uses these and her own questions to design and facilitate the discussion. I will observe and note how she facilitates the discussion. We will take turns stopping the discussion and talking with students about what’s happening in the discussion, beyond the content – namely, the questions being asked and reasons/goals for each question. Instead of interrupting class, we decided that I should simply observe and take notes. Later, I created 2 online videos and handouts to point out the major aspects happening in the discussion. Here’s a link to videos and the associated handouts. Videos 1 & 2 apply to this first session. I provided commentary in 3 ways: 1) pointing out the major shifts in the discussion (discussion map and outline), 2) introduced Bloom’s Taxonomy and analyzed the discussion questions in terms of higher or lower-order questions, and 3) commented on the various cues that Dr. M used during the discussion to facilitate – things such as asking for clarification, polling the participants, and asking for elaboration. Surprisingly, there were 12 different cues used during the discussion! A list is included at the above link along with language samples. Students later were assigned the videos to watch in lieu of a class period and were given a worksheet in which they analyze and improve their own discussion questions using Bloom’s Taxonomy.
- Second session – Students again have to submit 10 questions, this time about a research article related to the readings completed in the previous session. Dr. Muscanell will facilitate the discussion, and it will be based on her questions and those submitted by students. We will critique together the questions and talk about forming good questions based on critical thinking frameworks and discussion goals. We will also point out strategies for moving discussions forward through typical stumbling blocks. I again observed this discussion, noting any further facilitation cues and organizational frames used by Dr. M to design and guide the discussion.
- Third session – students will be given a research article to read before class. In previous semesters, students would be in charge of leading a discussion, and this time, Dr. Muscanell wants these to be better prepared. So we will work with students in class to do a mock discussion design session together – giving them tools and strategies to do more than gather several questions around a topic. Critical thinking frameworks and a planning document will be shared that help students identify important content, mapping the intellectual moves in the article, stating the specific goals of the discussion, generating discussion questions and a process to evaluate them, and a general plan with questions to help move the discussion through typical stumbling blocks. For example, what will you do if there is silence, or the discussion goes off track. How can you link comments and encourage extension of thinking. How can you re-direct students back to previous comments. How can you summarize the progress made? A third video was created (access it same link as above) that shifts into the design portion of their assignment. Each student needs to facilitate one class discussion. There are extensive rubrics that detail what students need to do as well as the quality and rigor of the work. Dr. M wanted students to have a way to make the discussions more critical and at a higher-order thinking level. So in this third video, students get a template to help them think about design: 1) What are the goals of the discussion; 2) What are the important, interesting, and problematic areas to be covered; 3) Designing questions to uncover these topics in the discussion; 4) How to use Bloom and other critical thinking frames (Paul & Elder 2006, Making Thinking Visible, 2011) to improve the quality and rigor of the questions; 5) Planning for follow-up questions that also increase the level of critical thinking; and 6) Generating a list of facilitation cues used to engage participants throughout the discussion.
This was such wonderful project to work on. It gave me the opportunity to integrate some of the things I learned a few years ago in the CT 700 course I took. Looking forward to whether this made a difference for the students and professor!
