Posted to Diigo 06/04/2010

1029. Student Engagement Techniques for Seminars « Tomorrow’s Professor Blog

• THE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT TECHNIQUES (SETs) are fifty field-tested learning activities that one or more college teachers have found effective in engaging students. Each SET promotes active learning by requiring students to participate in activities such as reading, writing, discussing, problem solving, or reflecting.
• “Seminar” helps students prepare for and participate in an in-depth, focused, and meaningful small-group discussion of a text. Students bring their marked-up copies and essay to class, and they use these as their ticket to participate in a highly structured small-group discussion.
• The structure of the small-group discussion provides even shy and diffident students and non-native speakers with a platform to practice their voice.
• 1.  Select a text that is conceptually rich
• 2.  Craft a prompt for a writing assignment that connects to the reading
• 3.  Create a handout that provides students with directions for both the reading and discussion
• 4.  Outside of class, students read the document, marking and then prioritizing the passages that they found to be most interesting, provocative, puzzling, and so forth and that they want to discuss with the group. They also write a brief essay in response to the instructor-developed prompt. This preparation is their ticket to a small group
• 5.  The teacher forms prepared students into groups of 4-6. (Either dismiss unprepared students, or allow them to observe in fishbowl fashion, sitting in chairs outside a group, listening to the discussion but not participating.)
• 6.  In round-robin fashion, each student selects one of his or her high priority passages
• and then briefly explains why it was selected
• 7.  After every student has contributed, students respond to what they heard from one or two of the other participants
• 8.  Students enter into a free-flowing discussion, sharing what they learned or found most meaningful, and as much as possible connecting their comments to specific passages in the text.
• 9.  After discussion, students add further comments, reflections, or insights as a postscript to their essays and submit them to the instructor.
• This technique is designed for a face-to-face environment. However, the basic steps can be adapted for an online class
• Most students will need guidance on how to read critically and how to contribute effectively to the discussion
• 1.  What does the text say?
• 2.  What does the text mean?
• 3.  Why is this important?
• When assessing seminar behaviors one can ask, How does a person contribute to the seminar? To what degree does he or she engage in the following three kinds of behaviors?
• A.  Introduce substantive points
• B. Deepen the discussion
• C.  Facilitate group exploration