Small Group Discussions

(Some sections adapted from Davis, 1993; Brookfield and Preskill, 1999)

Discussions can be an excellent strategy for enhancing student motivation, fostering intellectual agility, and encouraging democratic habits. They create opportunities for students to practice and sharpen a number of skills, including the ability to articulate and defend positions, consider different points of view, and enlist and evaluate evidence.

While discussions provide avenues for exploration and discovery, leading a discussion can be anxiety-producing: discussions are, by their nature, unpredictable, and require us as instructors to surrender a certain degree of control over the flow of information. Fortunately, careful planning can help us ensure that discussions are lively without being chaotic and exploratory without losing focus. When planning a discussion, it is helpful to consider not only cognitive, but also social/emotional, and physical factors that can either foster or inhibit the productive exchange of ideas.

 

Determine and communicate learning objectives

For discussions to accomplish something valuable, they must have a purpose. Consider your goals for each discussion. How do the ideas and information to be discussed fit into the course as a whole? What skills, knowledge, perspectives, or sensibilities do you want students to walk away from the discussion with? Your goals for a particular discussion should be consistent with your course objectives and values as an instructor. You might, for example, want students to be able to:

·         Articulate the arguments made by the authors of two assigned readings and assess the evidence used to support them. Evaluate the arguments alone and in comparison with one another and discuss their contemporary policy implications. Or…

·         Formulate arguments and counter-arguments for a legal position. Or…

·         Imagine a particular approach to the design of cities and discuss the impact such a design would have on the lives of people in different socioeconomic categories. Suggest and justify design changes to optimize the benefits for the most number of people.

When you can clearly envision the purpose of the discussion, it is easier to formulate stimulating questions and an appropriate strategy for facilitating the discussion. Communicating your objectives to your students, moreover, helps to focus their thinking and motivate participation.

Plan a strategy

After determining the objectives for your discussion, ask yourself: How will I make sure that students meet these objectives?  Plan the discussion out, even if you end up deviating from your plan. Some of the questions to consider when formulating a plan include:

·         How do I want students to prepare: read a case study? (if so, in class or as homework?) do a team exercise? watch a documentary? reflect on a set of questions?

·         What questions will I pose to spark or guide discussion? to encourage deeper analysis?

·         Will I open the discussion to the entire class or ask students to discuss the issue in pairs, small groups, or some combination of the above?

·         What will I do if students simply aren’t participating? If certain students dominate the discussion?

·         How will I allocate and manage the time I have?

·         How will I deal with digressions or unanticipated shifts in topic?

·         How will I correct students’ misconceptions or inaccuracies without stifling participation?

·         How will I (or my students) synthesize the ideas at the end of the class period?

Your answers to these questions will depend on your goals. For example, correcting factual inaccuracies might be critical in some circumstances, less so in others. Digressions may be productive if your primary purpose is to explore connections, and undesirable if the goal of your discussion is more focused.

One of the most important things to consider when formulating a strategy is how to get the discussion jump-started. Davis (1993) and Frederick (1981) provide a number of excellent suggestions.

Ask Good Questions

Good questions are the key to a productive discussion. These include not only the questions you use to jump-start discussion but also the questions you use to probe for deeper analysis, ask for clarification or examples, explore implications, etc. It is helpful to think about the various kinds of questions you might ask and the cognitive skills they require to answer. Davis (1993) lists a range of question types, including:

·         Exploratory questions: probe facts and basic knowledge

·         Challenge questions: interrogate assumptions, conclusions or interpretations

·         Relational questions: ask for comparisons of themes, ideas, or issues

·         Diagnostic questions: probe motives or causes

·         Action questions: call for a conclusion or action

·         Cause-and-effect questions: ask for causal relationships between ideas, actions, or events

·         Extension questions: expand the discussion

·         Hypothetical questions: pose a change in the facts or issues

·         Priority questions: seek to identify the most important issue(s)

·         Summary questions: elicit synthesis

These question types can be mapped onto Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives, which shows increasing levels of cognitive complexity as students move from fairly simple tasks (such as recall of information) to more complex tasks (such as synthesis, evaluation, or creation.) While you might frame the entire discussion in terms of a Big Question to grapple with, it is a good general strategy to move from relatively simple, convergent questions (i.e., questions with correct answers, such as “According to this treatise, what is Argentina’s historical claim on the Falklands?” or “What kinds of tax cuts does this bill propose?”) to more complex, divergent questions (i.e., questions with many valid answers, such as “Why did Argentina invade the Falklands?” or “To what extent would this bill’s proposed tax increases resolve the budget deficit?”) (exmples from Davis, 1993). Starting with convergent questions helps discussion participants to establish a base of shared knowledge and builds student confidence; it also gives you, the instructor, the opportunity to correct factual inaccuracies or misconceptions before the discussion moves into greater complexity and abstraction. Asking a variety of types of questions can also help to model for students the ways that experts use questions to refine their analyses. For example, an instructor might move an abstract discussion to a concrete level by asking for examples or illustrations, or move a concrete discussion to a broader level by asking students to generate a generalization or implication.

When instructors are nervous that a discussion might flag, they tend to fall prey to some common questioning errors. These include:

Asking too many questions at once: Instructors often make the mistake of asking a string of questions together, e.g., “What do you think the author is trying to say here? Do you agree with him? Is his evidence convincing? Did you like this article?” Students may get confused trying to figure out which question to address first. Asking a number of questions together may also conflate issues you really want to help students distinguish (for example, the author’s thesis versus the kinds of evidence he uses to support it).

Asking a question and answering it yourself: We have all had the experience of asking a question only to encounter blank stares and silence. The temptation under these circumstances is to jump in and answer your own question, if only to relieve the uncomfortable silence. Don’t assume, though, that students’ silence necessarily indicates that they are stumped (or unprepared); sometimes they are simply thinking the question through and formulating an answer. Be careful not to preempt this process by jumping in too early.

Failing to probe or explore the implications of answers: One mistake instructors can make in leading a discussion is not to follow up sufficiently on student contributions. It is important not only to get students talking, but to probe them about their reasoning, ask for evidence, explore the implications of what they say, etc. Follow-up questions push students to think more deeply, to substantiate their claims, and consider the practical impact of particular perspectives.

Asking unconnected questions: In the best discussions, there is a logical progression from question to question so that, ultimately, the discussion tells (or reveals) a story. When you are planning your discussion questions, think about how they fit together.

Asking yes/no or leading questions: Asking questions with a yes/no answer can be the starting point of a good discussion, but only if there is a follow-up question that calls for explanation or substantiation. Otherwise, yes/no questions tend to be conversation-stoppers. By the same token, discussions can stall if the instructor’s questions are overly leading, i.e., if there is clearly an answer the instructor wants, and the students’ task is simply to guess it, rather than to think for himself.

Ignoring or failing to build on answers: If students do not feel like their voices have weight in discussion, their motivation to participate drops. Thus, it is important to acknowledge student contributions, responding enthusiastically when they are insightful (“That’s an excellent point, Sarah; could you elaborate further?”) and pointing out when they contain inaccuracies or problematic reasoning (“Take another look at the article, Tranh; is that really what the author is claiming?”). If you do not wish to play such a directive role yourself – and want students to develop the habit of assessing and responding to one another’s contributions – you can throw student comments back to the class for evaluation (for example, “Do the rest of you agree with John’s recommendation? What would be some possible consequences if this plan of action were followed?”)

Provide Direction and Maintain Focus

Discussions tend to be most productive when they have a clear focus. It may be helpful to write out a few questions that the discussion will address, and return to those questions periodically. Also, summarize key issues occasionally as you go and refocus student attention if the discussion seems to be getting off track (for example, “How do the issues that have just been raised relate to the question originally posed?” or “That’s an interesting point, Alexis, and one we will return to later in the course.”)

While some lulls in discussion are to be expected (while participants are thinking, for example) the instructor must be alert to signs such as these that a discussion is breaking down (Davis, 1993):

·         Excessive hair-splitting or nit-picking

·         Repetition of points

·         Private conversations

·         Participants taking sides and refusing to compromise

·         Apathetic participation

If the discussion seems to be flagging, it can help to introduce a new question or alter the task so as to bring a fresh kind of thinking or a different group dynamic to bear. For example, you might switch from discussing an ethical issue in the abstract to a concrete case study, or shift from large-group discussion to small group or pair-work.

Bring Closure

It is important to leave time at the end of the discussion to synthesize the central issues covered, key questions raised, etc. There are a number of ways to synthesize. You could, for example, tell students that one of them (they won’t know who in advance) will be asked at the end of every discussion to identify the major issues, concerns and conclusions generated during discussion. You could also ask students individually to write down what they believe was the most important point, the overall conclusion, and/or a question the discussion raised in their mind (these can be collected and serve as the basis of a follow-up lecture or discussion.) You might also provide students with a set of 2 or 3 “take-home” points synthesizing what you thought were the key issues raised in discussion.  Synthesizing the discussion is a critical step for linking the discussion to the original learning objectives and demonstrating progress towards meeting those objectives.

In conclusion…

While there are a lot of issues to consider when planning and leading a discussion, the time you spend up-front thinking through the cognitive, social/emotional, and physical aspects of discussion will pay off later in more lively, productive, and rewarding discussions as well as greater student learning.

References              

Brookfield, S. D. & Preskill, S. (1999)
Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms. San     Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Davis, B. G. (1993)
Tools for Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Frederick, P. (1981)
“The Dreaded Discussion: Ten Ways to Start”. Improving College and University     Teaching. 29(3).

Summary:

This is a basic lesson plan for running of some small group discussions. This article provides some instructions to teachers which are suitable for a wide range of learners.

Concluding Remark:

In my opinión create a lesson plan is  basic to prepare our class. When we are running in an activity to work on groups. We have to be more careful at the moment to teach because there are different kinds of students and we know that not  all student learn in the same way. we have to making sure that the task is clear and that they having enough knowledge and resources to complete the task. We dont have to allow that one group become too noisy because they will attract interest from other groups, who will then lose their own identity. Read this article made me think in more ideas  about how can i develop my teaching to work on groups and im sure that it  will help me a lot.

Sources:

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Design & Teach a Course

http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/instructionalstrategies/discussions.html