Part One Describe how your answers changed on the survey from the beginning of the lesson to the end. Explain which parts of the lesson helped change your mind. If your answer did not change, explain which parts of the lesson supported your original opinion.

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.

Cognitive factors:

Determine and communicate learning objectives

Plan a strategy

Ask good questions

Provide direction and maintain focus

Bring closure

Social/emotional factors:

Demonstrate relevance

Encourage participation

Make high-quality participation “count”

Evaluate the discussion

Physical factors:

Creating a setting conducive for discussion

Cognitive Factors

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

Explanation: The objectives are expressly and comprehensively explained in the narratives

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