Early this year, after the pandemic had moved my classroom online, a student asked if we could try “silent meetings” in a course I was teaching. At first I assumed that, like many of us, he was just ...

Discussion is a large part of teaching and learning. We want to see and hear our learners engaged in conversations about the course content, making connections to their lives or to other aspects of ...

Few psychologists would claim that the lecture is dead but those who aspire to be good or even great teachers rely on this method less than their own teachers did. What’s taken its place? Engaging ...

As we approach the fall semester, one thing everyone who is returning to in-person teaching should be thinking about is how they will run discussions. Class discussions have always been complicated, ...

Why Are Class Discussions Challenging? There are a variety of reasons that class discussions are challenging. It’s not necessarily just students being “lazy”. There could be a lot of real issues and ...

At some point in their career, every teacher will find themselves having a difficult discussion with their students. My first took place not long after I began teaching. It involved one of my students ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Natalie Wexler is an education writer focusing on literacy. Nov 02, 2020, 01:28pm EST Nov 02, 2020, 01:28pm EST This article is ...

This week, our nation braces as we await the results of a presidential election during an ongoing global pandemic. Simultaneously, many of us are still reeling from the tragedy which unfolded last ...

This seems to be the common rule in most classrooms. It is easily explained in a lecture setting. Indeed, everyone must be focused on what the professor is saying. A discussion would only create a ...

Provide (verbally and on the syllabus) clear guidelines for participation. Discuss them beforehand, stick to them, and enforce them during class. Think about what active participation means to you and ...

As an undergraduate, I took a seminar dedicated entirely to Ulysses by James Joyce. Joyce’s modernist novel is mystifying, so question marks hung on the ends of students’ contributions. As we ...

Since coming to Brown, I’ve noticed that men tend to speak more frequently in my classroom discussions. I’ve had many conversations with friends about this who have noticed the same trend across a ...