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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

When I first started teaching, my attitude toward students who remained silent in discussion classes could be summed up with the words of Bernard Hopkins, the fistic sage of Philadelphia: “Bernard ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

W hen Agnes Bolinska was an undergraduate, she didn’t talk much in class. “I was scared of being judged, and I was scared of saying the wrong thing,” said Bolinska, who is now an assistant professor ...