Recognising that discussion is not limited to whole class conversations, but also may occur in dyads or small groups provides opportunities for more shy students to engage without having to speak in front of the entire class. Organising students into teams has the added benefit of creating a sense of community and belonging even when the course has large numbers of students enrolled. This sense of community also creates positive peer-pressure to be prepared for the discussion by completing reading assignments and to engage in the conversation.
See Think-Pair-Share strategy which allows for discussion in a dyad.
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We’ve mentioned two strategies for engaging students in the college classroom. The use of a Think-Pair-Share, and limiting who can speak. We also want to talk about those large courses. How can you make a large enrollment course feel smaller so that students will engage in classroom discussion? Of course, you can use the strategy in a large class. That makes perfect sense. And then perhaps asking people to volunteer their partner, or randomly calling on pairs of students to speak up. But a better strategy, I think, is to organise students in semester long small groups or teams.
Now a good strategy for this, I’m a sociologist, in my case, we could name the teams after famous sociologists. So there’s Team Marx, and Team Durkheim, and Team Weber, and Team Mills, and so on. So, you know, pick a name, whatever fun sort of thing so students begin to recognise that’s my team. My team has a name. And then there are five to eight students in each of those teams. And in these large enrollment courses, students are required to sit close to one another during class. And while the class might be predominantly lecture because of the large size, at some point or points during the class session, you take a break from the lecture and say, it’s time for us to have conversations in our teams.
So just as with Think-Pair-Share, you give them a compelling question that can be addressed from multiple different angles, and provide different insights. And have the students discuss the question in their teams. Now, keeping them on track is one of the challenges, right? So what you do then, you can’t call on every team in a large enrollment class. Let’s say maybe you have 10 or 15 teams in your large enrollment course, but you can randomly call on two or three of them. And the teams don’t know which two or three you’re going to call upon. So they have to be prepared to respond in case their team is called upon.
Now, it’s a good idea to tie that question to the assigned reading for the day. It encourages students to complete the reading ahead of time because of the sense of community that develops from being with the same group of five to eight students throughout the course of the semester. Even if it’s a class of 150 students, students feel like they belong. I have my team, I have my community, we support each other in learning in this course. So there’s this positive peer pressure that develops for students. I need to complete the reading so I can contribute to my team, or I’ll be letting my team down. And that sense of community is important not only for the sense of belonging in your individual classroom, but it helps facilitate learning when students think they belong. And that sense of belonging in community also contributes to things that administrators like me worry about. Will students be retained from one semester to the next semester? It also contributes positively to student graduation rates. So not only are you helping students learn in your course by putting students in a large enrollment class in semester long small groups, but you’re also making it more likely that they’re going to be retained in college, and to graduate.
