In sitting down to write a summary of the presentation by John Immerwahr and Heidi Rose, I feel as if I understood at least some of what Plato must have felt when attempting to render an exchange of views with Socrates. In its form, however, our discussion was much livelier than the published version of a Socratic dialogue. Would that all our classes went like this!
--- Dr. Margaret Connolly, Arthur J. Ennis Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities
 

"The Participatory Classroom: Strategies for Developing Student Discussion"
Presenter: Dr. John Immerwahr
Respondent: Dr. Heidi Rose
March 6, 1996

REMARKS BY JOHN IMMERWAHR

John opened with the reflection that when you're just starting teaching, your basic concern is "what am I going to do now?" - but that before long this question is replaced by "what do I want to have happen?" He organized his thoughts by exploring various aspects of questions and answers in the classroom.

About questions:

The format of questions and answers seems to be the royal road to class discussion; and yet...

Take One: When students make an observation, they often phrase it as a question: "Don't you think that ....". Learning from gestalt therapy, we note that if the student, is instructed to rephrase the observation as a statement, the energy level goes way up.

Take Two: Why should it be that the older person in authority asks questions, and the younger person answers? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Isn't the older person the one with the experience and wisdom to communicate? And yet, even conversing with our teenage children's friends, we are the ones who do the questioning: Hi, who are you, where do you go to school....In the classroom too, perhaps 75 % of the questions are addressed from age to youth.

A Fantasy: On the first day of class, the professor describes the course content, answers questions: "yes, there is a final, yes, the final grade is cumulative, no, yes .... any other questions? Okay, class dismissed. "
Day Two: "Any questions? No? Okay."
Day Three: "Any questions?" The kids are getting nervous.
"Are you going to give a lecture?"
"Well, I'll answer questions. Are there any questions?"
"What should we read? Where should we start?"

Two questions about questions:

1) How much time do we give students to come up with questions?
2) What happens to the question after that?

Giving time

Silence. We can be paralyzed by silence. But silence gives students time.

Voice mail, with group lists.
One of the world's great inventions, at least for first and second-year students. You can get to the students right when they're studying, and ask them, "can you come in tomorrow with a question about -"; or, "do this, and then give us a minute about - . " Hit the button, and the message goes to everyone in class. Or, receiving a response from students, press the 8 button to reply and you can say, "Good, that was interesting, now what about - . "  The same principle would apply to e-mail.

In class:
Give students time to write their questions down. Ask them, "take a minute with the person next to you and get some questions." Tell them, "I'll ask you for questions in twenty minutes; start writing some down."

What happens to the question?

Once the student gets the question out, we, the teachers, tend to answer the question.

Not always a good thing to do.

Take time to venerate the question.

"Gee -- let's put that question on the board."
Sometimes when I don't know what else to do, I put four symbols on the board: a plus sign, a minus, a question mark, and a bolt of lightning. I ask students to write down "something that impressed you, something you despised, a question you have, and something that turned you on. " Then I might leave the room. When I come back, I put their comments and questions on the board and talk about them. Connect them. This validates students and what they have come up with.

How do we ask a question that will lead to a productive discussion?

1) Think about the dynamics of question-and-answer in the classroom.

Typical situation: Professor asks the whole class a question to which the professor knows the answer, for example: what was Plato trying to do in the Phaedo?

Silence.

Finally, a student: "trying to prove the immortality of the soul??"

First, it's as if we're trying to get them to give our lecture for us.

Second, the student who answers is taking a big risk. If the answer is obvious, to his peers he's a repulsive toad. Or suppose the question is insulting. Once a professor complained that he had asked his class "who was Marx" and nobody answered. "They don't even know who Marx is!! " I did an experiment. I gave them the names Marx, Wagner, Darwin, Freud and asked them to write two sentences identifying these people and hand in the result, with no names. They all knew who these people were. Well, maybe not Wagner.

What they think of one another is more important to them than what we think of them. Especially on a campus as social as this one. Remember their concerns: housing; reproduction; food. And yet, Student Life tells us, they won't even go to the dining hall without a friend. They'll skip meals.

Another typical situation: professor asks a question, student answers. Professor feels: "you have saved me! " Then what happens? "Now I'll ask you even harder questions!! " Or: "Yes, but that wasn't what I wanted."

2) Think about two variables in different combinations: the number of possible answers the question has, and the number of people to whom the question is addressed. (And then think about these two variables along with the variable of time.)

We can ask a question that has only one possible answer but which is addressed to everybody - like a toss-up in basketball.

We can ask questions that have many possible answers, such as:
-Can you think of an example of - ?
-How did you feel about - ?
-What else did that make you think about?

We can change the focus of who the question is addressed to. A lot of us are embarrassed to direct questions to someone; we have a fear of calling on people. If you have an 8:30 class, you get over that. You go, "David, you talk." "Karen, now you say something about that." They're okay with that because they know at that hour they can't do it anyway.

We can ask, “how many people think this, and how many people think that?” Then get them to say why.

The book Teaching Tips by Wilbur McKeachie [on reserve in Falvey] is a valuable book. Among other things, it cites mounds of research studies proving that what you already believed is true. It has a lot to say about things you can do with writing. The question, "Eileen, what did you write down?" is much less threatening than "Eileen, what did you think about - ?"

Who talks in class and who does not?

When we get our students' papers, we find out that it's not always the brightest students who do the talking in class.

Some people start talking before they have any idea what they're going to say, hoping that it will make sense once they get it out. Others have the perverse idea that they must know what they mean before they say it. For these people class can be very frustrating because they sit there trying to put their ideas together and by the time they do the topic is all over.


One technique: have your non-talkers sit in an inner circle, the talkers outside. Let the non-talkers have the conversation. Often it will be more interesting and more thoughtful than what usually goes on.
[This last observation raised the topics of monopolizers and shy students, which was deferred until discussion.]

REMARKS BY HEIDI ROSE

A good way to begin a semester is to take the first one or two classes discussing what's been a class they've absolutely loved: to get them thinking about what works in a classroom and what has worked for them. Students commonly value classes in which there is a lot of give and take, and in which their ideas are respected. "The instructor respected me and respected what I said." One student who was taking the second semester of Core Humanities (now known at the Villanova Seminar) but had not taken the first particularly appreciated the fact that the class didn't make her feel dumb. She didn't feel that her ideas were undervalued: that's what she had been afraid of.

A corollary of respecting student ideas is the need sometimes for teachers to hold back. We need to restrain our own desire to say so much, to engage with an engaging text, or to unpack it for them; or we need to restrain our own feeling, when the class is having trouble getting below surface stuff, "Don't you see this?? It's so obvious. " One way to restrain teacher domination is to get students to work in groups. Again, holding back our own response gets them talking, to each other: if I stop myself from answering, another student will say what I was going to say anyway. Or again, sometimes when I'm answering a student question, I'll catch a nonverbal cue that someone has something to say, and when I open the floor to them, they'll say, "well, you just said what I was going to say." They do have a lot of experience although sometimes they may not feel that.

Students' written preparation in advance of class facilitates discussion. Ask students to come in with written discussion points every day: one question, a couple of thoughts. I decided that yes, I would collect the written thoughts; but would do so at the end of class, so as to let them speak from their papers during class. Sometimes I would then find myself reading a list of every interesting point made during discussion, and would need to counter this with "Yes, but I wanted to know what you thought before class." Another value of this technique is that after having read student comments, you can come back to the next class saying, "Oh, Doug, you made this really interesting point here; can you elaborate on it?"

Depending on the hour the class is taught, sometimes physical warnings exercises can be a big help: go get a drink of water; do facial exercises; do tongue twisters; do mini-calisthenics.

Nonverbal cues are particularly important in dealing with shyer students. Sometimes a flash across the eyes, a movement, or a gesture will signal the moment when you can catch them and get them to express their thought.

Silences. Our ability to be comfortable with silences is crucial.

Reading out loud can help, especially with literary texts; and especially with authors who are a little experimental, like Gertrude Stein. Reading out loud helps counter the student reaction, "this is not how I was taught composition!!" Have them work in pairs, with something prepared to perform in class. Hearing the words out loud can spark discussion and stimulate ideas they didn't have before.

DISCUSSION

[Many, many people participated in the discussion; I will not attempt here to match the commentator with the comment. - MC]

-In dealing with a monopolizer, sometimes I'll meet with other students in my office, and arrange to have the peer group deal with the monopolizer. I'll ask them how they feel about this student's behavior. "Do you feel you're given a chance to speak?"

-Sometimes I'll say, "all those who have spoken, I don't want to hear from you now; I'd like to hear from somebody else. "

-Often the obnoxious kid is needy in other ways. Have lunch with them, spend some time getting to know what their problem is.

-Be positive. Act excited. "Gee, I'm really glad you have this great idea! Put it in a journal."

-Ask the shy student one-on-one to participate: "I'd like you to help me out."

-Sometimes I say to the ones who aren't talking, "it's as if you have elected these other people to talk. You haven't in fact elected them, but the result is the same."

-With shy students, I always make a big deal of saying, "whatever you say in this class will not affect your grade. " Sometimes they identify their nonparticipation and shyness as a problem. My approach is, "if you want to work on it, I can help you."

-Isn't it one of the Core Humanities (now known as the Villanova Seminar) goals to raise the level of their skills in speaking.? I use Post-it notes sometimes on their papers: "I would appreciate it if you would participate more in my class."

-Sometimes I ask, "if you were in this situation in this story, what would you do?"

-There is a gender dimension on the question of participation. Sometimes it is women who don't participate, and who afterwards wish they had participated more.

-The gender distribution is 50/50 in the dorms and in the university. But there are more women than men in Arts & Sciences, more men in Engineering, and more women in nursing.

-One way of dealing with shyness is to create a lot of permission to speak, including "now it's your turn to speak," and calling on them.

-If they want to work on it, sometimes I'll strategize ahead of time with them, and plan, "you start it off, you say...."

-I routinely call on everybody - a "must" creating a "may." A little jumpiness tunes up the mind.

-I might ask, "what's the adjective that comes to mind about this character?" Or, "why did you say that?" At the end of class I'll make some concluding statement.

-Sometimes I ask, "who would you cast in this role?" And they'll say Demi Moore, or Sean Penn. Like Heidi's warm-up exercises, it gets blood going to the brain.

-I might ask, "which character most appealed to you, and why?" Often the shyer students come up with brilliant observations.

-I can't teach literature. I tell them to pick a passage ahead of time, read their passage in class, and say what's interesting. They always pick things you would never notice. And they come in prepared.

-The use of e-mail: the old theory was you assign the text and think you've done your job by doing that. But using e-mail you can achieve more focus: give more precise assignments; or engage students in some advance writing.

-Yes. I took a graduate course in communication and it was great stuff, but only when I got to class did I realize why we were reading it.

-With shy students, conferencing cannot be overestimated. It can make or break classroom dynamics. In conference you can say to them, "you're really writing nice things. I wish you'd bring these things up in class. Everyone should be hearing this! " There are two kinds of students to whom you should say this: those for whom it's true, and those for whom it's not. Conference time is more valuable than the most electric moments in class. After conferences, people are behaving differently because they've talked with you for 15 minutes.

-Instead of toning down monopolizers, you can encourage competition. Students could feel angry for not getting their share of class time: "I'm here to learn."

-I had a monopolizer once who I'm sure was clinically ill.

-I had advice from a psychologist on how to deal with a student whose behavior indicated she could possibly become aggressive in class. The advice was to immediately call "time out" and ask the student, "may I speak with you in the hall?" It's an extreme case, but extreme cases happen.

-It's not a good use of speaking skills if they come off as monopolizers or as overly aggressive. You can say, "Listening is a skill. Joe is real good at talking, and so-and-so is really good at listening. Now Joe's job for the next 45 minutes is to listen and take notes, then summarize at the end. "

-I am puzzled by the gender thing, the male monopolizer with the female teacher. Maybe we should do more in Orientation, "get a clue! there are people here in authority over you."

-Research has shown that if a woman professor doesn't want to listen to a student's problem, woe betide her. If a man doesn't want to, that's okay.

-Monopolizers have more power if everything is back and forth to the teacher.

-What can we do to get students talking more to each other rather than to the teacher?

-First make them comfortable. For freshmen, there is still tension; they haven't reached the stage of being cool and not doing their reading. Have them interview each other the first day -- about their background, about their summer. Use name tags. Have them introduce each other. Deal with readings in teams.

-I had my students arguing today all hot and bothered, and I made no attempt to moderate. Even though they were heated, they wanted to communicate with one another.

-What about silences? I wanted to break my class up today into small groups, and they said, please, not small groups! I said, "wait, you're supposed to love small groups! I'm supposed to send you to them when you're miserable." They said, "you may be miserable."

-You can rephrase the question to get some response.

-Silence doesn't bother me. I wait till they get uneasy.

-You can change chairs. Get up, move, turn the chair.

-You can ask, "who thinks this, and who thinks that?" Then you can say, "talk to her." You can ask them, "could you just say that again?" Sometimes I repeat it if they can't. Then you get them to repeat their position to another student as a statement.

If the student says, "Galileo would say," I get them to rephrase it: "I would say-” From Nick Rosa, who teaches counseling theory and practice, I've learned that energy goes much higher if
(1) the words are phrased as a statement
(2) the statement is made to somebody
(3) you are saying what you believe

-You can make a rule, no raising hands.

-You can ask a student, "can you please manage the discussion?"

-I use cases from the New York Times. They're not intimidated by the Times the way they can be by a classic text.

-What about when they haven't done the reading?

-I forestall that with mini-quizzes: "Take out a piece of paper. How many sisters are not married at the end of the novel? Who is --?" There are six questions, each one counts 20 points, so they can miss one. One person collects the quizzes, grades them, gives them to me, and I record the grades.

-For Frankenstein I handed out a 33-question quiz and said "come back in a week with the answers to these questions. "

-I've done one-page reading assignments in class with incredible results. It takes one-third of the class time. People are not always sure they've done the reading. For once they were all sure they had read it.
 

We have all heard the story that Gertrude Stein's last words were, "what is the answer?" - followed by, "what is the question?" Now we have the questions, and a lot of answers. Many thanks to all who participated, and to John Immerwahr and Heidi Rose for doing so much to make our jobs easier.
---Margaret Connolly