What are some good ways to facilitate a discussion?
- Students must feel comfortable talking to each other. To encourage
a warm climate at the beginning of the course.
- Consider the physical set-up in your classroom. Can students see each other,
or are they sitting side by side in rows facing the front of the room? Is
it possible to create a circle or a semi-circle?
- Establish criteria for a good discussion at the beginning of the course.
Spend a few minutes letting the students generate these criteria themselves.
(One GTF had each student introduce themselves by completing this sentence:
"When I am in a small group discussion, I usually...)
Feedback discussions are wonderful for making this happen.
- Make your students responsible for bringing good issues for discussion to
- Listen well. Respond in a way that indicates that you heard and understood
the question or the comment. Validate questions by either expanding on or
challenging them, and encourage students to challenge you.
- Allow enough time for discussion. Good discussions take some time for warm-up,
reflection, and maximum input.
- Give students time to respond. A few seconds can feel like a century, but
students need that time to process the question.
- Warm up your audience. Use review questions from the last session or even
a non-related current event to get people in the mood. Sometimes controversial
events or issues will jump-start a discussion. Check out The Book of Questions
as a resource; it poses dilemmas of all kinds, and it demands that readers
take a stand. Go around the room and let every student comment.
- Present material as problems to be solved, and encourage the consideration
of multiple solutions. For example: "Let's consider all the ways we might
determine the period in which to place this artifact." --or-- "There are lots
of ways this story can be interpreted. Let's see if we agree or disagree with
- Tell the students in advance what the discussion topics will be.
- Offer different options for participation. Letting students turn in written
responses often helps shyer students.
- Let students work in groups of three or four. Assign them a discussion topic
and give them five or ten minutes to put together a response. Let them decide
how to present their thoughts to the class.
- Prompt students with a variety of questions that require different levels
- Some questions can be answered with information from general experience
or from basic knowledge of the discipline.
- Some questions require that students explain the relationship between
different ideas, using this to form general concepts.
- Some require students to apply concepts and principles to new data and
- Tried-and-true techniques for structuring active discussion: