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 ...

One of Kevin Gannon’s favorite class discussion activities doesn’t involve much talking. Inspired by complete-the-story games in which players each write a line of a tale that builds off a previous ...

A guide to organising class discussions in different formats so that all students feel able to participate, based on insight from Harvard educators By promoting sustained engagement between learners, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Classroom discussions can be challenging for non-native English speakers, especially those with self-perceived low language proficiency and high speaking anxiety. A common issue in my pre-intermediate ...

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 ...

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, ...