CLASSROOM DISCUSSION


DISCUSSION IN FIRST-YEAR PRECEPTORIAL

A User's Manual for Student-Led Discussion, by Gale Rhodes, Professor of Chemistry, University of Southern Maine and Robert Schaible, Professor of Arts and Humanities, Lewiston-Auburn College.  Rhodes and Schaible give detailed guidance on how to have students lead discussion.  Even if you aren't convinced that such extensive use of student-led discussion is a good idea, faculty can readily use for ourselves the advice the authors give to students on how to prepare for and stimulate class discussion.

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~rhodes/StdLedDisc.html

Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom, by Lee Waren, Derek Bok Center, Harvard
University: http://bokcenter.fas.harvard.edu/docs/hotmoments.html

Handling discussion of subjects that bring up intense emotional reactions: The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan put together a set of guidelines for discussions in the wake of September 11. The guidelines, while designed with a specific incident in mind, can easily be applied more broadly to situations that bring up intense emotional reactions. The URL is: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/publinks/tragedydiscussion.html

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