One of the greatest challenges in today’s classroom is increasing and diversifying student participation. I developed a format to improve participation in small classrooms, of up to 25 students. The key is making the classroom a collaborative space, by sharing authority with the students and building a community. I presented my format at the recent Eastern APA Teaching Hub (January 2020). Instead of giving a standard talk, I used the format and conducted myself as if I were teaching a small class on the topic of “how I teach small classes.” In doing so, I discovered that the format also works well in a conference setting.
Here is an eight-step guideline of how it works.
- How to conduct discussion: Floating Chair
The majority of class time is devoted to discussion, which is conducted using a method called “Floating Chair”. In this method, the current speaker chooses the next speaker among the people raising their hands. The instructor also needs to raise a hand to participate (except for enforcing norms). I use my turn to speak to contribute, recapitulate the discussion in case students are lost, or change the topic. Further, I help students think critically about chairing and participation. Through explicit conversations about discussion management, it becomes everyone’s responsibility to improve classroom climate and to diversify participation.
The Floating Chair method takes the focus off the instructor and puts it on the students. First, students interact with one another instead of directing most of their comments to the instructor. Second, as most comments are raised by other students, students have an active role in setting the agenda and often feel more comfortable interacting. Third, as inevitable awkward silences become the responsibility of the classroom as a whole, students are more motivated to break the silence.
Floating Chair also facilitates more collaborative discussions, especially in a conference setting. Typically, conference speakers are expected to defend a view and audience members are expected to critique it. Floating Chair supports a dynamic in which audience members have more opportunities to defend and develop the view. For example, at the APA, most of the questions were about how to use the Floating Chair method. Since the discussion was managed using Floating Chair, others responded before or instead of me. For example, in response to a question about how to grade student participation, Russell Marcus (Hamilton College) proposed using peer-evaluations and briefly explained how it could be done. As a result, we all created something better together.
- Collaborative mid-term teaching evaluation
For mid-term teaching evaluation, I ask students to write about their own performance in the classroom, in addition to mine (anonymously). I use their comments as a basis for a conversation about what we can all do, in our respective roles, to improve the discussion. This exercise encourages a joint examination of classroom norms and self-reflection. The results can be striking. For example, one of my overly talkative students wrote on his form that he knows he can improve discussion by talking less. After that, he indeed made much more space for others. If we start using discussion evaluations in conferences, especially in small conferences, they may influence attendees similarly.
- At the beginning of the term: Set the tone
I start the term with an open discussion about the importance and challenges of class participation and I introduce the students to my pedagogical techniques. When you tell students that you will be sharing authority with them and explain how and why, they feel more involved and are more inclined to resist the traditional power dynamic from the get-go. Similarly, getting students to think about the role of participation can make them more inclined to participate.
- At the beginning of the term: Make name tents
At the beginning of the term, each student, as well as the instructor, makes a name tent (each person folds a blank page into two, writes their name on it, and places it in front of them). I collect the name tents at the end of each meeting and redistribute them at the beginning of the next. Knowing each other’s names strengthens the sense of community. In addition, distributing and collecting the name tents creates opportunities for personal interactions with students and helps with taking attendance.
- At the beginning of each meeting: Sit in a circle
Sitting in a circle challenges the strict hierarchy of the classroom. To further break down the hierarchy, I try to sit at a different spot in the circle each class, next to different students and in a different part of the classroom.
- At the beginning of each meeting: Two-minute chat
At the beginning of each meeting, I ask the students to spend two minutes talking casually with one student they don’t know well. I, the instructor, also participate. As a community forms over time, students become less intimidated by and more compassionate towards each other (and the instructor). In addition, the two-minute chats create opportunities for the instructor to check in with individual students.
- At the beginning of each meeting: Common ground
I start each meeting by briefly presenting the material. This way, students have something to talk about even if they didn’t do or didn’t understand the reading. Moreover, it helps in focusing the discussion on the topics of your choosing.
- At the end of each meeting: Recap
At the end of each meeting, I summarize the discussion and correct any lingering misconceptions.
In closing, I recommend experimenting with this format in small classrooms and conferences.
Authority sharing and community building create collaborative environments that foster constructive and inclusive conversations.
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my students for helping me develop this format, especially my students in the class Philosophy of Race, Ethnicity, and Citizenshipin the Fall of 2018. I would also like to thank Candace Vogler, from whom I learned some of the components of this format, and Jes Heppler and Jeff Kaplan for feedback. Last, very special thanks to the participants of the Feminist Summer Reading School in the Summer of 2017, and especially to its four organizers: Sophia Arbeiter, Heike Behnke, Barbara Haas, and Conny Knieling. They showed me how much of a difference better discussion management can make and in doing so inspired me to look for ways to improve.
Ravit Dotan
Ravit Dotan is a graduate student at UC Berkeley. She specializes in epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of machine learning.
