Flipped activity suggestion - Small groups
- Generate ideas in preparation for a lecture
- Summarise main points in a text, reading, lecture
- Assess levels of skills and understanding
- Reexamine exams, problems, quizzes, writing assignments
- Process learning outcomes at the end of class
- Provide comments to teachers on how the class is gong
- Compare and contrast key theories, issues and interpretations
- Solve problems that relate theory to practice
- Brainstorm applications of theory to everyday life
Meyers & Jones (1993)
Be clear about the purposes of group discussion:
Intellectual purposes
- To engage students in exploring a diversity of perspectives
- To assist students in discovering new perspectives
- To emphasise the complexity and ambiguity of issues, topics and themes
- To help students recognise the assumptions underlying many of their habitual ideas and behaviours
- To increase intellectual agility
- To encourage active listening
Emotional purposes
- To increase students' affective connections to a topic
- To show students that they are heard, their voices matter, that their experiences are valued
Social purposes
- To develop a sense of group identity
- To encourage democratic habits
Good discussions do not just happen; they usually result from some degree of pre-planning, especially around what and how to contribute.
Brookfield (1990)
Prepare for discussion activities
- Choose discussion topics carefully - choose topics that are not too factual or uncontroversial
- Provide preparatory materials- access to concepts, ideas, factual information and explanations that will inform their discussion
- Evolve consensual rules - create procedural rules and codes of conduct (eg respect minority opinions, no-one is to dominate the group, divergent views are allowed, time limits or maximum contributions allowed)
- Personalise discussion topics - connect to student experiences
- Introduce some productive dissonance - invite them to consider alternatives