Teaching is hard. If a lesson is too general, students walk way feeling uninspired. If it is too specialized, some may struggle to find relevance. With too little guidance, discussions can quickly go off the rails. But if the teacher holds the reins too tightly, they prevent the sort of accidental discoveries that make learning exciting. Even worse, they risk giving the false impression that they hold all the correct answers.
Below are some strategies from top universities for crafting and running engaging seminars.
Below are some strategies from top universities for crafting and running engaging seminars.
Communicate Values and Expectations Upfront
In 2014, Google completed Project Aristotle, a study of the factors that contribute to team performance. They found that the strongest indicator of a team's success is "psychological safety," the shared sense that team members are free to speak up, ask questions, report mistakes, or propose ideas without fear of punishment or embarrassment. We think this applies to successful seminars as well.
One way to increase this sense of psychological safety in a seminar is to set clear expectations. Let students know ahead of time how much they are expected to participate, that disagreement and mistakes are allowed, that insults are not.
One way to increase this sense of psychological safety in a seminar is to set clear expectations. Let students know ahead of time how much they are expected to participate, that disagreement and mistakes are allowed, that insults are not.
Let student's know that there is a strict "don't be a jerk" policy.
On Thicket, there are a few ways to clarify expectations:
- Set a welcome announcement
- Upload a course policy to the class's shared resource folder
- Devote a few minutes of the first class to discussing shared expectations
Doing so will help increase participants' confidence in their own ability to participate appropriately, and their trust that other participants will do so as well.
Share Discussion Questions before Class
Not everyone is equally comfortable sharing their thoughts in front of others. One way to help those less comfortable is to share topics and questions for discussion ahead of class time, allowing participants time to consider their responses before class. The question can be something as simple as "What is one question you had about last week's lesson?" or "What is one thing you found confusing in this week's reading?" Then you can devote the first portion of next class to discussing participant's responses as a group, without risking catching anyone off guard.
We built a messaging system into Thicket so that discussions can continue outside of class.
Set Clear Goals for Your Lectures
There are many different philosophies behind what a good lecture should accomplish. One common view understands lectures in terms of:
- Context: Provide necessary background, clarify relevance, define key concepts for the lesson.
- Content: Guide students through the core ideas of a lesson, elaborating on readings and pointing out alternative perspectives.
- Closure: Summarize the key points and takeaways, setting up future lessons.
But there are other ways to use lecture time, depending on the sort of materials that students have access to outside of class. For instance, some lecturers like to rely on textbooks to provides students with standard narratives, and then complicate these narratives in lecture. Others like to use lectures to illustrate how to defend a hypothesis with evidence, or to work through a problem together with students.
Regardless, lecturers should be careful to avoid causing cognitive overload, by introducing too many new concepts or problematizing too many ideas at once.
Be Careful with Leading Questions
The occasional leading question can help guide discussions back toward a more productive direction and help participants recognize how much they already understand. However, if overused, leading questions can give the impression that there are clear right and wrong answers, and risks turning a session into a sort of quiz show, where the participants try to guess the correct answer.
Use Existing Resources
There are plenty of great resources for educators on the internet. Many top universities have centers for teaching that support their own professors and graduate students, including UC Berkeley, Harvard, UT Austin, U Michigan, and others. These are a great places to find strategies for designing and facilitating engaging classes.
