Engagement Strategies

Consider these strategies to increase student engagement in discussion-based/seminar courses.

Student-led Discussions

Ask students to sign up for dates to lead short portions of class discussions. This can happen during synchronous class sessions or asynchronously using class discussion boards. Create parameters for leading and participating in discussions. For instance, you might ask discussion leads to prepare five discussion questions and additional follow up questions based on homework readings. Prior to the first student-led discussion, explain and model good discussion facilitation to students. For example, you might model leading a discussion then ask students to comment on strategies you employed.

Think/Pair/Share

Pose a question to your class. Give students 1-2 minutes to think about the question individually, then 1-2 minutes to discuss their thoughts with a classmate either face-to-face (socially distanced) or remotely using Zoom breakout rooms. Once students finish discussing the question with a peer, ask for volunteers to respond to the question. In addition to encouraging critical thinking and collaboration, this activity is quick and easy to deploy for face-to-face and remote students.

Facilitating Discussion Using Canvas Discussion Boards

Present one to three discussion questions that you anticipate posing during the session on a Canvas discussion board.  Have each student compose a paragraph-long response to one of those questions (so that each student has something to say in class) and a shorter response to another student’s principal post (so that you lay the groundwork for dialogue in class).  It is helpful to create one due date for an initial post and a second, later due date for replies to discourage procrastination and cultivate robust discussion. To decrease grading burden, you might consider grading based on completeness rather than quality. If you opt to grade on quality, using a discussion board rubric can increase grading efficiency and consistency. During synchronous class sessions, use points students made on the discussion board to catalyze class discussion and encourage students to do the same.

Focus Questions or Passages

Use questions to frame or provoke thinking. When posting course materials in Canvas, add 1-3 critical thinking questions for students to consider as they read or review.

You can also begin classes by placing a short, provocative quote from the day’s reading assignment (or a related quotation from another source). Give students five minutes to respond to the passage. They can do this collectively as a class in a Canvas discussion board, Microsoft 365 document, or a Google doc by writing notes, paragraphs, lists, or mind maps about what the passage means and why it is significant to the course or to the subject matter of the day’s session. Review and respond to entries to facilitate an opening discussion of the day’s topic or review them after class after giving students an opportunity to share their thoughts as a way to frame the day’s discussion work.

Peer Assessment Using a Simplified Rubric

Create a simplified version of a rubric you use to evaluate student work. You can do this by turning the rubric into a checklist, focusing on a single performance criterion from the rubric, or converting the rubric into a list of questions. Place students in pairs and trios and ask them to use the tool you created to review one another’s work. After completing reviews, ask students to discuss reviews with their peer reviewers and formulate a plan to revise and improve their work.

The Debriefing Assignment

Give your students 24 hours after a class session to debrief each other in small groups via Canvas Groups or a Google Doc template that you create for each group. Each template should contain a column for each group member; each column will contain a space for that person to evaluate his or her own performance in class-discussion work, spaces for each of the other group members to respond with suggestions for improvement or comments highlighting successes, and a final space for the student to address the comments received.

Anonymous Paragraph Critique Using Polling Technology

Ask each student to submit in advance of a class session a draft of one paragraph from a pending paper assignment. Let students know beforehand that paragraphs will be anonymously displayed to the class for the purpose of workshopping them. Select paragraphs to display, then deploy a series of critique questions using a polling tool. Use the poll results to generate a discussion about strengths and weaknesses in the paragraph and ways to strengthen the paragraph as part of the writing process.

Shared Notebooks or Documents

Split your class into groups of four. You may want to group face-to-face students with other face-to-face students and remote students with remote students. Using a Microsoft OneNote notebook, Microsoft 365 document, or Google doc as a collaboration space, the students in each group will serve, respectively, as

1. The Recorder (taking notes of lectures and other content-based material presented in class)
2. The Questioner (posing questions that the group might want to present before the end of class or at some later time)
3. The Devil’s Advocate (offering generative critiques of the material presented in class)
4. The Mouthpiece (articulating the group’s ideas to the larger class section and to the instructor, perhaps taking notes along the way about what the student wishes to say).

The Fishbowl Technique

Select a subset of three to four students to serve in your “fishbowl” group. If students are face-to-face, position them, with appropriate social-distancing measures (if necessary), in front of the Zoom Room camera so that remote students can see their interactions. If students are remote, make sure that face-to-face students can observe their interactions on their devices or on screens in the classroom. Provide the fishbowl group with a discussion prompt and have them converse for five to ten minutes while the students outside of the fishbowl, both physically present and remote, take notes on the discussion. Follow up by having the observers pose questions about or respond to points made in the fishbowl group’s discussion.

Zoom Polls

You can create Zoom poll questions prior to or during classes to allow students to respond to questions anonymously. Questions can be used to determine students’ opinions, conduct knowledge checks, dispel common misconceptions, and more. Among many productive possibilities is a question that has multiple good or “correct” answers but that asks students to choose the best answer. Students who chose the most popular selection can then be invited to explain the reasoning behind their choice.

Note: Zoom polls are not accessible to students using screen readers.

Top Hat Word Cloud Polls

Productive discussions can derive from questions that invite students to share general perceptions instead of answering questions with “right” or “wrong” answers. For example, in Top Hat, you can give students 60 seconds to enter a single word (single-word answers work best for this activity) describing their impression of the day’s reading, a central concept from lecture, etc. Display the results as a word cloud. The results are sometimes amusing, generating a nice bond between students and a pleasant teacher-student rapport, and they are often informative in terms of their ability to spark larger discussions or to gauge students’ understanding of the material covered by the poll.