I’m into week two of my IF-oriented course, and I’ m learning more everyday. On Tuesday we had our first official IF-style discussion. I had to bite my tongue often as I suspected, and allow them to generate ideas. I could think of half a dozen objections to each of the ideas they proposed, and I had to keep my critical self hooded and gagged. Our topic is the nature of art, and I began with some thought-provoking real and hypothetical cases of works that challenge conventional notions of what art is. There was plenty of discussion, but I found that in a class of 12 students, about 3 of them contribute 90% of the ideas. About eight of them occasionally speak, and four never willingly joined in. I’m feeling the need to hurry the class into small groups and give them each more responsibility for the group’s work than they have presently.
I also have a peer mentor in my course who is a senior. She has no grading responsibilities, but she is there to model college learning in my classroom and serve as an advisor to the students. Through her I’ve learned about some of the interpersonal issues that have arisen among the members of the class, and these issues are forcing me to consider how to best navigate this group so they can have constructive discussions. So far, it’s going alright, but if the present dynamics are left as they are, things will take a turn for the worse. Fortunately, some of the facilitation techniques have helped, and I’m going to include more think/pair/share and other techniques to ensure that discussions are more balanced. A round-robin activity already worked well on Tuesday, since it forced some of them into more active roles.
I summarized our Tuesday discussion and posted the summary online for my students, and they responded well so far. They produced two conceptual possibilities that could describe the nature of art. Both possibilities are only in a nascent stage – they are more like germs of ideas rather than fully formed possibilities. They also produced a list of 6 important concepts surrounding art (intention, appreciation, context, etc.) which we will pick up again in next Tuesday’s discussion.
Finally, wish me luck this Sunday as I attempt to use an IF-style discussion model in a Board of Trustees retreat for a local school, where I’ve been asked to facilitate a discussion. I’m going to try to get 16 Board members to generate a set of possible responses to the question “What can we, as a Board and as Board members, do to further the mission of the school?” I only have 2 hours to get the job done, so I’m going to have to work quickly with them. I’m packing my flipchart and markers!
All the best to everyone!
Michael Gettings
5 Comments
Hi, Michael (and Everybody): Thanks for undertaking this blogging “thing.” I’m enjoying the voyeurism. I’d really like to know what the two conceptual possibilities are that your students came up with. Apparently, I don’t have the right pair of binoculars.
Hi Michael, Thanks for posting about your experiences. It’s great to hear about how things are going for you. My class this quarter is really quite big and I haven’t done much IF-style discussion yet.
About your post today… I’m wondering: did you and your class talk at all about conversational expectations? That is, do you have any agreements as a group about things like equity in speaking, constructive disagreement, etc.? If so, you can look back at those as a group to think about how your conversations are going. If not, maybe week 3 is a good time to get them talking about what they (and you) would like the conversations to be like to help everyone learn. Just a thought.
Thanks Laura, I tried what you suggested, and it worked. I first asked the class what they expect to get out of our discussions. That generated a list of about 12 items. Then I asked them for ideas about how we can ensure that those expectations are met. What they shared was unsurprising: “be open-minded,” “don’t scoff at others’ ideas,” “get involved in the discussion,” and “listen to others”. But I also got them to say (paraphrased by me) “find ways to share conversational space with others”. I asked for a show of hands at the end of the discussion to determine who believe they can live with these practices, and it was unanimously approved. I’ve avoided talking about “rules” since they tend to restrict behavior, and have chosen the language of “best practices” to guide the class in a positive direction. So, thanks! Your suggestion was really helpful. The peer mentor I chose for my course thought Tuesday’s class went so much better after we talked about what I’m now calling our “expectations and practices” discussion. Since I don’t really know what I’m doing here, I really benefited from your expertise Laura. Thanks!
No worries, Michael. Sounds like you are doing some great stuff in your course! I feel fortunate to be able to learn from your experiences. Good idea to call it “expectations and practices.”
Jack, in response to your query, the two possible responses to the question “what is art?” were these:
1. What makes something art is that it is aesthetic, or that it potentially or actually produces an aesthetic experience in at least one individual.
2. Art must have meaning, which can include simple beauty or being for its own sake.
As you can see, these are really germs of ideas, not fully-formed answers or theories. The first one trades the difficulty of understanding art with the difficulty of understanding the aesthetic. The second one seems to impose a necessary condition on art, but it doesn’t explain what meaning consists of. So they have a lot more work to do.