My students had their first IF discussion this week. They talked for about 50 minutes, then we spent about 15 minutes debriefing as a group before I met individually with the three facilitators. I started the debriefing by having them free write to prompts about...
Last semester Pradip and I collaborated on teaching parallel IF courses. Our students read the same texts and explored common themes. While Pradip’s students produced a series of photographs, my students wrote a series of essays – including essays that ideas...
There’s a lot of talk these days—as there’s always been—about reforming higher education. One of the more popular ideas getting a lot of play is that doing away with the disciplines will fix what’s wrong with the system. The disciplines are maligned for being...
In case anyone is interested in using (or revising and using) either of the 2 evaluation forms that appear on pages 100-104 of the Guidebook for Student-Centered Classroom Discussions, I've attached the 2 forms in Microsoft Word (both in 2008 (".docx") and...
My IF course makes me nervous. Not flop-sweat nervous like when I tried to teach Song of Myself without having even glanced at it for several years, but the kind of nervous that's good for someone who's been teaching at the same place for 15 years. My course is an...
I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to set up student groups since I have watched the enrollment in the class I will be teaching starting next week grow from 7 to almost 50 students in the last month (not what I expected!). Given that I intend to have...
Last night was our second meeting (and only the second week of classes) of "The Good Society," the topic of the course. Since we only meet once per week (for three hours), I've not yet moved very far into organizing groups. In addition to some course content,...
I am teaching a course on how globalization is changing San Francisco, and am having students collaboratively develop policy proposals for the city by using IF Discussion techniques. They will develop ideas about policy alternatives, research different facts about...
For those of you teaching an IF sponsored course this spring (2010), we'd like you to post blog entries at least 4 times during the semester in which you reflect upon and share some of your course experiences. We hope that we'll all benefit from the expanded...
The Perspectives articles exploring IF in the classroom have, thus far, largely articulated the benefits of our student-centered approach on student learning, interaction, retention, and skill development (leadership, communication, etc.). It is important that we...