What happens when a liberal arts college re-envisions its first-year student seminar program to integrate IF’s discussion process? Find out on March 22 when Wesleyan College professors Matt Martin, Deidra Donmoyer, and Lisa Rouleau facilitate a seventy-five minute interactive panel on “Using Student-Facilitated Discussion Teams to Re-Envision a First-Year Seminar” at the Teaching Matters—Making Connections Conference at Gordon State College in Barnesville, Georgia (http://www2.gordonstate.edu/teachingmatters).

Professors Martin and Donmoyer co-directed a major collaborative project with the Interactivity Foundation to integrate IF’s classroom discussion approach to student-facilitated discussion teams into all sections of their Wesleyan Integrative Seminar Experience (“WISe-IF”). Lisa Rouleau is Wesleyan’s Director of the First-Year Experience. The entire class of first-year students learned how to facilitate their own discussion teams devoted to developing contrasting perspectives on the course content. Conference participants will learn about how the Wesleyan faculty worked together to prepare for and teach the course, how the course actually worked, and what impacts this new teaching approach has had. Participants will also have the opportunity to experience an IF discussion and to think about how IF techniques might work for them.