Harvesting what we already know about collaborative experiences and empowering groups to create collaborative guidelines Dear collaborative discussion friends, Welcome to the Collaborative Discussion Project Newsletter. In our first newsletter, we highlighted two...
Pre-program surveys Dear collaborative discussion friends, We are kicking off the new year with our first Collaborative Discussion Newsletter, highlighting a new Collaborative Discussion Toolkit activity each week. We have heard your feedback! Our open source...
My first week of simulating the IF process via my facilitation and notetaking for the class discussion went OK. It is a large group (around 40), and I made students responsible for taking turns speaking, building on each others' comments, and making sure everyone...
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...
Now that it's been well over a month since my last post, it's hard to know how to sum up all the things that have happened. I'll start at the conclusion: Thursday was the last day of my IF course. All 15 of our first-year seminars are invited to participate in...
If you have not been to a university campus since the 1960s or 1970s, you might be surprised to find how similar the classroom environment is to that which you might remember from forty or more years ago. While technology has transformed the average classroom into...
Since my last post, several things have happened. My students finished their first round of discussions, so everyone has tried their hand at facilitating. It went reasonably well, although I'm changing some small things to make the next round better. I also had...
This week I asked my freshman class to continue discussing "the public value of higher education." I told them to focus on their college experience to present -- activities they had attended (required by the University) & courses in general: "What were they...
When people are invited to take part in one of the Interactivity Foundation’s Public Discussions they often wonder what effect this could have if we meet with just a small group of citizens, perhaps just six or seven people, in sessions here or there around the...
The entry below is another story from my colleague Jack Byrd about student experiences with a student-centered discussion class. It might help you think about the ways that discussion facilitation differs from making an oral presentation. You might also think about...