Tbers, 

The posting below looks at how to increase seminar participation among all
students. It is by Mano Singham, Case Western Reserve University, and is
number 22 in a series of selected excerpts from the National Teaching and
Learning Forum newsletter reproduced here as part of our "Shared Mission
Partnership." NT&LF has a wealth of information on all aspects of teaching
and learning. If you are not already a subscriber, you can check it out at
[http://www.ntlf.com/] The on-line edition of the Forum--like the printed
version - offers subscribers insight from colleagues eager to share new ways
of helping students reach the  highest levels of learning. National Teaching
and Learning Forum Newsletter, Volume 13, Number 2, © Copyright 1996-2004.
Published by James Rhem & Associates, Inc. (ISSN 1057-2880) All rights
reserved worldwide. Reprinted with permission.


            TALKERS AND LISTENERS

When running seminar or discussion classes for undergraduates, the major
issue instructors face is unbalanced participation, with some students
dominating the discussion while others remain silent. While there are ways
to force more widespread participation (such as calling upon people, basing
grades on participation, using tokens, allowing people to speak only a
limited number of times, etc.), all these techniques involve coercion to a
greater or lesser degree. They run counter to the basic idea of the
seminar/discussion as a continuing conversation, similar to the ones that
one might have with friends and neighbors. One cannot imagine using coercion
there. <http://www.ntlf.com/html/ti/images/v13n2a.jpg>

No Coercion

Since my own teaching philosophy has evolved to the point where I believe
that the best learning occurs under conditions that aren't coercive, I tried
a promising experiment this semester that focused on improving discussion
without coercion. The course was on the "Evolution of Scientific Ideas." The
class was comprised of 17 sophomore students. At the beginning of the very
first meeting, after brief introductions all around, I spoke for a few
minutes, saying that the class would function best if everyone participated
in the discussions. Of course, all instructors say this, and it usually has
little effect.

But then I said that in semi-formal groups such as this, each one of us had,
over time, developed a preferred, or at least customary, role. We saw
ourselves as either "talkers" (people who volunteered to speak and did so
frequently) or "listeners" (people who preferred to stay silent and rarely,
if ever, joined in the discussion unasked). I asked each person to
self-identify, with me beginning and identifying myself as a talker. (This
should be no surprise. McKeachie reports that the most common cause of
unbalanced discussion is the instructor who typically talks about 70-80% of
the time!)

Which Are You?

Six students identified themselves as talkers, while eleven said they were
listeners. I then said that both talking and listening were essential skills
and that we needed to develop both aspects of our personalities. I then
asked all the talkers to sit together in one part of the room, the listeners
to group in another part, and to discuss amongst themselves the following
questions: What made me become a talker (listener)? How can I develop my
listening (talking) skills? How can I help listeners (talkers) talk (listen)
more?

The two groups spent about 20 minutes discussing these questions. The
talkers group (which I naturally joined), although half the size of the
listeners, made much more noise, talking and laughing as they discussed,
with people jumping in with ideas and comments. The listeners group was much
quieter, with only one person speaking at a time, but even there the
conversation never died down. The two groups then reported to each other at
the end of the time period.

Listener Characteristics

The listeners said they listened and did not talk much because they felt
that their ideas must already be obvious to everyone; that there was usually
no pause in the discussion for them to insert their ideas; they liked to
take in information; they took time to formulate their ideas and by the time
that happened the discussion had moved on to something else; they did not
feel themselves to be experts and did not want to waste other people's time
with their unformed or poorly articulated views. To overcome these feelings,
they felt that they should force themselves to talk more.

Talker Characteristics

On the other hand, the talkers said that they felt compelled to share
whatever ideas they had; that they thought their ideas were good; felt
compelled to correct ideas they believed were wrong; were uncomfortable with
silence and felt obligated to break it; and sometimes felt they would
explode if they kept silent. They also said that this behavior had developed
over years as they realized that they liked the attention talkers received,
they were noticed in class by teachers and hence did better, and were often
expected by teachers to respond to questions. To overcome this, they felt
they should force themselves to listen.

An important realization by the listeners was that the talkers did not need
to think their ideas had to be very original or carefully phrased before
they expressed them. Talkers said they often thought things through while
they talked, rather than before. Listeners realized that their own ideas
were not inferior to those of the talkers. In their private journals to me
for that first week, students said they were totally surprised by the
exercise, but that they enjoyed it because they had never before thought
carefully about why they adopted their particular roles.

The whole class felt that we should try and create the conditions under
which everyone got to participate. It was agreed that this responsibility
should be shared and that the instructor should not have to play the role of
arbitrator or be the focal point of the discussion. The class as a whole
would try to develop good seminaring skills as we went along, monitoring the
discussions so that they were not dominated by a few people.

Silent Running

I was apprehensive as to how this early discussion would influence
subsequent classes. The next few classes were not promising, with low levels
of participation and discussion. But what I then learned from their journals
was that a few of the talkers (who are the kinds of students who keep
discussions going) had decided to take a vow of complete silence in order
not to dominate the discussions and to allow space for the listeners! They
said they felt discouraged that the listeners had not immediately picked up
the slack. I replied that they had to be patient, and that it is much harder
for a listener to talk than for a talker to decide to listen. I suggested
that they strive for a balance between domination and silence.

Conversation

The discussions got much better as the semester progressed, with the
distinction between the talkers and listeners getting blurred but not
eliminated. Almost all the listeners seemed to feel much more at ease in
speaking and one or two of them even started talking to such an extent that
they were accused (in good humor) of having "crossed over" to the talkers.

In a review discussion at the end of the semester, students said that this
initial discussion had had a major impact on how they viewed their role in
the seminar. It had made them more self-reflective and conscious of how
their actions influenced that of others. They wished that it would be done
in other classes as well.

Contact:

Mano Singham
Associate Director, UCITE
University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH 44106-7025
E-mail: [log in to unmask]