Student-led Discussions
Faculty asked individual students to prepare for and lead a class discussion.
About
Student Led Discussions can engage both the individual student and the broader class, but even with faculty intervention, can vary in their quality. They are used at a low level across the divisions, with Sciences/Math and Engineering reporting “never” using it 80.49% and 83.78% of the time, respectively, while Management led in the usage of the activity at the “often” and the “several times” levels with 20% of respondents in both categories. As faculty rank increases, there is greater use, with “never” dropping to 66.27% at the Associate level, and 58.7% at the Full Professor level. Large classes, again, dampen the use of this type of pedagogy, with 85.5% of classes over 30 reporting that they “never” use it. This drops to about 55% when the class size is under 16. Counterintuitively, classes that met just once per week led in the “always” and “often” categories (10% and 30%), whereas classes that met four or five times per week, reported using it the least (“never” of 61.2% and 68.4%, respectively).
The original study's data and analysis for "Student-led Discussions" can be found on this link.
What Faculty Have To Say
Strengths (6)
- Positive effect on class engagement and participation
- Deepens everybody’s learning
- Makes students responsible for their own learning
- Students “learn by teaching;”
- Models a community of scholars
- Develops communication skills
Weaknesses (6)
- Varied student ability and effort
- Varied performances that can be shallow, miss key concepts, or even be inaccurate
- Time consuming
- Can encourage other students to skip the reading
- Distrust of peers in the “expert” role
- Public speaking can be hard for many students
Pedagogy Usage
Bucknell faculty was asked their best estimate for how often in the semester they used Student-led Discussions and the average class time it took.
Average Duration: 25 min (mode=15)
Remote Suggestions
Students prepare to run class similar to how the instructor does. Have them prepare and turn in a typed agenda, including a plan for whatever mix of lecture and disuccion they will provide. They then are in charge of leading a live class session, and sharing their notes/slides for hybrid learning. Instructors should define what a class plan looks like, perhaps modeling it themselves, and student-led classes should be done in the same way, taking into account whatever variations have already been established for the online class. If a whole class seems too much, have them lead only a part of each class.
Resources for Additional Learning
Articles & Books
- Goodbye Lecture: A Student-Led Seminar Approach for Teaching Upper Division Courses Mark A. Casteel & K. Robert Bridges.
- Toward Democratic Discourse: Scaffolding Student-Led Discussions in the Social Studies Flynn, Nora K.