Is it right to use competition as a way to foster discussion in class? I am a competitive person, and one of the biggest adjustments I had to make when I began college was realizing that, unlike a high school debate, collaborative discussion doesn’t have a winner (although there are plenty of ways to make everyone…
After fumbling and bumbling questions in my classes and failing to channel my inner Oprah and getting my students to just open up their intellectual inner landscapes to me, I started thinking about what makes good discussion questions. It occurred to me that the best questions are not the ones I ask students, but the…
Last week Tara wrote a great post about balancing different historical narratives when assigning readings. This got me thinking about how to do the same in lecture. A lecture is supposed to provide a framework for students to make sense of readings and assignments, but there is danger in conflating the role of a lecture…
Let me just start by saying I don’t think I am a bad lecturer. Still, reading a recent post by Petra Clafin on the dangers of misguided Q & A during lessons gave me flashbacks. Clafin focuses on math classes in secondary education, but the pattern pops up while teaching history on the college level…
