Silence

Instructors often find that students do not want to engage in classroom discussion. The Productive Discomfort Cohort has brainstormed ways to get students to engage in classroom dialogue. Some ideas include:

1. Consider what the cause of silence is. Are the students unprepared? Do they need more time to think? Are they uncomfortable with the topic?
2. Put students in groups and let them re-ask the question in their own words then ask groups to report out or walk among groups and when you hear a well-thought-out answer, ask the student to share it with the class when you call on the student.
3. Break questions down and take it from a different angle.
4. Ask someone to play devil’s advocate and challenge what you have said.
5. Have students write their thoughts down on cards, collect them and either read a few of them to begin the discussion or find the themes that emerge on the cards and talk about those (so no one student feels singled out).

At our October 13, 2011 meeting, we discussed whether students do not speak up due to fear of evaluation and/or perhaps they are so tech savvy that they are not as comfortable engaging in face-to-face dialogue. Some ideas we discussed for drawing them out include:

• Coming up with non-linear or unorthodox ways to integrate essential learning such as using pictures and feelings. Raymond described an arts and crafts exercise he does with students to have them create a family crest before writing their cultural autobiography.
• Martha shared an exercise in which she had students write in their journals and then shared several of the entries anonymously to show students how many of them were feeling/struggling with the same things.
• Several people have students work in small groups and then have them report out. To get students to share what really happened in their small groups, the following techniques were mentioned:
  • Walk around while the groups are working and when you hear a good comment, tell the student you are going to call on them when the class reconvenes. If student does not want to do so, you could offer to summarize it for them and then ask them to augment if needed.
  • When language is a barrier (i.e., students may have to struggle to be articulate in a different language), the instructor could also ask them to name some key words.