Student presentations

In small classes in the past, I’ve had students sign up for a day on which to do a presentation to the whole class. They had to come up with several questions for the group to discuss, and present reasons why these questions are important (maybe some background information, connection to larger themes in the texts, etc.). I found that even when students asked excellent questions in their presentations, it was too often the case that few or no other students would engage with their discussion questions. I’d have to push and pull to get people to talk. I began to wonder if this was in part because of the problem of discussion in large-ish groups: it’s too easy to just sit back and hope someone else says something!

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Discussion Stagnation

[Note after writing this: I see that I was asking this question a number of months ago in my blog…guess it’s an unresolved issue and has been for awhile…]
Seminar discussions in my Arts One class this past year were not as lively as they have been in past years. This class meets in a group of about 20 twice a week for 75 minutes, after a 2 hour weekly lecture. This is quite a bit of time for first year students to be responsible for discussion each week. My strategies in the past have been to spend part of the time outlining main points in the readings, then pose some questions that should generate discussion; start with some writing assignment that will generate thought and discussion; ask for student questions for discussion; start with student presentations where they prepare questions before the class. These have all worked okay except “ask for student questions for discussion.”

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Resource for Teaching Philosophy: Teach Philosophy 101

I just found a great resource for those who want to think further about teaching philosophy: a site called Teach Philosophy 101 (www.teachphilosophy101.org). It is focused on teaching introductory courses, but many of the suggestions there could be adapted for upper-division courses as well. Among the many helpful things on this site: discussion of challenges of teaching philosophy (and resources for addressing them), innovative assignment ideas, discussion of effective lecturing techniques, and lots of links to further reading and other resources. They are looking for contributions of ideas from others as well, to make the site even more useful. An excellent site, well worth a look.

Whose discussion question is this, anyway?

One of the courses I teach on a regular basis has a significant discussion component–after a two hour lecture each week, I and a group of about 20 students meet twice a week for 1.5 hours each to discuss the texts and lecture. I have found that I tend to develop a pattern of encouraging discussion on the questions I’m interested in, and somehow am not doing enough to generate discussion on students’ own questions and ideas. I am not doing this on purpose, but this pattern has inevitably developed each time I’ve taught this course (this is my third year doing so).

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Students’ own philosophies

I have sometimes wondered just why it is that introductory philosophy courses rarely focus on students’ own philosophical views in the sense of asking them to come up with their own answers to the “big questions” without having read the “classics” beforehand. Or, in the sense of having a capstone assignment where they are to synthesize what they have studied and their own views into a philosophy of their own. Sometimes I do the former, but only in the form of short questions during the first or second class, to get people thinking, and then we drop this pretty much entirely when it comes time to start reading the major philosophical works on the reading list.

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Foucault and Kant on philosophy as emancipatory critique

I am working on a book review of Foucault and Freedom by Johanna Oksala for a journal, and in the third part she argues that “by linking his thought to the Enlightenment, Foucault makes the normative move of adopting the ideals associated with it–critical reason and personal autonomy–as the implicit ground on which his critiques of domination, abusive forms of power and reason rest. The Enlightenment provides him with the historical–not transcendental– values on which to base his critiques” (187).

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Back from maternity leave

Well, well…it’s been awhile. Far too long. I have been busy at home with a new baby boy, and have completely let this blog go. Letting blogs die a quiet death is a common blogger experience, I think. But this one is not quite dead yet. I am back from maternity leave, and though much of this summer will be spent working on research, I plan to add some new posts on teaching here as well. Coming back to the classroom after a year without teaching is, I hope, going to be an interesting and refreshing experience. I am excited to start up again, and catch up on the world of pedagogy blogging, in philosophy and other subjects.

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Long time no blog

Well, I fell prey to the scourge of bloggers–the neglect that comes with being just too darn busy to post. I was so caught up in teaching this term that, though I kept thinking I really need to just post even some short thoughts as better than nothing, I instead let it go until the end of the term. Now that classes have finished for the Fall term, I have a little time to post some reflections on my courses.
In my Social and Political Philosophy course this past term, I tried two new things: (1) requiring students to keep some kind of journal over the course of the term, and (2) a new kind of group assignment.

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What is class time for? Part II

After a long hiatus for the summer, I am finally getting back to posting on this blog–I was working on research as well as moving to a new apartment, and so my thoughts on teaching were not as prolific as usual during the past six weeks or so.

I am posting one idea I put in place in one of my courses for how to make class time more than lecture with some discussion within the big class group thrown in. I had considered student presentations, but given that my Social and Political Philosophy class has 60 students this term, and given that the term is only 13 weeks long, it’s hard to fit in 60 presentations. Another option that I’ve used in the past is group presentations, where groups of two-three students work together to present something to the rest of the class. In the past I’ve been able to do that because I’ve had break-out discussion sections in addition to the lecture, and the presentations could happen in separate discussion groups. That worked well because then several presentations could happen at the same time. But it requires the discussion-group setup, which my course this term doesn’t have.

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What is class time for? Part I

Barbara Ganley posts a few ideas in response to a question she says she gets regularly: if your students are spending time discussing outside of class (through blogs, discussion boards, or otherwise), then what goes on during class time when discussion would otherwise take place? I am interested in the question of “what is class time for,” not because I have or am planning to take discussion out of the class meeting and put it into blogs or discussion boards instead, but simply as a general question: what is the best use of class time for the sake of promoting learning (especially in philosophy courses)?

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