Class discussions can be enjoyable, challenging, uncomfortable, stimulating, complex, and enlightening. Facilitating discussions is among the most important of all teaching methods because it encourages students to apply, test, and extend their learning in dialogue. Discussion is essentially structured application with immediate feedback, with rapid iteration. It is the place where novices take steps towards speaking with the facility of experts, where students can begin to think of themselves as invited into the discipline.

It is also perhaps the most challenging art for the teacher to master. Facilitating a discussion with all it entails – asking the right questions, listening and responding fully to participants while simultaneously fitting each comment into your overall plan and also thinking of how to connect it to the next step or idea, all while keeping it related it to the essential learning of the course but also allowing for the organic emergence of fresh ideas – requires concentration and creativity.

Below, we offer some guidance and suggestions to consider when incorporating discussion into your teaching strategy:

• Benefits of Discussion as a Teaching Strategy
• Preparing the Students and Environment for Discussion

We also recommend reviewing our resources on facilitating discussions and encouraging student participation in discussion.

Benefits of Discussion as a Teaching Strategy

When deciding when and how to use discussions, consider some of the benefits and types of learning that can occur and how discussions might support student learning in your course. Discussions can help students to:

• practice using vocabulary, frameworks, or theories of a discipline
• use evidence and examples to support an argument 
• connect and engage intellectually with a subject
• encounter, consider, and analyze a diverse range of perspectives
• build a learning community where students are co-creating knowledge

Short, medium, and long discussions and class size considerations 
Depending on your course, you may want to plan class discussions regularly or only on certain days for key topics. Some discussions may take an entire class period, for example, within a small seminar class; however you can also include short or medium-length discussions within your course, alternating with periods of lecturing. For medium and large sized classes, pair or small group discussions can work especially well, since it can be challenging to hold a discussion with the entire class.

Short discussion: Turn to your neighbor (1-5 minutes). Students turn to a person sitting next to them to discuss a question prompt. Sometimes this technique can be paired with answering a polling question or raising hands. This works in any class size, but is especially a good option for large classes in rooms with fixed seating.

Medium-length discussion: Think-Pair-Share (10-20 minutes). Students first think or work on a problem individually, then pair up or form small groups for discussion. At the end, you can ask students to share what they discussed with the whole class. Note that the larger the group size, the more time they will need to discuss. For example, in a group of four, if everyone talks for two minutes, they will need at least eight minutes to discuss. This strategy can work in all class sizes, but pairs may be best in classrooms with fixed seating in rows.

Long discussion (20-60 minutes). This type of discussion allows for more in-depth and nuanced consideration of a complex topic. These types of discussions tend to work well in smaller classes and need more active facilitation by the instructor . You may consider starting class with a warm-up strategy. Other techniques such as gallery walks, concept mapping, or case studies are well suited for these longer discussions. To prepare for a long discussion we suggest writing a list of main question prompts or activity directions and sharing them ahead of time to allow students who may want extra time to prepare or think about the questions. Follow-up questions and further discussion can emerge from the main prompts. Preparing a handout or slide with questions can create structure.

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Preparing the Students and Environment for Discussion

Build rapport: Spend time early in the semester building connections within the classroom, learning about your students, and helping them learn about each other. Icebreakers and structured activities can help with this. Give students several low-stakes practice opportunities to express themselves, develop confidence, and build interpersonal skills and familiarity with the rest of the class before graded discussions even start. This also works to develop a supportive and welcoming environment full of sharing, listening, and showing respect. Their regular comments and contributions need to feel valued and honored by you and their classmates. In small and medium sized classes, using name tents or name tags can help people refer to each other by name during discussions.

Communicate guidelines and structure: Discussion structure might look different in various courses so clarify the format of your discussions. Share guidelines for discussions, explaining their purpose. Outline your goals for these discussions and how students can succeed.

• Build community agreements together: Your learning community can create a shared 
  contribution of outlined behaviors to maintain respect and decrease instances of incivility.
• Communicate expectations and grading criteria: It can help to provide accountability for students to prepare for discussion, participate in the discussion itself, as well as reflect at the end of the discussion. Accountability could be in the form of a pre-class reading quiz on Canvas, annotating the readings before class using social annotation tools, posting questions or reflections on an online discussion board, completing in-class handouts, taking a photo of individual or group work in class, and uploading it to Canvas, or filling out an index card at the end of class with the answer to a reflection question.
• As the instructor, you should also plan how you will grade this work. You might grade some work as complete/incomplete or if your participation grading is more complex, providing a detailed rubric with success criteria is essential. Here is one example of a discussion rubric.

Model effective discussion: Depending on the course level or major, you might have students who haven’t really experienced or witnessed college-level discussions before. You can describe the difference between conversation in class and academic conversation which involves students using specific vocabulary, phrases, and statements in your discipline that allow them to articulate and practice critical thinking. To demonstrate and practice what effective discussions look like before going into a graded experience you can participate in frequent academic discussion activities, such as energizer activities that share values or opinions, scenarios, and case studies that generate perspectives, conversational starter activities that practice generating questions, listening activities, or pre-class activities such as social annotation or discussion boards on the reading.

Practice foundational skills: Use these low-stakes practice opportunities to develop several pre-skills before diving into the full discussions.

Foundational skills with activities to practice:

• Active listening: Peer summaries, listening circles, note-taking challenges, paraphrasing exercises
• Asking good questions: conversational starter activities
• Recognizing assumptions: Case study analysis, assumption checklists, role reversal, debate prep, media literacy exercises
• Backing up claims with credible evidence: evidence-based writing prompts, fact-checking assignments, annotated bibliographies, research competitions, source evaluation tasks. The Cornell Library has guides on evaluating sources and media literacy or could work with you on developing guides or activities specifically for your course.
• Assessing other people’s claims: peer review workshops, logical fallacy hunts, claim analysis discussions, critical reading exercises, mock trials
• Sharing purposefully with an audience in mind: audience-specific writing, oral presentations with feedback, role-play scenarios, creative projects, audience analysis
• Building upon a conversation: structured group discussions, dialogue journals, collaborative storytelling
• Challenging each other with respect: debate sessions, conflict resolution role-play, critique guidelines, and reflection exercises.

Build students’ content knowledge: When entering your course, students might have little context or prior knowledge on the topic. How much do students need to know before engaging in your critical discussion? You can decide, based on your learning outcomes, how much content knowledge you’d like them to develop. Consider giving them guidance on how to read and evaluate academic or other sources or provide reading questions. Communicate to students if you want readings or outside material referenced in the discussion. Social annotation can be a great pedagogical tool for getting students to engage in critical reading.

Assess and adjust the physical space:
Is the physical space conducive to hosting effective discussions? Visit the classroom ahead of time to see how the space will work for your intended discussions – you may need to see if you can make adjustments to the room, adjust your teaching plan, or look into requesting a different room. For example, in a room with fixed seats in rows, you might use paired discussions (talk to your neighbor) as a strategy. Consider the following:

• Acoustics: can they hear others in the class? Is the room echoey? Would it help for you to use a microphone?
• Orientation: choosing a U-shape or circle layout that supports the type of discussion if it is possible to move the furniture.
• Distractions: consider lighting, movement outside of windows, temperature, air quality, scent, uncomfortable seating or tables in the way, and distractions from other students. Some of these will not be under your control, but you can check in with students if there are factors that can be adjusted that would make them more comfortable.

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For more on engaging students with class discussion, visit Facilitating Discussion and Encouraging Student Participation in Discussions.

References and Further Reading:

Eberly Center, Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation (2024) Discussions. Carnegie Mellon.

Davis, B. G. (1993) Tools for Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brookfield, S. D. and S. Preskill. (1999). Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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