Students learn best when their minds are actively engaged. Research indicates that mental engagement during discussions is superior to that which occurs during one-way lectures. Some degree of lecture or demonstration may be required to present new material, but a controlled whole-group discussion can help that information take root in the students' minds. Discussion is appropriate for enabling students to:

Apply information delivered through instructor-directed means to situations they perceive as relevant;
Analyze the perspectives of other students within the class, a significant goal for younger students especially.
Synthesize material delivered from diverse sources--the textbook, the lecture, the visual presentations.
Evaluate the validity of their previously held beliefs.
Evaluate the evidence and logic provided by others against their own developing knowledge base.
Gain motivation for pursuit of additional learning.

To make controlled whole class discussions most effective for meeting the learning objectives of the class, Davidson and Ambrose (1994) make the following eleven recommendations for balancing content and process functions:

Ask effective questions that push students to higher level thinking and that encourage them to respond to one another's comments.
Listen proactively by hearing not just the words but also the tone and the underlying message.
Use your peripheral vision to make sure that all class members are as engaged as you want them to be. You can then use your eyes, your body language, and other questioning techniques to pull in and address what your peripheral vision has told you.
Empathize with speakers and encourage the class to do the same. Make sure that ideas are not simply dismissed out of hand.
Keep your sense of timing, knowing when to ask a question, when to summarize, when to make a connection to an earlier comment, and when to be quiet.
Help clarify ideas that are poorly explained by either restating them or using visuals to give them structure.
Separate yourself from the discussion part of the time. Although you are the director of the discussion, in this case, you need to let the students take the lead sometimes and not try to restate every comment or respond to every idea.
Vary the pace and tone of the discussion. Keep the tempo brisk when needed or slow it down when appropriate. Encourage and allow levity if that's needed and stay focused on a more serious tone when that is needed. Support or confront, when necessary.
Make connections with both individuals and groups. This presents a catch because it's easier to do this as you come to know your students better, but having discussions is part of what lets you know them better.
Share relevant personal information. Self-disclosure can be powerful when it's done in an appropriate manner but can be self-serving when it's not.
Be flexible so that you can allow the discussion to take off even if it does so in a direction you originally hadn't intended, but that seems productive. Change the format to affect learning outcomes positively.

You can see that making sure a whole-class discussion is productive involves a great deal of energy and focus. Inexperienced faculty often think that holding a discussion will let them off the hook for a while and might be something to do if the lecture has left them drained or if they haven't had time to plan adequately. This is far from the truth. A productive discussion takes both planning ahead of time and careful orchestrating throughout.

Like so many other activities in teaching, orchestrating effective classroom discussions is a balancing act. Remember that discussions are most effective when carefully planned with your learning objectives clearly in mind.

Strategic professors know that using a variety of teaching and learning methods is critical to students' learning and success. Pay attention to the ideas in this article and others available from Meggin McIntosh. In addition, you can learn much more about teaching and reaching the many different types of students who are in today's college classroom by reading the book *Teaching College in an Age of Accountability* (Allyn & Bacon). The book was written by Richard Lyons & Meggin McIntosh (the author of this article).

To learn more ideas that you can use as a faculty member, be sure to check out http://www.TopTenProductivityTips.com and http://www.meggin.com

(c) 2008 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., "The Ph.D. of Productivity"(tm). Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do. Sound interesting? It is!