Tuesday's session was a good one, entailing:

* 15 minutes of participant debriefing about the first week of the quarter, facilitated by our Lead TA, without any faculty in the room.

* 5 minutes of Harrington presenting and our discussing some course-organization issues.

* 20 minutes' discussion resulting from Harrington's asking the four first-time-ever TAs in the room:  "What struck or surprised you most strongly from leading your first discussion or lab sections?"

* Harrington asked people break into groups (we ended up with five groups of 4-6) and work on the following two questions for 30 minutes:  (1) Each person describe the most exciting or transformative discussion (s)he's ever had (preferably in a classroom setting, but perhaps in any setting that entailed more than two people).  Then, (2) pool the key elements (structure, setting, participants, design) of those discussions.

* We then spent 15 minutes (just a little too little time) to report these key elements.  The class leader wrote these on the board, and someone transcribed them.
 

ELEMENTS  OF  GREAT  DISCUSSIONS

• Reduced inhibitions (through knowing each other well;  through food and drink;  through establishing trust)
• Clearly established ground rules (which help establish trust)
• Elements of common ground made explicit (which helps establish trust)
• Role playing, which forces participants out of their typical ways of thinking
• Game scenarios
• Assigning student leaders
• Small groups (8-9 was mentioned)
• Passion of the leader
• Providing or developing concrete examples, which relates to
• Discussion grounded in empirical cases or issues
• Different perspectives included (and engaged)
• Required class preparation (e.g., statements or papers in advance)
• No requirement of “closure” (another group, which felt that closure was important, led us to modify this to “don’t require a consensus or a single conclusion”)
• Deep questions

OTHER  SUGGESTIONS

• See the distinctions among different classroom formats, in another set of Geography 599 notes, linked here.
• Look at the Geography 599 notes on discussions -- the third heading in the page linked here.
• Intergroup Dialogue, Education and Action (IDEA) is an exciting UW initiative that attempts to provide resources for using structured and facilitated dialogue to improve understanding of social differences.  There are curricular, pedagogical, research, and public-outreach components.  I'm hoping to have Professor Ratnesh Nagda visit Geography 599 during Autumn 2003, to explain more about discussion, dialogue, and this initiative.
• There is a discussion going on about organizing discussions on the Geography 599 discussion list:  look at the "Topics for 599" and "Organizing Excellent Discussion" threads -- try to add comments to the latter.