Discussion Leader, Summer 2005

What It Is

Each student will be responsible for choosing a novel and a day to lead a discussion with the rest of the class for at least a half hour on what they see as the most important and interesting questions about their novel. Afterwards, each student will turn in, through an email to me, a brief reflection on and assessment of their experience leading the discussion.

What It's For

It's a truism that you don't really learn something until you try to teach it to someone else, but there is nevertheless a good deal of truth to this cliché. Being responsible for teaching anything makes you pay a lot more attention when you're learning it, since you'll be in the position of setting goals for the half-hour (at least) of class time you'll be running, designing questions and activities, and trying to anticipate and to answer your peers' questions. Given that you all are relative newcomers to the academic study of science fiction, I thought each student would better understand where potential sources of confusion or frustration might be, as well as how to engage the key questions raised by their novel--probably much better than I would. Hence, you all have the opportunity to "peer teach" in a way that could well be more effective than my own teaching at times. At the very least, you all will be exposed to a variety of teaching styles and methods over the course of the session and, when teaching, have the opportunity to draw on what you feel are the most effective and appropriate teaching strategies for the material you all will be wrestling with.

So the main goal in crafting this discussion leading assignment is to have you learn more about some aspect of the works and writers your discussion falls on, mostly through your research and planning for that thirty-to-forty-five-minute portion of the class period your group will run. Another goal is to get you in the habit of using the resources available to you-our relatively vast library holdings in science fiction, the links on the web site, and other sources--when doing research with a purpose. The assignment thus gives you the opportunity to get out of "book report" mode--out of simply finding something out about something and summarizing it. Rather, the purpose of your research is to help you shape your objectives for your class presentation/discussion/activities. Another major goal of discussion leading is for you to gain proficiency in "oral communication skills"--not simply lecturing in front of a group (if you choose that mode of running the class), but also the kind of communication that's essential to directing a class discussion. This is where the final goal of having write on your experience comes in: by reflecting on the relation between your plans for the class period and what actually happened during it, by considering where the class period went well and what you'd most want to change in either your plans or the way you tried to implement them, and by crafting a written reflection and self-assessment, you are meant to develop and improve your critical thinking and writing skills.

So there's a lot you can learn from the process of completing this project: from your experience of the challenges, frustrations, and satisfactions of research, from your experience of "being responsible for" a portion of our class time, from your experience leading and looking back on the discussion, and so on.

Furthermore, I'm hoping that the things you learn in and from this project will carry over into how you approach subsequent classes--about preparing for class discussion, about being an active reader and learner, about what it means to gain some degree of expertise on a particular topic, about how you and your peers might appear from the perspective of someone "running a class." Hopefully the experience of being responsible for a portion of a class period and learning from how other students handle that responsibility will raise serious questions for you about what it means to take responsibility for your own learning.

How To Do It

I don't want to limit the creativity of your approach to running a portion of a class period by laying out a step-by-step approach. So much is dependent on your individual interests and interpretations, your beliefs about the most effective modes of teaching, your reading of your novel, and the process by which you narrow down the many possible questions you might ask down to your top few, that it's probably impossible to create such a list, anyway. But what I can do is offer some examples of kinds of things you might consider doing when running--or getting ready to run--a portion of the class period.

• Some individual self-reflection might be a good way to start--particularly about the ways you learn. Think about the times you've been the most interested in a class topic or learned a lot from a class discussion or activity. Think about the times you've been absolutely uninterested in a class topic or learned nothing from a class discussion or activity. Do you notice any patterns? Any lessons for you in these patterns? Another good way to go is to think about what you've learned in other courses (psychology, education, etc.) about how people learn; if there are people in your group who have taken courses that address this topic, draw on their relative expertise. You might also consider how learning takes place in other sites than the classroom (sports, music, student government, work, relationships, and so on) or in media that we don't normally think of as primarily pedagogical (for instance, what "lessons" about masculinity and femininity are taught in the WWE, in soap operas, in commercials, in movies, in anime, and so on)--and consider how you might draw on (or refuse to draw on) some of the explicit and implicit pedagogies in play and at work outside of schools and colleges.
• Certainly, the overarching goal is fairly set in stone: to try to come up with an effective and engaging way of teaching what you see as the key questions about your novel. What's up to you is how to interpret and implement it. Obviously there are many kinds of goals you might choose to prioritize during your portion of the class period to help you reach this overarching goal: to impart information that you believe is important for better understanding of the novel (this could mean conveying something about historical context, about a debate among literary critics, about literary allusions in and influences on the novel, about the novel's relation to various literary movements, its contemporary relevance, the light it sheds on other disciplines, and so on); to offer your own interpretation of a novel and seek feedback or response from the class; to present a problem, issue, or question that you believe is important for the class to try to solve, consider, or answer; and so on.
• Along with a multiplicity of goals, there is a great variety of ways of reaching them: lecturing, in-class writing, small-group discussion on the same topic or question; small-group discussion on different topics or questions, large-group discussion, and a wide range of activities [obviously, not all of these will be appropriate in a class of our size!]. Again, it's your choice as to what teaching strategies will best mesh with and help you reach your goals.
• Let me close this list of advice by stressing the importance of being a good "audience" for other students. Try setting an example--in being prepared to participate, in working within the parameters the discussion leader has established, in respecting their objectives and methods, and so on--so that they will want to also be a good "audience" for you!

By July 1, you must turn in a 500-1000-word authored assessment of and reflection on the experience of planning and leading a discussion on your novel. In this essay, you should describe the planning you did, explain and justify your original lesson plan, comment on what actually happened in the class, and comment on whether and how you'd rethink any aspect of the pedagogical project in light of any differences between your plans, expectations, and experiences in it.

Grading Criteria

Your grade for this segment of the course will be based on two key factors: my overall assessment of your lesson plan and teaching effectiveness; and the quality of your reflection on and assessment of your planning and teaching.