Robert Gray's CommentPress Site

I found this linking of discussion with democracy to be fascinating and a perspective that I hadn’t considered.

I think that discussion can be integrated into all kinds of teaching approaches! There is nothing to say you have to pick one or another. I think it’s also critical to persevere with discussion. Sometimes students are simply not used to it, but using something like the think-pair-share technique can provide a gentle introduction.

It’s a strong statement here between soft and hard sciences, and it’s walking on a tight rope to find the right equilibrium. A discussion about too simple or settled facts, and advanced research knowledge in natural science are not the same things. As teacher/researcher, I think it’s our responsibility to clearly establish the differences for not falling into unproductive discussions, and thus deriving away from the teaching objectives.

I agree with the opinion that lecturing or using other teaching approaches are equally important as discussion in learning. As Marc mentioned, finding a good balance between all teaching methods without overdoing it unnecessarily is sometime hard to reach.

It’s important to distinguish “settled facts” from open questions here.

I think it’s a must to get across what the scientific consensus model is *now* very clearly, since so much else downstream depends on it. But in order to get there, it’s very productive to discuss how new results were established in discussion and debate *at the time*.
And of course, an explanation of _why_ something has become a settled fact, and all the different supporting evidence for it

This seems a weak counterargument. Like the text suggests, bunch up sessions, or spread out the discussion over time. Setup in one session, use the next one just for discussion, and do the wrapup at the beginning of session 3.

This is a point I also struggle with. I’ve tried mentimeter free-form text bubbles in smaller settings they work really well, and I can pick out some answers, and discuss them in more detail. But when there’s hundreds of them flying past the screen, I’m stuck

They can work I think, as long as you have a tool such as menti to consolidate the groups’ answers:  have them discuss with each other solving the menti questions rather than each on their own.

For me the value of well-run group discussions for student engagement and understanding outweighs the need for (to say it extremely) box-ticking my way through a syllabus.  Course descriptions always grow over time more easily than they shrink, and if I found myself in such a situation, I’d push for a review of the syllabus. I’d rather have students understand 3 topics well than 5 in a rush. The skills they pick up learning the 3 will help them get to the “missing” two with much less effort later.

Natural scientists discuss their work all the time. No controversy here.