Discussion Leading

Each week a team of ~5 students will be responsible for leading a discussion, activity, or other type of session for the first hour to hour and 10 minutes of class. The discussion should focus on the readings from that week, and can use the provided responses as a jumping off point.

You won’t have to write a response post the week you’re leading, but you should plan to set aside some time before class to coordinate with your discussion co-leads about your plan. You should also really dig into the readings the week you’re leading, and think about how you would spark an interesting and meaningful discussion.

Many different structures are possible depending on what groups would like to do and how inspired you feel by the readings! Creativity is encouraged, but you should focus on learning rather than pure entertainment :)

A good “default” plan could be:

• Generate a set of open-ended discussion questions
• Break the class into small groups of ~5 students, and have the small groups discuss each question with a note-taker/responder who will bring the key ideas back to the main group
• Return to large group discussion to synthesize ideas across groups
• (Possibly repeat 1-2 times for the session)

You might want to consider how you can use aids like whiteboards, post-its, or other tools to capture and spark ideas. The staff can help collect materials if given advanced notice.

If you’re leading the discussion on a hybrid week, consider how you will include the hybrid participants. The course staff can help you setup infrastructure like Zoom breakout rooms or PollEV as desired by your group. It might even be good to have some facilitators be remote on hybrid weeks, so they can hop between zoom breakout rooms and ensure the remote experience is smooth.