It’s the day before classes start and I am feeling some odd combination of prepared and nervous. I feel as though I had excellent training for what I am proposing to do and yet I am also worried that it’s not going to work out. A lot of planning went into the course but I also allowed for some flexibility. So I am curious to see how this works out. I wanted this blog to be a kind of journal of my experience so will check back in at different points in the semester.
Week 1 into Week 2: I am working on getting members of the class to talk with me and each other. Not surprisingly there are a fair number of students reluctant to speak. I have been tossing out lots of subjects while covering the chapters of the course text assigned and it seems to be giving the students more confidence and a feel for each other.
Midterm: The class has loosened up quite a bit. I accomplished this by scatter-shot discussions during class of the different course topics, which is easy with behavioral economics. The first full-class deliberation went really well.
Due to the size of the class I divided it into two groups and the first group was scheduled to present and everyone had a written assignment deliverable designed to provide background. The speakers did a good job and there was great interaction both among those speaking and the other students not scheduled to speak. The second group will do their session toward the end of March.
I think it was a good idea to divide the group (15 students each in 50-minute sessions) and one other strategy that I thought was effective was to ask each speaker to state their first name at the start of the presentation. That way students could address each other by name. It also contributed to the listening part of the deliberation assessment. Students could make notes of points raised and refer to them with the speaker’s name.
The same type of exercise was repeated about 2/3 through the semester and even the reluctant students were engaged and participating. Some of that was the choice of topic; it was something that everyone could find information on and have an opinion about.
The final session of the course will be the extended time period allotted for final exams and everyone is expected to share the research they did for the final paper of the course. I am optimistic that it will be a good session, but that will be my next check-in.
Week before the Final: It’s the week before the final and I am working on preparing students for the final deliberation. I have shown a video so they can see what it should look like and am going through the steps of preparation for the next few classes that we have left. I decided to check in before the final because I am feeling more optimistic about the energy around this in the class. Students seem more engaged and interested in having the conversation. What I can say at this point is that the journey has been up and down and I am interested in seeing how it ends. More later.
The Final: The final exam session was allocated to the final deliberation to allow ample time for everyone in this relatively large class to participate. Students had prepared for this by researching an area related to the overall topic, which I hope will result in good information on a number of aspects of the topic to be included in the group work.
The final session turned out to be successful. The participation was broad-based, and students engaged with each other. The group arrived at a consensus and my overall feeling was that students felt heard and felt that they had learned from each other. This was evidenced in the reflections students turned in at the end of the session.
So how to summarize? This has been a journey with its ups and downs and those were mostly my lack of confidence in the process and practice. As I grew more familiar with facilitating a deliberation the more the students responded and it become self-reinforcing. For anyone reading this I would say keep moving through the steps and learn along the way. I don’t feel as though this is an end but rather a beginning and I move forward to continue to foster deliberation in my classes with more assurance.
