The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Kelly Whitmer (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

One of the things I am most interested in as a scholar-teacher is how we come to know what we know and to believe what we do. For me, the study of history creates a powerful foundation for better understanding the sources of our knowledge and beliefs. It creates countless opportunities for critically examining change over time by taking into consideration the worldviews of various historical actors, who (like all of us) often found themselves in difficult situations, had to make quick decisions and even respond to ethical dilemmas while also simply trying to go about their daily lives. I was drawn to participating in the DCI Collaborative because the initiative seemed to me – and my experience as a DeeP Collaborative Faculty Fellow has confirmed this – to be creating new opportunities for students and faculty to explore questions about knowledge, certainty and “tricky problems” in highly reflective and nuanced ways. 

In one of the last readings we did for one of our virtual small group discussions, a chapter focused on ‘bounded autonomy’ in the book The Political Classroom (by Diana E. Hess and Paula McAvoy), I was struck by the authors’ discussion of “what students learned” in the classroom of a particular teacher. The authors noted that a marker of this teacher’s success, particularly when it came to discussing a difficult or divisive topic, was his ability to turn his classroom into a space where students really had time – and also had the tools – to reflect on that topic’s complexity. 

Students reported coming away from class discussions feeling less certain about their views than they did beforehand (p. 145). They also left the class more willing to accept the possibility that they might be wrong, or that they had more to learn about other perspectives. I realized that a similar kind of aspiration had been operating for me at a kind of intuitive level throughout the entire semester. I see now too that many of my students had been telling me in various ways that our deliberations had, in fact, helped them to realize how much they did not know, and still wanted to learn, about the topics we had explored.

I embedded a “deliberative pedagogy” approach in a 100 level History course I teach (primarily for first- and second-year students) called “Science, Society and the Archives.” The course is already associated with a “perspective-taking” General Education requirement in my college, which means that I have arranged it in such a way that students have opportunities to encounter the experiences and perspectives of marginalized historical actors in the history of the sciences and to consider these alongside related histories of socioeconomic and political struggle. But there is a difference between simply considering these experiences and perspectives and actually giving voice to them in the context of a deliberation.

Informed and inspired by our readings and discussions, I decided to create opportunities for students to do role playing as part of my deliberation strategy. I organized the class around four deliberation topics: (a.) animal/human experimentation in the history of the sciences; (b.) natural history and empire; (c.) science and religion (we focused on the Scopes Trial); and (d.) science denial and disinformation. I created a deep framework for students to approach each topic through lectures and engagement with primary sources, after which I assigned them a social identity and then asked them to respond to a deliberation question in the voice/persona of a specific historical actor.

Students wrote “position papers” in the voice of these actors, which were due before our designated “deliberation day.” I found that this step helped students feel more confident in their ability to participate in our deliberation day discussions. I also asked students to write and post short “debrief” responses on Brightspace, where they could talk about what it had felt like to give voice to a perspective they may or may not have entirely agreed with. Some talked about how the experience had helped them gain a new appreciation for the challenges that particular historical actors faced, challenges or struggles they had never really considered before.

I really learned a lot from this experience on the whole and am still processing it! I realized, for example, that the success of the deliberation units I created hinged on how well I had managed to curate the related readings and historical roles. I underestimated how much time and energy it would take me to create a deliberative framework where the issues could be effectively historicized and primed for student engagement, deep reflection. I also struggled a bit with mixed levels of student participation in the actual deliberations. When I teach the course again, I plan to experiment with a “fishbowl” model for the deliberations themselves. I may also create more opportunities for students to assess their own participation and the relative “success” of the deliberation as part of the debrief process, which I left relatively unstructured in this first go around.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Kristen Thompson (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

Astronomy is the oldest of all sciences, with beginnings that predate recorded history. Artifacts from as early as 1600 BC provide evidence for early observations and understanding of the sky from all around the globe. In a course that explores the whole of the Universe over the whole of time, one is bound to encounter many examples of disagreement, whether about physical laws, interpretations ofvobservations, or topics that are sensitive and meaningful to different cultures. Despite our differences, we all live under the same sky; a sky that transcends conflict and connects us all to the Universe and to each other. This common umbrella of the sky and the rich history of conflict within the field of astronomy inspired me to integrate deliberation into my introductory astronomy course at Davidson College.

The Introductory Astronomy Course

Introductory astronomy is one of the most popular general education STEM classes nationwide and is largely taken by non-science majors who aim to fulfil their Natural Science distribution requirement. As such, astronomy is often students’ only exposure to science in college and the last science course they will ever take. Most of these students will not become scientists, but rather the future teachers, lawyers, physicians, journalists, and citizens who will have a large impact on public perceptions of science.

Of course, I want students to leave my class with an understanding of the field of astronomy. However, I also find it important that they acquire an understanding of the diversity of thought in science, how deliberation can forge stronger collaboration, and a recognition of astronomy as a human endeavor that transcends individual cultures, eons, and our own planet. While I have long desired to merge the worlds of astronomy as a science and astronomy as a human experience, I have struggled to effectively do so, largely due to time constraints.

In a one-semester astronomy course, such as the one offered at Davidson, I am challenged with the task of introducing students to the whole Universe in about 16 weeks. I have found it difficult to add discussions about the human endeavor of astronomy when several important astronomy concepts have been omitted to fit the course into the one-semester format. I have found deliberation to be an effective way to connect these two worlds and create a path for incorporating meaningful discussions into the introductory astronomy course.

How I Incorporated Deliberation

One of the most challenging parts of integrating deliberation was selecting topics that were both current and ones in which I believed students would be invested. I decided to focus on two structured deliberations the first time integrating this new method into the course. The first deliberation came near the beginning of the course while we were discussing constellations, light pollution, and the view of the sky from different parts of the world. Students explored the scientific importance of dark skies for astronomical research and the cultural significance of dark skies to civilizations around the world and throughout time. They were then introduced to “satellite constellations” such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper. Students wrote deliberation guides that summarized the importance of such satellite constellations and the effect that they have on dark skies and astronomical research. Upon the completion of the deliberation guides and careful research about all sides of the issue, students engaged in a one-hour small-group deliberation during class.

The second deliberation occurred near the middle of the course during our unit about telescope properties, optics, and atmospheric requirements for their successful operation. Students discovered that the best locations for telescope construction unfortunately coincided with mountain tops that are sacred grounds for indigenous peoples. Our deliberation specifically focused on the ongoing debate about the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea, a site that is sacred to Native Hawaiians. Students researched the history of Native Hawaiians, their connection to Mauna Kea, the benefits of the construction of the observatory, and various viewpoints about the issue. They once again created deliberation guides prior to hosting a small-group deliberation in class.

Within the small groups, each student was required to first describe their stance on the issue prior to an open group discussion and summarize their key take aways and suggestions for finding common ground at the end of the deliberation. Facilitators monitored the open discussion to encourage balanced participation and to ensure all students were given space and time to express their views.

One of the most significant outcomes of the deliberative format as compared to simple discussions that I have used in the past were the student suggestions for finding a path forward. Many of the suggestions offered were not only creative, but also plausible. Students were generating real solutions to current problems. Some suggestions required action by government officials or other organizations but some referenced actions that community members can take to minimize conflict. The deliberative process and the creation of actionable outcomes helped students see the mutual connection between themselves and the Universe.

Looking Forward

There were several lessons learned during my first experience of integrating deliberation into the astronomy class. The first lesson is that students require much more facilitator training than initially anticipated. Class time was dedicated to learning about the deliberative process and the role of the facilitator. However, students needed more practice guiding the conversation and encouraging participation before the first large deliberation. The next time the course is offered, I plan to introduce several smaller deliberative tasks during which students can practice and refine their skills prior to hosting the first large deliberation.

Secondly, I found that there was little disagreement among students at the beginning of both deliberations, leading to open discussions in which the main response was “I agree” and one-sided arguments. Students often struggled to maintain a meaningful discussion for more than a few minutes without intervention from a facilitator to play devil’s advocate. There are many contentious topics such as immigration or abortion for which students have strong opinions that have been influenced by, for example, personal experiences or political beliefs. They have spent a long time debating these topics with friends and have been exposed to coverage of them by the media and may therefore feel more intimately connected to them.

The topics of light pollution and telescope construction on which we deliberated in class were not as familiar, and perhaps students had a harder time connecting with them. In both deliberations, the majority of students seemed to find the topics less contentious than anticipated. For example, most students were willing to sacrifice dark skies for better internet connectivity via satellite constellations and most quickly came to the conclusion that telescopes simply should not be built on sacred grounds, period. I plan to spend more time connecting students to the issues in the future to help better prepare them for a balanced deliberation.

Thirdly, I believe that the physical environment in which the deliberation is held could influence the outcome. Perhaps students would feel more connected to the discussion if, for example, the discussion about light pollution were held at night, outdoors, under the stars.

Conclusion

While imperfect, my first experience integrating deliberation into an introductory astronomy course was encouraging. As an astrophysicist, my academic experience and training has been based almost entirely on learning physical laws, scientific facts, and equations to describe the workings of the Universe.

Participation in the Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative has been rewarding and has greatly impacted my teaching and my own thinking. Learning how to effectively guide class discussions and facilitate deliberation has transformed my astronomy class into a space where students not only learn scientific content but also explore the human connection to the subject. While traditional science courses may not include much discussion, I encourage more science faculty to take a deliberative approach to help students personally engage in the subject matter.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Alberto Morales (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

I came to the DeeP Collaborative with a curious mind to deepen and expand my pedagogical and andragogical practice in higher education. My participation in the DeeP Collaborative provided me with an opportunity to revisit some of the lingering questions I have about higher education and learning: what is learning through difference like for these newer generations of students, and how much can students learn through disagreement in a safe and accountable space in today’s political climate?

In my Winter 2025 quarter-term course, ‘Race Across the Americas,’ I introduced deliberative pedagogical exercises as one means of engaging students in class discussions. This course, drawing on Ethnic Studies, Latin American Studies, and Global Studies, offers a comparative exploration of racial formations in Latin America, the U.S.A., the Caribbean, and their transnational and diasporic communities. We adopt a hemispheric approach to the study of race, moving beyond national frameworks to examine how ideas about race have developed dialogically across the Americas. One of the key objectives of this course is to encourage students to critically examine race and racial formations as culturally contextualized and situated within the politics of difference.

I briefly introduced students to the concept and practice of deliberation during our first course meeting following their completion of a pre-course survey. Deliberative practice was a new concept for most students, particularly in understanding that it is not about debate or determining who is right or wrong but about appreciating and enriching each other’s perspectives through careful attention to and engagement with difference. Teaching-wise, scaffolding deliberative approaches through in-class exercises was crucial in helping students become familiar with open communication while examining disagreement and opposing viewpoints. Equally important was a self-reflection writing exercise with open-ended questions, which students completed immediately after the deliberation.

I was skeptical at first, as I did not fully agree with all the deliberative pedagogy parameters, which at times felt too scripted and limiting. However, after putting deliberation into pedagogical practice through three one-hour-long, in-class deliberations and based on students’ feedback, I will continue to explore and develop deliberative pedagogical approaches in future courses. In the remainder of this post, I discuss two of the three deliberative exercises my students participated in, beginning with a 15–20 minute familiarization exercise designed to prepare them for deliberation.

In-Class Pair Activity about Deliberative Strategies

We began to engage with deliberative strategies by having the students respond to an in-class activity in pairs. The worksheet asked them to write out phrases they use when they face different forms of disagreement and help them navigate difficult conversations. For example, I asked students to write sentences that demonstrate how to: acknowledge feelings and offer understanding and support, ask open-ended questions and diffuse tension, and find common ground and diffuse misunderstandings, among other things. During a think-pair-share, students were able to exchange phrases and conversational approaches with one another. After their think-pair-share, they reported back to the class, creating a collective Google Doc. This exercise was inspired by the “Conversations Tips: A Pocket Guide” handout, a resource developed by Living Room Conversations and the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative at Davidson College, which provided practical advice for engaging in productive and respectful conversations.

Small Group Deliberations

Not all deliberations were the same or took on the same form. I purposely designed the in-class deliberative exercises to be different each time so that students could take on various roles and appreciate the diverse content and forms of deliberative practice available. After completing a few readings on deliberation, I placed students into small groups of 4-5 students for their first deliberation experience, using the Living Room Conversations guides on Race.

Of particular interest were the following Living Room Conversations: Race and Ethnicity, Interracial Race and Ethnicity Conversations, and Being White in the Racial Justice Movement. This soft introduction to deliberation was well received by the students, resulting in overwhelmingly positive written feedback. One student expressed that the most meaningful aspect of the Living Room Conversation for them was the groundwork for free speech and expression it provided. “We created a safe space to talk,” the student noted.

All students had the added challenge to employ in this deliberation concepts from our course readings, lectures, and discussions based on the following authors: Aurora Levins Morales’ “What Race Isn’t,” Juliet Hooker’s Theorizing Race Across the Americas, Ruha Benkamin’s Imagination: A Manifesto, and Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia on Caribbean political radicalism.

One of the reflection questions students had to answer was, “What concepts, terms, or historical knowledge from this course helped you understand your conversations on race? Their responses were positive and included comments such as the following: “The concept of multiracial democracy provided a useful starting point for thinking about what a society that values racial and ethnic differences might look like.”

Additionally, these initial micro deliberations also encouraged students to practice and develop careful and intentional listening skills. As one student observed, “the most valuable thing in this Living Room Conversation was to talk to my peers and listen to their own stories and perspectives. I appreciated that it was more of a discussion than an argument between different parties, which can be polarizing to many. It was meaningful not only to discuss but also to listen to others in my group.” These reflections underscore the students’ sense of empowerment and the inspiration they drew from the course deliberations.

Micro-Deliberations on Controversial Topics

For the second in-class deliberation exercise, I randomly assigned students to one of five home groups. Now that I had familiarized the students with deliberative pedagogy and practice, I decided to challenge them further by engaging them in micro-deliberations on more controversial topics. Students had to prepare by reading two Deliberation Guides by the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, one entitled “College Admissions Policies: How Should Applicants’ Backgrounds Be Taken into Account,  If at All?” and the other “Immigration: Who should we welcome? What should we do?”

To facilitate this second in-class deliberation and keep students curious and engaged in the process, I employed the Institute for Civil Dialogues’ Hot Topics/Cool Head toolkit, which encourages spontaneous face-to-face interactions among participants while maintaining respect and equanimity. After having assigned the students into small home groups, students were called up to sit at a table in the front of the class and called to perform one of these randomly assigned positions: “Agree Strongly,” “Agree Somewhat,” “Neutral/Undecided,” “Disagree Somewhat,” and “Disagree Strongly.”

The goal was for them to engage with differing viewpoints on a controversial subject and have spontaneous discussions without demonizing one another. Discussion topics included race-based affirmative action, legacy admissions, underrepresented and minoritized students, border security, foreign-born populations, immigrant rights, ethnoracial composition of immigrant populations, and other concerns related to racialization and social, political, and economic inequalities.

A set of reflection questions also followed this exercise. This second deliberation exercise proved to be the most challenging for the students, and it received mixed reviews due to the added challenge of not being able to choose which perspective or standpoint to deliberate from. On the one hand, those who liked this exercise wrote, “My favorite in-class activity was the deliberation exercise, where we were each assigned a specific stance. It was intense, making it an engaging way to explore different perspectives while strengthening our critical thinking and deliberation skills.”

On the other hand, some students expressed their discontent with the activity, while others had mixed feelings about it, stating, “I was not too fond of the activity where we had to act out an assigned role. However, I also enjoyed this activity because it exposed me to a situation that made me uncomfortable which allowed me to grow as an individual.” I took a risk with this exercise, which involved controlled disagreement and polarization, but I also empathized with the students’ concerns.

Lessons Learned

As a result, I suggest allocating more class time for this type of deliberation exercise, where students engage purposefully with disagreement, to invite them to unpack and vocalize their experiences and reflections through in-class discussions or a decompression session. We were unable to do this as we had reached the end of our scheduled class period. Even though students were very vocal about being assigned to a position where they had to disagree with something they would usually agree on or vice versa, the activity proved helpful in holding space for students to appreciate differences and opposing views. As one student put it, “I gained skills from the deliberation exercises, especially the one where you might have to agree with a view that you do not align with. That exercise made me think about the reasoning behind different viewpoints and why someone may feel a certain way.”

Overall, students in Race Across the Americas had a great experience enriched by deliberation exercises and diverse deliberative pedagogical approaches. As one student summed it up, “Learning about racial imaginations and how they can transcend geographical borders yet manifest differently is an important concept that has altered my view of the social system we live in. Additionally, this course has taught me essential skills for engaging in constructive and respectful conversations on complex subjects.”

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Kalynda Smith (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

Aggies DO and Never Done is my university’s sometimes-less-than-encouraging slogan. It means that we are always working towards our mission, which is great! But sometimes it feels like the work – teaching, research, service, grading, analyzing data, meetings, etc. – never end. Spring 2025 was no different.

This spring was my first full semester of being the Interim Director of the Graduate Programs in the Department of Psychology. We interviewed for four positions, I mentored too many research students, while somehow neglecting my research, and this was my first go at deliberation in my classroom (after not having taught for a year). I will not get into my “additional duties as assigned,” but I’m attempting to set the stage. You may be thinking that I’m starting with my excuses to explain why this all crashed and burned, but I’m not, I promise. I cannot say that my first attempt at deliberation was a raging success. Absolutely not! What deliberation was in my Spring 2025 Social Psychology course was one of those things that define professors as lifelong learners.

Social Psychology

One of my most innovative assignments in my Social Psychology course is a blog post. I’ve been doing this assignment for about seven years, across two institutions. I ask students to pick a topic in the course and explain it through a current event. I started with instructions not too much longer with that explanation. Now, I have what would probably be two Word doc pages of instructions because both the creativity and the critical thinking seem harder and harder for students to grasp as time goes on. The lengthy instructions are to tell students “exactly” what to do as much as I possibly can, because that is very important to them, without actually telling them exactly what to do.

In their own voices, I want them to present a current event, much like you might see in a podcast or a social media reel, and explain why it happened according to social psychology. To remain somewhat uniform in the course assignments, I thought we could also do this with the deliberations in that I would provide the current event that students would explain using opposing theories or ideas in social psychology, which I also chose, with the end result being to try to agree on what students felt was the best social psychological explanation for the current event.

When this finally came together in my mind, I felt some relief that I’d figured out how I would proceed, but was still a bit unsure regarding whether the activity was really deliberation because there weren’t any real stakes. We weren’t necessarily going to discuss any pressing issues, because what I really wanted to do was make sure the students understood the content. So, there were layers to contend with.

Okay, there’s the setup, what were the assignments?

Deliberation One: Attitudes and Attitude Change: Influencing Thoughts and Feelings, Cognitive Dissonance 

The Social Psychological topic for this assignment was “Components of Attitudes.” The current event was Billboard 100’s top 10 Female Rappers, a first for Billboard. The students were told to answer the question, “Using our understanding of attitude components, how can we best increase support for female rappers?” The group that took Stance A was told to promote affective attitude formation and given the hint: Collect as much evidence as possible about existing affective attitudes about female rappers. The group given Stance B was told to promote behavioral and cognitive attitude formation, given the hint: Collect as much evidence as possible about existing behavioral and cognitive attitudes about female rappers.

Students were further instructed to read the relevant chapter to become an expert on attitude components. Each group should learn both sides of the argument to be able to challenge the other group, if possible: “You want to be able to present as much evidence as possible to come up with the strongest solution.” They were then to read the post from Billboard (they were provided a link), but add to that all the information they could find about female rappers, especially the ones on the list, keeping in mind the components that make up Billboard’s list: quality of records, chart success, buzz within the culture, notable business endeavors and partnerships, and touring success. With all of these factors in mind, they were to present all the evidence that supports the view that your stance is the right stance.

Deliberation Two: Group Processes: Influence in Social Groups

The Social Psychological topic for the second deliberation was “Group Cohesiveness and Group Diversity.” The current event was the 2024 presidential election (students were told they could find relevant articles online). Their prompt was to use their understanding of group dynamics and ignoring the actual outcome, explain what strategy should have been used to win the election. Stance A promoted group cohesiveness with the hint: Collect as much evidence as possible about the cohesiveness of each political party. Stance B promoted group diversity, with the hint: Collect as much evidence as possible about the diversity of each political party. The instructions to the students were to “read all the information you can find online about the political parties’ (leaders and constituents) activities related to group cohesiveness and group diversity.” Then, with concrete examples on hand, “present all the evidence you can that your stance is the right stance.” And finally…

Delibration Three: Attraction and Relationships: From Initial Impressions to Long-Term Intimacy

The third Social Psychological topic was Mate Selection as explained by Evolutionary Psychology versus Social Psychology, and the current event was the tradwife trend. Students were given a link to read about the tradwife trend. The question for the students was, “Using our understanding of mate selection, what best explains the “tradwife” trend? Does either perspective suggest the trend should persist for Gen Z women?” Stance A promoted Evolutionary Psychology theory regarding the tradwife trend and stance B promoted the Social Psychology theory. The hint was the same for both groups: Collect as much evidence as possible about what it means to be a trad wife (from social media, other media and historical sources) and compare Gen Z women to past generations.

Each assignment also came with the following instructions: “We will begin by flipping a coin to determine who goes first. The first group will explain the current event in detail. They will briefly explain the topic, but will focus on their stance. Then they will present their stance, with evidence from the current event to support their stance. The second group will then present their stance. The groups will then take turns rebutting the other groups points until both groups and the class decide which stance is the strongest. Dr. Smith will moderate while those in the audience take notes for their evaluation. When the groups have deliberated as much as possible, the audience will get to ask questions, and everyone will vote on the strongest stance.”

Before we began the deliberations, we spent class time discussing the format of deliberations during the first week of the semester and two weeks before the first deliberation, and I turned examples I would usually give of the content into deliberation examples. Students read, “Deliberative Pedagogy as Critical Connective: Building Democratic Mind-Sets and Skill Sets for Addressing Wicked Problems” during our research methods learning unit, and I dedicated a special section of my Assignments tab on Blackboard to the deliberation activities.

What Happened?

Even after the discussions in class and reminders via Blackboard, I was nervous! So, I took a breath, flipped a virtual coin, and we began…

The first deliberation was great! Not perfect, but great! Each group presented their argument, then they sparred. I added a few comments here and there clarifying the content, took notes on who said what, and although I had to check in with the audience halfway through because they were so quiet, they had questions at the end of the deliberation and seemed to enjoy participating in the final vote. The affective attitude component won. Speaking of the audience, they took notes and completed an evaluation of the activity while the groups spoke. I evaluated the groups according to whether each member added substantive information demonstrating they understood the social psychological topic and actively participated in the conversation by adding one or more comments beside their initial content blurb. The audience received points by turning in a complete evaluation.

This deliberation had me proud, and still a little jumpy once we finished, but we did it! I told the class, “We did it, and I expect the next one to be even better!” Here’s where the narrator comes in to tell us our heroine’s expectations were not met (insert eyerolling emoji here).

I actually had a bad feeling about the second deliberation early on, which by this point in the semester, class attendance had begun to wane. So, I began sending messages via Blackboard (and email) reminding the students (both the groups and audience) to prepare for the upcoming deliberation and get together with their randomly-assigned groups. Unfortunately the students assigned to deliberate in Deliberation Two, however, did not do so in a timely manner. This problem was compounded by some errors I made on Blackboard with adjusting deadlines and making the activity instructions available to the students.

Despite my efforts to send them the correct information in advance and remind them to not leave everything to the last minute, I still received emails at midnight before the deliberation that they could not access the assignment. To make a long story short, when we flipped the coin in class, there was silence from the group that was due to present. When I pivoted to the other group, more silence.

I was pretty livid, particularly since some suggested that it was my fault they were not prepared. I turned on my laptop and went back to lecturing, going through the points of the deliberation myself. We talked through the different stances, discussing which one made the most sense and why. I was satisfied with their engagement and understanding of the material, and we got through the class. When I had a chance to think it through, I assigned a paper to the groups who did not do the assignment. Because I led a semi-deliberation, the only work the groups had left was to provide evidence of their stances to demonstrated that they understood. Some students seemed fine with this arrangement, while others were not.

And finally, the third deliberation was pretty anti-climatic compared to the first. The main issue that came up was that one group could not grasp the stance assigned to them because they did not agree with it. Otherwise though, the entire class was really into the topic and current event (of course mate selection is sexy, no pun intended), so there was a ton of engagement and really thoughtful evaluations.

Evaluation

While the audience evaluated the deliberations they were not leading, each student also wrote a reflection paper on their deliberation experience as their final paper of the semester. Between the evaluations and the reflection paper, I found that I needed to be much more descriptive in the instructions. I had to revise the evaluations because students seemed very unclear about how the deliberations applied social psychology, and I fear the reflection papers got a little “help” from AI. The revised evaluations worked out much better, although unfortunately there was not much to be done about the AI issue, except explain in my feedback that reflections cannot actually be done by AI. Sigh.

As far as other missteps, I think I should have had students do a survey-like evaluation about leading the deliberations like the audience did of watching the deliberations. That would have helped keep the information fresh in their minds for their reflection papers (although the instructions for the papers were available from week 2 on). It would have also been nice to have a more structured rubric for their participation in the deliberations. I decided to be lenient in my grading, but I did not give them as much feedback as I think I should have. Finally, I did not assess their reading of the deliberation article, so, I’m pretty sure they did not read it. I had a bit of a time including the new assignments into my grading system, but I dropped the ball on that one. 

What’s Next?

This experience was a good one. The challenges will strengthen the future assignments, and I will continue these assignments. Even though this was a semester that had me barely hanging on at times, the emotional ups and downs of deliberation in my Social Psychology course had the creative juices flowing, and it was a crazy, aggravating, good time! I’ve decided to do an entire update of my course and a part of that will be adding smaller deliberation activities that are designed more to engage students in what we are discussing in the moment, and less this class presentation-type of assignment that sometimes sends the students into a tailspin. I can’t give you too many details just yet; this is a summer assignment that I’ve given myself, but I’m determined to strengthen their critical thinking skills through deliberation and I know I can, because Aggies DO!

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Brandon Inabinet (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

My starting point was easy enough, with a Rhetoric and Strategy class in a liberal arts college in a program about advocacy and civic argumentation. If not deliberation, we would have already had students studying the ancient and modern ideas about stasis and topoi, argument fields and spheres, prima facie case construction, burden of proof, and fallacies.

But my institution has an initiative On Discourse that attempts to create more lively exchange and representation of different viewpoints on campus. The class nor the major were part of the initiative. The President had invited colleagues principally from the various DEI offices and sociology to serve with law and politics faculty. What they had landed on was bolstering the intergroup dialogue program (pleasing “the left”) and sponsoring more campus events with opponents on panels or in debate (pleasing “the right”).

In the broadly uninteresting and unnoticed middle was my curriculum. I realized how centering the preparation for and practice of deliberation, with the help of Graham Bullock and Davidson’s DCI, might elevate academic and critical interests in argumentation into a lively and transformative practice. Although I have taught the debate team and held debates in class, the emerging generation’s concerns about over-competitiveness has me embracing deliberation as a set of more transferable skills and values. 

So, supplementing my normal instruction that feeds the debaters in the class, I motivated students with days in the curriculum “cleared out” for the practice of dialogue and deliberation, and a midterm project of creating deliberation guides.

Fitting in another learning objective, the students used AI technology (of their choice, mostly ChatGPT) to create the guides and visual rhetoric skills (of their choice, mostly Canva and Adobe) to meet audience needs. The latter part of this needed more instruction, as the use of researched charts and graphs alongside non-copyrighted images was surprisingly tougher for the students than the ability to detect and correct AI hallucination in research.

Another goal was dialogue before deliberation, to be able to compare these practices. In the fall semester this went well, but some calendar issues in the spring complicated this dynamic. I will go back to what I did in the fall to ensure dialogic listening is the foundation, and the motivation to diverge and converge and potentially act that comes with deliberation as the supplement.

One additional small issue I had was using deliberation guide writers as facilitators on those topics. I needed more time to prepare the students, reminding them that their new “expertise” on their assigned topics meant that they know how to navigate and question, not to weigh in themselves and bulldoze the conversation into what they had found as (recent) researchers. This was compounded because I chose to use local rather than national issues, and the deliberation guide research created newly passionate students who didn’t even realize the issue existed before it was assigned. So anytime student deliberators became quiet or confessed they weren’t fully informed became an opportunity for these researcher-facilitators to take center stage. As their professor, I had to be the “not fun” person who would intervene and disrupt this, even as the other students really wanted to hear the student facilitator’s newly found opinions.

Still, students were ambassadors for this approach and now other courses in the department and administrators in the university are interested in what we did (such as including texts Try To Love the Question and Why We Argue, and the online tool of UnifyAmerica’s College Challenge). I look forward to the expanded scope and reach of deliberative practice being a part of the broader On Discourse initiative at my institution.