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!
