by April Tallant | Aug 31, 2026 | Active Learning, Blog, Discussions, Teaching & Learning Tip
How do you transform students from passive listeners into active participants in their own learning? Barkley and Major’s Student Engagement Techniques (SETs): A Handbook for College Faculty offers 50 ways. Their handbook includes a collection of field-tested activities designed to make learning more interactive and meaningful. Each student engagement technique is a well-tested recipe with step-by-step directions, examples, variations, suggestions for online implementation, and resources.
Think about the following SET and how you might implement it based on your own teaching style, instructional and student needs, and your discipline. Whether you have already implemented this in your course dozens of times or try it for the first time after reading this article, let us know – we would love to learn how it went and what tips you have for others!
What it is:
“Split-Room Debate” is a SET that introduces students to multiple perspectives. It is best used when students are already familiar with a topic and are adequately prepared to engage in a discussion, either through their own research, lecture, assigned reading, class discussions, etc.
How to do it in person:
- Select a topic with two identifiable, arguable, and opposing sides that are flexible enough for students to build arguments for and against for the “Split-Room Debate.” Students will move from one side of the room if they are on the “pro” side and the other side if they are “con.”
- Establish and review ground rules. That may include students present only one argument at a time, each statement is limited to a set amount of time, participants should stand on the appropriate pro or con side of the room, and all discussion must follow the expectations for civil and respectful dialogue. Allow time for questions before you begin the activity.
- To begin, state a prompt. Once you deliver the prompt, ask students on one side to start the debate. That student makes a statement (providing evidence for their stance) then selects a speaker on the other side of the room to go next, and so on. Allow time for students to think about their position before moving to either the pro or con side, and invite students to move to the side of the room of their choosing as they hear the statements, with the opportunity to change their mind as they think about their peers’ statements.
- After all arguments have been shared, lead a class discussion to identify the strongest points from each side and reflect on any changes in understanding or opinion.
Examples of prompts from the handbook include, “I have a fever, so I need antibiotics,” (medical science class) and “voucher systems should be used to introduce choice and competition among schools” (educational leadership class). Perhaps students can debate different theories in your discipline. A biology class might debate theories related to the role of reactive oxygen species in aging, for example.
How to do it online:
Students in online courses could post their statements on a discussion board through text or video. After the deadline, ask students to read arguments and post a synthesis of the debate, if and how their opinions changed, and their final stance on the topic. Students might be assigned a side to argue during one discussion; then be assigned to the other side the next discussion, before they post their final argument in the last discussion.
How to adapt it:
Variations and extensions recommended by Barkley & Major include doing this activity in pairs or small groups, setting up a three-way debate, and assigning a reflection detailing issues clarified, surprises that emerged, and whether their opinion changed.
Other ideas for variation may include using a polling tool like Poll Everywhere for an anonymous debate. If students’ is limited or the classroom space is not conducive for students to move around, you might adapt this activity and invite students to raise different colored papers (green for pro, red for con) or print thumbs up and thumbs down cards for students to indicate their choices. What other variations come to mind?
This SET can promote logical thinking, challenge existing assumptions, and help develop communication skills. If you would like your students to investigate a topic critically, consider multiple perspectives, and understand that complex issues rarely have simple answers, consider experimenting with “Split-Room Debate.”
Barkley, E.F. & Major, C.H. (2020). Student engagement techniques: A handbook for college faculty (2nd Edition). New York: Wiley Jossey-Bass.
Image from Canva.
by April Tallant | Apr 21, 2025 | Blog, Discussions, Event, Feedback, Professional Development
Are you interested in a Learning Symposium to mark one year since Hurricane Helene’s devastating impact and to exchange knowledge across disciplines regarding the service, research, and teaching response of our faculty, staff, and students?
The Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning is assessing interest in a potential university-wide event to do that next fall. Please indicate your interest by completing a brief form (< 2 minutes) no later than Friday, May 2.
There is no commitment required at this time. If there is enough interest, the information that you provide will help us to plan the event. Please contact Joy Mischley, Director, Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning, for more information at jmischley@wcu.edu.
by April Tallant | Jan 14, 2025 | Blog, Collaborative Learning, Discussions, Educational Development, Faculty Development Workshop, Pedagogy
The Coulter Faculty Commons is excited to offer our expanded Faculty Forward Program again this Spring!
All faculty members in their 1st-3rd years at WCU are eligible. Faculty Forward is a learning community designed to help new faculty boost their teaching self-efficacy while connecting with their colleagues across campus. Topics for the spring include methods of instruction including dynamic lecturing, discussions, and collaborative learning.
Meetings will be held on select Thursdays from 12:45-1:30 PM. Our first meeting will be held Jan 30. If you are in your 1st-3rd years at WCU and you are interested in joining us, please register. Read more about Faculty Forward and if you have questions, contact Faculty Forward facilitators Dr. April Tallant (atallant@wcu.edu) or Dr. Alesia Jennings (acjennings@wcu.edu).
by John Hawes | Apr 21, 2022 | Active Learning, Assessment, Blog, Collaborative Learning, Discussions, Faculty Development Workshop
2nd post of 9 in the Small Teaching Series
Small Teaching by J.M. Lang presents methods for making small changes in your teaching practices (hence the name) that can significantly improve your students’ learning. Each chapter provides the research-based evidence behind the practices Lang proposes so you can have confidence that Lang’s ideas work. The Coulter Faculty Commons will be boiling the Small Teaching chapters down into blog posts to provide instructors with concepts they can apply to a lesson, a class, or a course.
“Once more unto the breach…” (from Henry V, spoken by King Henry)
Lang references “the connected nature of knowledge” (p. 48) to clarify how prediction aids learning. The example he offers is that of a comparison between a history student and a history professor. Given the date 1865, a history student would recall that it was the year that the American Civil War ended. A professor of history would also recall the events leading up to the surrender of the Confederate Army at Appomattox, Chamberlain’s rendering honors to the defeated troops, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the ultimate failure of Reconstruction, and countless other bits of information that are connected to that date. The fact that the Civil War ended in 1865 is relatively useless in itself, but knowledge is derived through the “web of connections” surrounding that date. Lang posits (and the research supports this) that when confronted with the need to answer a question (predict a result) with insufficient information compels the brain to seek out any possible related information on the subject. This process creates and reinforces the connections in the brain and begins building knowledge.
Lang suggests the following methods to give your students the opportunity to refine their powers of prediction:
- At the beginning of the class, unit, or course, give students a brief pretest on the material. For example, give an opening-week pretest that is similar in format to the final exam.
- Prior to first content exposure, ask students to write down what they already know about that subject matter or to speculate about what they will be learning.
- When presenting cases, problems, examples, or histories, stop before the conclusion and ask students to predict the outcome.
- When you are teaching a new cognitive skill (e.g., writing in a new genre), let students try their hand at it (and receive feedback) before they feel ready.
- Close class by asking students to make predictions about material that will be covered in the next class session (p. 60)
Of course, predicting doesn’t always result in a correct answer. Our theoretical history student might have thought that 1865 was the year the Civil War began. Lang cautions that immediate feedback (or as immediate as practical) is important to keep inaccurate facts from getting entrenched. It also has the benefit of helping students identify gaps in their knowledge or as Lang put it, vaccinate them against the illusion of fluency. In the case of a pretest, it also lets your students know what kind of information they will be assessed on in the future, so they can adjust their study practices appropriately.
Small Teaching is available in the library as an ebook and is one of this summer’s Beach Reads! Email John Hawes (jhawes@wcu.edu) if you are interested in joining a casual reading group this summer!
As always, if you’d like to discuss these or other ideas with the Coulter Faculty Commons you can schedule an appointment at https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/consultations/
Lang, J. M. (2016). Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hunter-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4455000
by | Feb 17, 2022 | Active Learning, Be Present-Mindful, Blog, Canvas, Classroom, Discussions, Educational Development, Emergency Instruction Plan, Faculty Development Workshop, Pedagogy, Student Engagement, Teaching and Learning
Part 2 of the Inclusive Pedagogy Series
I started teaching online in 2003 for a for-profit institution. It was two years after receiving my M.Ed. in Research and Collaboration at TCU where my focus was on online asynchronous learning. I was anxious to apply my research to my own classroom!
The realities of teaching online soon became very apparent. At that time the institution did not have an LMS. I taught the course through discussion forums. My students were lines of text on the screen, as I was to them. We didn’t have Zoom or any other video meeting software so we were confined to interacting through the discussions and email.
I realized quickly that I needed to somehow become a real person to my students; a person who cared about their experience and success. So I set about recording video introductions, using video and recorded screencasts to help them learn HTML, web design and multimedia. Soon I was asking them to post an audio or video introduction instead of text, encouraging them to share photos of pets and places they loved to travel. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was humanizing my online course.
What is humanizing?
If you google this topic, you will see quite a few results. We’ve been working on this for a couple of decades, so that doesn’t surprise me. I particularly appreciate the work of Michelle Pacansky-Brock, a community college faculty member turned faculty developer who started teaching online in 2004. She created a wonderful infographic on this topic.
“Humanizing leverages learning science and culturally responsive teaching to create an inclusive, equitable online class climate for today’s diverse students.” Brock, 2020.
https://brocansky.com/humanizing/infographic2
Humanizing your course is how you bring equity into your course design and teaching.
It also brings decades of research on instructor presence and student persistence to bear on course design and instruction. Being an excellent instructor in both the physical and online classroom in higher ed is a skill that anyone can learn. So these steps can apply to in-person courses as well.
Steps to Take to Humanize Your Course
Brock offers eight elements to use in humanizing your course:
The Liquid Syllabus: A public, mobile-friendly website that has your brief welcome video and includes “warm, non-verbal cues and hopeful language” to ease anxieties about your course and how to be successful in week one (Brock, 2020, pp107-108).
Humanized Homepage: the homepage provides a clear and friendly welcome to the course and tells the student how the course works and has a clear Start Here link to the syllabus and/or the course information module in Canvas (this is also a Quality Matters and Online Learning Consortium quality standard). Here is an example
Getting to Know You Survey: In week one, ask the students to complete a confidential survey that provides additional information about each student and helps you identify which students are going to be ‘high touch’ requiring more of your time that other students. In Canvas, you can create a survey for this purpose. If you are logged into Canvas, go to https://westerncarolina.instructure.com/accounts/1/external_tools/43?launch_type=global_navigation to see an example of questions to include.
Warm, Wise Feedback: I love this and always attempt to convey support and encouragement in my feedback to students. Brock states, “Your feedback is critical to your students’ continuous growth. But how you deliver your feedback really makes a difference, especially in an online course. To support your students’ continued development and mitigate the effects of social and psychological threats, follow the Wise feedback model (Cohen & Steele, 2002) that also supports growth mindset (Dweck, 2007). Support effort + ability + action. And deliver your message in voice or video to include verbal or nonverbal cues and minimize misinterpretation.
Self-affirming Ice Breaker: Week one of a course is full of anxiety for students and can impede their ability to start the course. Try an ice breaker that invites them to share a part of their identity. One example from the infographic is to ask them to reflect on a value that is important to them and then choose an object from their life that represents that value.
Wisdom Wall: sharing the ‘wisdom’ or advice from students who have previously taken your class. You can use a collaborative tool such as a Word file in OneDrive that students can access, or Flipgrid, which can be enabled in Canvas. You can also have studente email their success advice to you that you would add to the file, or empower students to create their own by having a link to a shared Word document by changing the edit settings to ‘Anyone with the link’. Post this link in your course to share it with your current students and then they can also add their own advice. Here is Michelle’s example of a Wisdom Wall.
Bumper Video: Short videos used throughout the course to introduce a new module or clarify a sticky concept.
Microlectures: laser-focused short videos (5 – 10 minute) that walk the students through the comprehension of complex concepts. Before you record, identify the one or two ideas you want your students to take from the video. Write a script to make sure that you are saying exactly what you want to say in the short video. Also, remember to produce closed captions for all videos. If you need help with closed captioning in Panopto, please contact the help desk ithelp@wcu.edu
All of these suggested steps are part of the best practices in online course design and teaching. They are also steps that you can take at any time during the semester.
These elements will be included in the CFC’s Online Course Design Institute offered totally online this summer. If you’d like more information about the OCDI, please contact us.
by John Hawes | Oct 25, 2021 | Active Learning, Blog, Discussions, Educational Technology, Student Engagement, Teaching with Technology
Looking for some new ideas for classroom discussion?
Seeking an idea for an online discussion?
What about a guide for setting norms/expectations related to discussion practices?
We have identified some resources to help you think through these questions.
Tips for the new teacher
Are you unsure of the role that discussion should play in your class? This guide by the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Teaching and Learning, Guidelines for Classroom Interactions, frames the discussion, first and foremost, as an exercise in knowing how your course goals align to the discussion as a lens for knowing and learning.
Classroom teachers looking for a quick, digital resource, the IDEA paper Effective Classroom Discussions covers expectation-setting, teacher roles, and student roles, in an attractive and chunked layout. Useful when planning for a future course.
Tips for the online teacher
If you teach online and are looking for ideas on how to maximize engagement in online discussions, Kreiger, Lee, and Zolkover, instructional designers at Penn State, recently presented on this topic at the 2021 CanvasCon conference. In their presentation Change the Prompt, Not the Tool: Developing Effective Discussions, they share information for new online teachers. They suggest that faculty write out their responses to these 5 steps, prior to posting them to the LMS:
- What is the context? Why are you asking them to respond?
- How does it fit? Write an explanation for how the assignment fits into the course.
- How should they proceed? Write out, 1-2-3, what they are to do. Since online students typically have to wait longer for a response, they advise that you “build in” the help. See the course from their eyes.
- Clarify grading. Provide some clarity on how they are graded, and remember that in Canvas, discussions can be high-stakes (with a point value or rubric) or low-stakes (with a complete/incomplete checkmark).
- Scaffold the responses. Let them know how the response “flow” should work. Are you wanting them to respond to others? (remember that this can require students to log in frequently, just to see if a response has been posted). Or do you want a rotating moderator to collect all responses, and summarize and present those to the class?
All of this information, now typed and on-screen, is tidy and structured for copy-paste into the Canvas LMS discussion rich content editor – so students will then know the big picture, and all the details, associated with the discussion.
Another helpful resource is the book Engaging the Online Learner by Rita-Marie Conrad and J. Ana Donaldson. The book frames the discussion as a small component of online engagement. Faculty will enjoy the foundational frame and theory the authors provide (constructivist and problem-based). You will not only see online classes in a new light but you will also be provided dozens of discussion-based activities and icebreakers that stem from the theory. Grab and use! One of our favorite texts!. The library has a copy; you can search for the call numbers here.
Tips for facilitating challenging classroom conversations
Many university teaching and learning centers provide guidance for handling challenging or controversial subjects. One of our favorites is the tips provided by Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching, Difficult Dialogues, as they don’t just discuss procedures for handling the challenging topic (helpful as that is). Rather, following a discussion they integrate activities for gauging student understanding that is writing- and reflection-based.
In summary, there are a lot of resources to help inspire new and innovative ideas and thinking for both the new and experienced instructor, whether teaching face-to-face or online.
Further Reading/Viewing:
Conrad, R. M., & Donaldson, J. A. (2011). Engaging the online learner: Activities and resources for creative instruction (Vol. 38). John Wiley & Sons.
Lee, L., Krieger, J. M., and Adam D. Zolkover. (2021). L. Change the Prompt, Not the Tool: Developing Effective Discussions. [Video]. InstructureCon. https://www.instructure.com/canvas/resources/instructurecon-2021/change-the-prompt-not-the-tool-developing-effective-discussions#main-content
