Raise your hand if you’ve heard this one before: you’ve just delivered a well-prepared lecture, and a stirring one at that. You’ve covered a sequence of interesting topics and woven in an insightful narrative that ties everything together, and now it’s time for discussion with your students. “Let’s turn it over to you! Any questions?” And with that, silence falls abruptly. Students start to shift uncomfortably. What happens now?

As a beginning instructor, this sort of experience was a source of persistent dread marring my enjoyment of teaching. It seemed that there ought to be many things on the minds of my students, especially judging by the input I would receive one-on-one in my office hours, and yet I was at a loss for how to draw them out in a forum specifically set aside for the sharing of ideas.

Over the years, I have developed a number of strategies which have helped me transform an awkward, broken dynamic into something a little closer to the Socratic dialogue of my dreams.

1. Seed your lecture with class discussion topics

You’ve spent what seems like aeons internalizing the material you’re about to impart to your students. After defending your ideas in reams of paper and diverse conferences, it’s tempting to present everything in a self-contained framework that puts everything in its place and leaves no loose ends.

But while this approach helps prop you up in conversation with your peers, it leaves little for students to latch onto and call into question, unless they happen to have done a lot of thinking on the subject on their own. Instead, try seeding your lecture with unanswered questions, alternative viewpoints, and allusions to external examples that you might not have time to fully explore.

2. Empower your students with responsibility for the conversation

Studies have shown that passive absorption of information can be exhausting for students, and while they will have adapted to the process over a lifetime of schooling, having students take an active role in driving conversation can provide a welcome mental break that’s refreshing for everyone.

However, no one likes to be caught unprepared. Assigning an individual or small group to the task of raising interesting questions based on materials is one way to guarantee a starting point for conversation that emanates from students’ own interests.

Depending on the structure of your class, it may be preferable to have students draw from today’s lecture rather than from assigned readings, as this keeps the discussion on topics fresh in everyone’s minds. This is a particularly helpful approach for upper year students, who ought to be developing their own presentation skills by now in any case.

Resist the urge to resort to further lecturing if conversation stalls. This one was an easy crutch for me as a TA with no control over course content, but as a professor you should already be in your comfort zone with the material. Now you have to navigate the social cues of undergraduates, not just present.

Be on the lookout for students’ responses and look for threads to draw out that they can relate to personally. And don’t jump in too fast to answer questions yourself – have students address the rest of the class. You can follow up student questions with elaboration and further questions, however, especially if a question receives only a short answer or reaches a dead end.

3. Bridge the gap

There’s nothing more stultifying to free discussion than the looming presence of a judgmental authority figure. For generations, the teacher-student relationship has been marked by a pronounced imbalance in authority, with a responsibility on one side to keep kids in line, and a tendency on the other to abandon authentic communication with the authority figure.

As students enter adulthood, it’s time to start addressing them more like peers, but it can be tricky to accomplish this without risking your authority in matters of curriculum and deadlines! One solution I have found is to work to become an effective mediator in the discussion setting.

Let your passion for the subject matter infuse your engagement with the students; let them see the human side of your life’s work. But don’t take over – allow students to take what inspires them and let the rest go. This preserves just enough distance to reinforce your position as the expert resource, without imposing a sense of judgment or scrutiny.

Most importantly, learn all of their names, and use them frequently. I cannot stress this enough. Call on students with an upturned palm, as if inviting them to speak, and never with a pointed finger, as though accusing them and singling them out. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve done that has improved my effectiveness as a teacher so much as the employment of these basic indicators of familiarity and respect.

4. Let discussion meander along unforeseen paths

Don’t be afraid to let the conversation veer away from your usual learning objectives. Discussion as an activity is an end in itself, and the skills you should be hoping to encourage are the universal skills of reasoning, listening, analyzing and lateral thinking.

It’s fascinating to see engaged students draw conclusions that have never occurred to you, or, on the other side of the coin, to watch them travel well-worn paths for the first time. If you find yourself trying to use class discussion time to hash out course content to prepare for an exam, you should probably take another look at your lecture design.

However, you’ll want to avoid letting conversation devolve into cavalier discussion about sensitive topics. At the outset of the course, encourage students to imagine that someone in the room has had very close experience with any topic they are about to discuss. This simple mental exercise can increase compassion and empathy without invoking self-censorship.

5. If all else fails, have a grab bag of activities prepared

Ah yes, the dreaded “group work” session. An easy way for teachers to sit back hand all the work over to students – or so I had always thought, back in the day. But as it happens, not all students have the lack of self-consciousness and outspoken nature that got me into so many awkward scrapes as a highschooler!

Many students find fully open discussion among twenty or thirty of their peers highly intimidating, and it can be useful to provide opportunities for them to engage in smaller groups, especially at the beginning of a course as everyone is still getting to know one another. Provide activities that require a conclusion or decision that can then be presented to the rest of the class to transition to a more open discussion.

You’ll have to gauge the median extroversion of your particular class to get a sense of how many such sessions will produce the best overall results, and play it by ear. At any rate, leave a few open discussion sessions toward the end of the term to allow the natural leaders in your class to shine.

Mix and match as needed

As with all strategies, the proper balance between them will depend on your particular class makeup as well as on your strengths and weaknesses as an instructor. Nothing works for everyone in every situation, and as a final note, I might add that it can save everyone’s sanity not to worry too much about attendance during discussion period.

When approaching teaching in any classroom, getting to know your students, the majority of whom are ‘Generation Z’ can also be a huge benefit. Understanding how Generation Z thinks will help you plan new teaching strategies to maximize engagement and retention in your class, here are 5 tips to get you on your way.

Better to have an engaged group of ten or twelve students than a stilted and apathetic group of twenty. Ultimately, students must see to their own education, as the saying goes. Good luck, and happy discussing!

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