Workshop: “What Are We Talking About? Building a conceptual language for understanding seminar discussions”
Wednesday, March 21
José Alfonso Feito, Associate Professor of Psychology, Saint Mary’s College of California
José Feito was a Carnegie Scholar during 2001 and 2003. During both periods he worked on ways of understanding undergraduate participation in seminar discussions, and how we can teach our students skills that contribute to successful discussions.
This workshop will allow participants to explore in depth some of the questions about student discussions that José Feito and his colleagues have been working on, and will include the opportunity for hands-on use of the video assessment tool that José has helped to develop.
What exactly happens when students have a great seminar discussion? Although many of us are firmly committed to discussion-based pedagogies, we do not always have well-articulated ideas of what constitutes good seminar learning. Using current SoTL research as a starting point, this workshop will explore some potential theoretical models for understanding students’ cognitive and social work within seminar discussions. These models will offer new ways to parse the complexity of student discussions and arrive at a deeper understanding of the kinds of learning we hope to faciltitate through this type of pedagogy.
