Hist. 217: The Age of the Renaissance
Laurel Carrington

Panel Discussion Exercise

For this first exercise, I am dividing the class randomly into groups of four to five people each.  The assignment will be to do a structured discussion of the homework questions for that day. Each of you will take responsbility for one of the homework questions, although you should all have worked through the entire group of questions as you usually do for class. The discussion should progress as follows:

• I will introduce the panel to the class. I will pretend I am an interviewer, and address each speaker in turn with one of the questions.
• The speaker shall discuss the question briefly, elaborating with reference to one or more excerpts from the text. While you may prepare your answer with notes, I do not want you to read from a text. This part of the exercise should take each of you from 2 to 3 minutes maximum.
• After we have heard from each of the panel members, the discussion shall be turned over to other panel members, and then to the class, who shall ask them for elaboration, or contribute insights of their own. This part of the exercise should take 10 minutes altogether.

In your discussion, pretend you are in front of a T.V. audience for an educational program, which means be on your best behavior.  You need not act as if you’re meeting royalty, but you shouldn’t be too casual either.  Come in dressed for the part. You should expect to have one meeting with other members of your group in advance of the day your group is scheduled to discuss in class. The following are some suggestions for your meeting:

• Establish your purpose together. Review the assignment and make sure you have a shared understanding of what the assignment should accomplish for you and for the rest of the class.
• Get acquainted with your readings and questions together.
• Get acquainted with the other members of your group. 

In preparing to speak, you should consider these points:

1. Pace yourself well. Students often make the mistake of talking too fast, and making themselves less than intelligible. Practice with your group to get an idea of how effectively you're communicating.

2. Get a sense of how you do when you're in the gaze of other people. You first need to develop an awareness of how your body responds: does your mouth go dry? Do you get fidgety, or red in the face? Second, you need to see you your brain responds: do you forget everything you thought you were going to say? Do you have trouble getting words out? Develop some strategies for coping; for example, blushers should be prepared to keep their attention focused on the task rather than on what is going on with their faces; fidgety types should avoid wearing jewelry or handling pens; people whose brains get scattered should be prepared with clear notes.

3. Watch out for filler type words, such as y'know, like, um, uh, and the like.

4. Adjust the volume level of your voice. If your voice tends to be soft, you're going to have to work to speak up.

5. Check out your posture: don't slump over; be alert yet not at military-style attention.

6. Make eye contact with whoever is addressing you. At the beginning, I will be asking the questions; after each person has talked, you will be directing questions at one another and then receiving questions and comments from the class.

7. Do not look on this as a performance, but as an act of communication.

Laurel Carrington
Last modified: February 28, 2007

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