Dr Camilla Maclean
Organisation and HRM
Warwick Business School
Seminar Teaching
1.
The Student (you teach)
 Their learning needs
 Variables impacting on seminars
 Participation / cultural considerations
2.
The Seminar tutor (you!)
 Your learning needs
Teaching Strategies and common problems
4. Going Forward
3.
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The Students
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Who are they?
Where do they come from?
What are they like?
How do they learn?
What is their relationship with you?
What do they need to learn?
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The Students: Your Responses

Mostly 18-25 yr. olds

Have high expectations for WBS teachers

Have mixed experiences and varied backgrounds – hence varied goals and hard
to make everyone happy e.g. some students looking for pragmatic and
examples, others want more theory.

Lack of experience with group work

Can be tired and hungry! (for early morning seminars)

Are friendly and have a sense of humour

Very international mix (WBS UG’s, few from UK) – cultural differences

Are people! With individual learning styles…

Can be lazy sometimes

Exam-oriented – focused on their mark i.e. the ‘score’ monster driving them…
and yet, sometimes not enough for them to read and prepare thoroughly
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Student’s Learning Needs?
1.
Hard Needs:
 Subject knowledge/content
 Writing skills
 Referencing skills (Harvard)
 Research skills
2.
Soft Needs:
But also want to /
happy to go beyond
the syllabus – will
appreciate you
bringing your own PhD
research and thoughts
into the seminar
discussions
 How to ask questions / participate in discussions.
 How to work collaboratively
 How to give presentations
 How to be critical and reflective!
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Student ‘Participation’

This is the ultimate aim of any seminar; question is how to
achieve it (shared understanding of what it is…?)

Examples of student participation include:
 Asking questions to group presenters (with student presentations)
 Contributing to class discussions
○ underpinned by evidence of having read the seminar materials
 Being able to link seminar discussions to wider issues
 Identifying links and implications for their country, their culture or to
recent news events

What does a student need to do to effectively contribute =
read the materials, attend lectures, think about the topic!
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6
Personality vs. Cross Cultural Issues

May be stating the obvious, but consider… do
different cultures have different approaches to
learning and to ‘participation’?
1. Language concerns
2. Little previous opportunity / expectation to ‘speak up’
3. Little previous opportunity / expectation to be ‘critical’

New learning is based on previously held beliefs

Impact of personality traits i.e. introvert vs. extrovert
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Variables Impacting on Seminars




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Class size
Physical lay out of classroom
Degree of preparation by students
Type / character of students e.g.
age and maturity of class (UG vs.
PG)
You…. e.g. subject knowledge, prior
learning on/of teaching, degree of
preparation, comfort levels in being
‘up front’?
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Out of your
control (?)
The Seminar Tutor… You!
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Seminar Tutor’s Learning Needs?
How to improve teaching techniques?
1.
Discussions with other PhD’s
2.
Discussion with NIE’s
3.
Workshops
 e.g. University IT workshops
4.
Trial and error!
 i.e. learning doesn't happen from
failure, but from analysing the failure,
making a change, and then trying again.
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Teaching Strategies…Problems,
Challenges, and suggested Solutions
V.S.
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Common Seminar Problems
Challenges:
1. Getting students to talk in group situation
○ Silence is not golden? Strategic vs. awkward...
2. Lack of seminar preparation by students (hopefully
not the tutor!)
3. Keeping discussions focused
○
On Facebook / surfing with laptops / phones!
4. Lack of context for students
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Common Seminar Problems?
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Common Problems: Your Responses
You identified a number of possible problems and challenges in
seminar teaching including:
1.
Encouraging students to make a ‘new’ contribution (e.g. vs. reading
/ repeating something off Wikipedia).
2.
Some students may have a lot to say and some students may have
little or nothing to say – the challenge in being prepared for the
possible variation.
3.
Talking / disruptive activities in seminar.
4.
There, but not ‘there’.
5.
Low student motivation
6.
Apparent unwillingness to learn.
7.
Students with conflicting work needs / conflict with other modules.
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E.g. On Facebook,
texting on phones,
chatting, playing games…
Common Problems: Your Solutions

Ask them to identify something interesting about themselves along with
their name and then use both (their name and interesting thing about
themselves) when asking them to contribute.

Bring chocolate / crackers for early morning or last in the evening sessions.

Offer a piece of candy to the first student to talk (regardless of whether
they answer correctly or not).

Have a ‘Plan B’ – when students are not talking and the tutor needs to step
in or when students ask ‘what if’ questions.

Use ‘story time’ (and begin with yourself) for when students run out of
things to say about the readings e.g. asking them to provide a fictional or
actual account of an experience that relates to the topic.

Bring in your own PhD topic examples.

Find examples to provide the context that makes the content or theory
meaningful for the students.
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Common Problems: No One Talking
Possible Solutions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Student presentations as ice breaker (can initiate these on your own)
Break students into smaller groups
○ Each group could be assigned to discuss one seminar question
○ Each group could be assigned to answer the same seminar questions,
but from a different role for each group.
○ Have them feed back into larger group at end (one as ‘recorder’ and
one as ‘reporter’ before they start talking)
Use / encourage student ‘co-chairs’
Random or cold calling – use the attendance sheet
Occasionally prowl the room.
Use students comments to build on each other e.g. “Aashna has
made a good point, do others share this view or does someone
have a different perspective?”
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Common Seminar Problems?
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Develop A Facilitative Atmosphere
Think about your approach:
 Do an ‘ice breaker’ / get to know you exercise at the
start of the seminars.
 Ask for contributions in positive manner (“Sam, we’d
love to hear your opinion on this…”)
 Praise students for their contributions and use them
to ‘add on’ knowledge (“That’s an excellent point,
have you thought about this?”)
 Use humour appropriately (be careful that this does
not appear as being patronising)
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Develop A Facilitative Atmosphere
Above all:
Try to be energetic
(through tone and
presence) and –
hopefully, but not always
- they will be energised!
N.B. Little empirical evident to support
idea of singular ‘learning style’… we all
use of all senses to learn
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YOUR Seminar Preparation
1.
Seems obvious: know the articles – read them thoroughly.
 Be able to summarise key points
 What do you want the students to get out of the seminar?
2.
Think about how to help develop perspective
 Role play (assign different roles/perspectives to the students)
 Use case studies
3.
Offer concrete examples from current events or link back to
their experiences (BBC / Radio 4)
 learning deepens when built on prior knowledge
4.
Summarise at start / end of seminar key points
 linking back to overall modules goals and to key readings.
 We remember the first and last things said to us most of all.
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How do you know they’re learning?
Monitor student learning
 To provide on-going feedback
for students to improve their
learning (can be used by
instructors to improve their
teaching)
 To help students identify their
strengths and weaknesses and
target areas that need work
 To help faculty recognize where
students are struggling and
address problems immediately
Evaluate student learning
 At the end of an instructional
unit, after you have taught, by
comparing it against some
standard or benchmark
 A final project or a paper or a
midterm exam
 Information from summative
assessments can be used
formatively when students or
faculty use it to guide their
efforts and activities in
subsequent courses
Formative Assessment
Summative Assessment
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Going Forward

How best to support you? And what teaching
strategies would be helpful?
 Record / practice mock seminar sessions
 Record real seminar sessions
 Video’s or podcasts
 Facebook updates
 More workshops
 Mid-term brainstorming session with other seminar
tutors.
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PhD Teaching Opportunities
Seminar tutoring
 harder than lectures?
 more important than lectures!
2. Smaller lectures
 e.g. workshop lectures
1.
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