ENCOURAGING
PARTICIPATION IN
SEMINARS
Prof Aleks Szczerbiak
20 April 2016
Encouraging participation in
seminars
• What is the problem?
• What traditional strategies have been
developed to overcome it?
• A possible solution to ‘structural
passivity’
• What have been the results?
• What have been the problems
with/limitations to this approach?
What is the problem?
•
•
•
•
Quiet/shy seminar groups
Quiet/shy students within a seminar group
Loud/dominant personalities
Lack of/unfocused reading and
preparation
• Structural passivity – members of a
seminar group systematically excluding
themselves from discussion
Previous strategies to overcome this
problem
•
•
•
•
•
Developing rapport (learning people’s
names, talking nonsense etc)
Being provocative
‘Protecting’ and encouraging students
with minority/controversial views
Course packs with core readings
BUT – don’t necessarily work –
especially where there is structural
passivity
A possible solution to ‘structural
passivity’
• Start seminars with small group
exercises circulated (a week) in
advance
• Follow by ‘report back’ and then more
‘open’ plenary discussion
• Exercises can be analytical,
normative and/or role playing
Examples of small group exercises:
Analytical
• How do communist regime legacies
complicate post-communist
democratisation?
• Devise an electoral strategy for a defeated
communist successor party
• Why have the best post-communist
economic reformers made most progress
with democratisation?
• Is post-communist democratisation easier in
ethnically homogeneous states?
Examples of small group exercises:
Normative
• Should post-communist states choose
strong or weak presidencies?
• How should post-communist states deal with
their communist past?
• What advice would you give to ‘Yes’ and
‘No’ campaigners in an EU accession
referendum in a post-communist state?
• What arguments would supporters and
opponents of NATO membership use in a
post-communist state?
What have been the results?
• Students can focus their reading, thinking
and preparation
• All students involved in participation and
discussion from the start of a class
• Tutor can choose groups with less assertive
students to speak first in ‘report back’
• They can encourage quieter students to
contribute without ‘putting them on the spot’
• Overall, this has greatly increased seminar
participation and reduced structural passivity
What have been the
problems/limitations?
• Still risks domination of seminars by most
assertive students – especially in ‘open’
plenary discussion
• Can crowd out discussion of non-assignment
topics
• Tension and need to strike a balance
between:
- Providing structure for seminars
- Allowing spontaneity of discussion
Conclusions
• Many traditional strategies to encourage seminar
participation do not necessarily tackle structural
passivity
• Starting seminars with pre-circulated small group
exercises around analytical/normative puzzles followed by report back and open plenary - is one
possible solution
• Experience suggests that it works in increasing and
broaden participation among the structurally passive
• But seminars can still be dominated by the most
assertive and spontaneous discussion crowded out