by Nathan Pagel, Philosophy

It can be difficult to coax active engagement from students in a classroom setting. Even when professors and students are mutually aware of the benefits that come along with a dynamic classroom environment where student participation is fostered and encouraged professor prompts for input are all too often met with anxious silence, shifting glances, and wordless prayers that are almost audible: “please don’t call on me.” Many classrooms will have a handful of students that are willing to brave the unknown and venture an answer to a question from a professor that goes beyond the safety and comfort of the way the material for the class has been presented in their books. However, these students can only be counted on to a certain degree. If it is only ever the usual suspects engaging in class discussions, the rest of the students can relax into the security of relative anonymity and let the class time unravel without feeling any pressure to take the content of the discussion into their own hands and bend it in a new direction. Students shouldn’t be so happy to swallow pre-digested informational gruel, leaving the pleasure of sinking one’s teeth into a firm and juicy problem to some small number of their peers, and yet many of them seem quite content to do so.

Class questions being met with opaque silence can leave any professor frustrated. What are they so afraid of!? It may be worth reminding ourselves, every once in a while, why students may be hesitant to respond to in-class questions. In speaking up they do not merely risk being wrong, they risk exposing something about themselves. No matter how much a professor may extol the virtues of being wrong and how it is really the stem that bears the fruit of understanding, it is not merely a fear of being wrong that frightens students away from expressing themselves. The way in which they are wrong can matter much more. When a question is answered in a public setting, something about the answerer’s thought process and comprehension of the material is revealed to those around them. When a student answers a question they also publicly reveal something about who they are and how they think. Doing this in a classroom full of one hundred or so of one’s peers can be a terrifying experience for anyone, but it is especially daunting for socially vulnerable young students who may be new to a university setting. One way to sidestep this whole issue while simultaneously reaping the benefits of productive student interaction is through in-class writing.

The process of actually writing rather than just thinking the answer forces students to be sure that they can phrase the answer in a coherent way. It is easy to think that one knows the answer to a question, and it is not until they have to produce the answer in an understandable form do the holes become apparent to the student.

Having students stop in the middle of class to write out answers to questions posed by the professor may seem like a waste of class time. Why not have students write reflections after class?  However, in narrowing the extent to which something about the student or their understanding of the class content will be revealed publicly, they can wholeheartedly respond to the question in an honest and unreserved way. Furthermore, the process of actually writing rather than just thinking the answer forces students to be sure that they can phrase the answer in a coherent way. It is easy to think that one knows the answer to a question, and it is not until they have to produce the answer in an understandable form do the holes become apparent to the student. If these holes are laid bare in class, they can be used to focus student attention on what they are missing, or encourage them to direct class discussions through their own question to help complete their picture of the content. Having students stop and take two to three minutes to write down how they would think about a certain question gives them a concrete sense of their own knowledge and a map for how to focus on and engage with the rest of the lecture while simultaneously avoiding the social risks that an extempore out loud discussion would entail and arming them to be better prepared to engage in class discussions by having concretized their thoughts.