PREPARING AND TEACHING
14 Planning and Facilitating Seminars/Labs
Learning outcomes of this chapter include:
- Purpose of seminars/labs
- Planning and preparing for seminars/labs based on learning objectives
- Encouraging students’ preparation and participation
- Further resources for learning activities
Purpose of the Seminars/Labs
Dr. Maureen Connelly, a Professor of Physical Education and Kinesiology at Brock, mentioned that the purpose of seminars/labs are to
- Engage in a focused discussion about a particular topic
- Learn to develop oral expressive abilities in an environment that us supportive, honest, and prepared
- Develop communication and interpersonal awareness – being aware of others, self-awareness, turn-taking, not interrupting, knowing others’ names, respecting differences, respecting subject matter
- Share responsibility for the flow and focus of the seminar
- Learn a variety of cognitive, reflective, and body processes – reading, thinking, integrating, synthesizing, formulating questions, developing, thoughtfulness, critiquing
- Use the topics of the course within institutional and habitual parameters
- Develop self-reflexivity and political awareness
Advice in Planning and Facilitating Seminars/Labs
Professor Lorne Adams offers the following advice in planning and facilitating seminars
When our learners are arriving to class, they are thinking about their last class, last evening, and their next date. Help them bridge into this class by interrupting those preoccupations.
- A strategy you can try in order to bridge into class is breaking up cliques and moving groups around by having the students call out numbers from 1-5 and grouping all number 1s together, 2s, and so on.
- Another strategy you can try is to have them pick out coloured pieces of paper/cards from a deck and sort them into groups based on colour or suit.
Consider giving students the opportunity to:
- Speak at the start of class
- Get to know each other
- Get to know you
- Relate the readings and information to their other courses, previous experiences, and/or related course content
Planning your Seminar
Think of 3- 5 teaching points you want to get across in your seminar.
Think about what the essential points of information are in the content you are covering. What do you want them to get out of it? Then design a learning activity that will allow students to access that material without you telling them.
Starting Your Seminar/Lab
Start the seminar off with an ice-breaking/energizing activity that will get students talking to each other and make everyone a little more comfortable. Check out Opening Activities, Icebreakers, and Energizers chapter for more. These activities can be done for initial introductions and when you are starting a new topic/reading/concept.
Ideas include:
- A round-robin of introductions or first impressions of the new content/material
- Pairs: Introduce yourself to a partner, discuss the new reading/specific question posed by the TA, and share your discussion points with the class.
- Hand out a sheet of instructions “Find someone who…. has read the course outline/ has come from out of town/has experience with this content/subject matter, etc.” and have students circulate the room, completing the task
- Two truths and a lie (in groups of 3 – 5, say three things about yourself – others decide which one is the lie)
The Dreaded Readings
In a perfect world, all students will have read all readings. In this world, it is not going to happen. How can we familiarize students with the material without alienating those who have read and chastising those who haven’t?
Suggestions include:
- Have students collaboratively annotate readings highlighting areas they found interesting or important.
- Form small discussion groups with those who have read the assignment and those who haven’t.
- Ask students to scan the reading and circle/read out loud the sentence they find most interesting
- Tell the students what the most important points of the reading are; then give students the opportunity to scan the reading to find those points
- Have students underline one sentence that states the thesis
- Play SEARCH and EDIT: ask students to find something that is badly written or unclear. Students love to point out what doesn’t work in the readings – ask them why it doesn’t work. This tactic gives students ownership of the material and allows them to review the main points.
- Ask students to each write an exam question based on the reading. Form small groups and get students to discuss the questions and possible answers. Good for review of essential points before a midterm or final examination
Learning Activities and Objectives
Points to remember when designing a learning activity:
- What is the objective?
- What is the time allotted?
- What is the content?
- Method/Materials?
- Group size?
- Product? How can you evaluate their learning?
Remember – students are better able to establish connections between the material by actively engaging with it!
When you have asked yourself these questions then think of the learning activity that WILL MATCH YOUR OBJECTIVES.
Your learning activity might be a small group exercise, a survey, a think/pair/share task, a role play, a case study or a set of questions and answers. Know your group, since activities such as role plays will not be suitable for large groups or shy students. Build a degree of choice to the activities so that students can participate in ways that will further their own learning, but will not make them too uncomfortable.
Ending your Seminar/Lab
Bringing closure to a seminar is just as important as having an effective start.
Leave a few minutes at the end of the class to debrief and see if students are now familiar with the content you covered in the seminar. Do the students have an understanding of the 3- 5 teaching points you outlined?
To review and wrap up the session, consider having students quickly jot down three things they learned from the discussion. Then go around the room, asking students to identify (one quick point each) what they have assimilated. This encourages students to do a quick mental review of the discussion and the material learned.
Alternatively, you could collect these sheets of paper and evaluate what was learned and what wasn’t.
Further Resources
Teaching Tools website provides suggestions for effective, inclusive teaching. The tools are developed by translating evidence-informed pedagogical research.
