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Small Group Teaching in English Literature - A Good Practice Guide
Small Group Teaching in English Literature - A Good Practice Guide
in English Literature:
A Good Practice Guide
Jonathan Gibson
Report Series
Number 23 • November 2010
ISBN 978-1-905846-41-2
Small Group Teaching
in English Literature:
A Good Practice Guide
Jonathan Gibson
Report Series
Number 23 • November 2010
ISBN 978-1-905846-41-2
Note and Acknowledgements
This Good Practice Guide incorporates, with permission, material adapted from ‘Seminar Teaching’,
a set of pages on the English Subject Centre website written by Ben Knights (http://bit.ly/2ZRp9N)
as well as parts of unpublished documents written by Jane Gawthrope (English Subject Centre) and
Peter Howarth (Queen Mary, University of London). It also adapts material from Staying the Course:
The Experiences of Disabled Students of English and Creative Writing (Egham: English Subject Centre
Report 18, 2009: http://bit.ly/apT4Un) written by the author of this guide together with Kevin Brunton
(London Metropolitan University). Many of the ideas mentioned in the Guide have been stimulated by
items listed in the bibliography.
Copyright Statement
a) The author of this report is Jonathan Gibson, who should be referenced in any citations of the report
and acknowledged in any quotations from it.
b) Copyright in the report resides with the publisher, the Higher Education Academy English Subject
Centre, from whom permission to reproduce all or part of the report should be obtained.
c) If any additional use is made of secondary data the source must be acknowledged.
The Authors
Jonathan Gibson has worked as a lecturer in English at the universities of Exeter and Durham and
at Queen Mary, University of London. He is currently Academic Co-ordinator at the English Subject
Centre. He is an active researcher and has published widely on early modern literature.
Contents
Foreword 2
Introduction 3
2. Getting ready 5
2.1 Intelligent design 5
2.2 Questions to ask when planning a seminar 5
2.3 Practical considerations 6
2.4 Preparing together: ground rules 7
5. Keeping it going 17
5.1 Starting things off, drawing things to a close 17
5.2 Enabling and guiding whole group (plenary) discussions 17
6. So how did it go? Evaluating the effectiveness of your small group teaching 19
6.1 Self- and peer-observation 19
6.2 Evaluation by students 20
Bibliography 21
1
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
Foreword
Student or tutor, professor or graduate assistant, trembling imitate. F.R. Leavis once famously observed that the essence
neophyte or confident third year: for most people engaged with of critical discussion lies in the implicit posing of the question,
English at university, ‘small group teaching’ is as critical to their ‘This is so, isn’t it?’ followed by the answer ‘Yes, but’; as Bernard
discipline as the chance to study Shakespeare or the Victorian Bergonzi countered, Leavis perhaps gave insufficient weight to
Novel. It means having the chance to exchange ideas in a forum the possibility of someone replying ‘I very much doubt it’ or ‘No,
small enough for everyone’s voice to be heard. It means that, by thunder!’ My own undergraduate tutor, a pupil of Leavis’s,
once heard, those voices can be nurtured. It means that students argued that no one wanted to speak in a Leavis seminar because
accept the responsibility to think for themselves while listening they were all so eager to listen. I wonder. A rather different
to what others have to say. Take away the ‘small group’ and the motivation for such silences is tendered, hilariously, by
subject is de-natured. David Lodge:
You don’t have to be at a university to agree. One of the reasons Occasionally one feels, as a teacher, rather like a soccer
why English continues to be such a popular ‘A’ Level subject referee who, having blown his whistle for the kick-off,
is that teenagers relish the chance to debate, to negotiate finds the players disconcertingly reluctant to make
meaning rather than simply absorb it. In studying English, a move and is reduced to dribbling the ball himself
they become accustomed not simply to a body of knowledge furiously from end to end, scoring brilliant goals in
but to a way of learning that is both individual and collective, undefended nets, while the motionless players look
personalised yet collaborative. Reading and thinking about curiously on.
books in the context of a ‘small group’ is an essential means of
With Jonathan Gibson’s new guide, more of us can look forward
education, certainly, but also of socialisation. Older readers – for
to sticking to our central task of ensuring the rules of play are
example, the many thousands of people who participate in book
observed and, very occasionally, blowing the whistle.
clubs and reading groups – feel the same special quality in the
‘small group’ discussion of a set text. This foreword has been written in challenging times, and not
only because the whole idea of ‘small group teaching’ has
That doesn’t mean to say that all voices even in the smallest
for some years been under threat. A matter of days ago, the
group are always heard. Seminar discussion may, in ideal
Higher Education Academy announced that funding for its
circumstances, take care of itself, but it is more likely to require
Subject Centres was to be discontinued. Let this new guide
careful planning and imagination. Tutors used to managing large
stand as an example of what the English Subject Centre has
numbers may well struggle to adapt to a situation in which they
achieved in its ten-year life: the sharing of ideas with reference
have to sustain discussion between only a dozen students, and
to the best available practice; the promotion of learning and
we have all faced the situation where a group of undergraduates
professional development as a collaborative enterprise, free
has little to say in the face of unfamiliar material. We are all
from the prejudice of private gain; the pursuit of excellence as a
experiencing the pressure to make every second of the student
democratic imperative. I’ve been proud to serve on the Advisory
experience as valuable and enjoyable as it can be – and at a
Board for the Centre and record my appreciation of the work
time when there will be fewer of those seconds to go round –
bequeathed to English scholars and students across the world by
so a guide such as Jonathan Gibson’s, written with authority,
the Director, Professor Ben Knights, and his superb team. Now
sympathy and pragmatism, is especially useful and timely.
it’s up to the rest of us to keep it going.
The greatest of our profession may not always be sure of their
David Roberts
ground when it comes to dealing with small groups of students;
Birmingham City University
or, when they are sure, not always models we might care to
2
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
Introduction
Small-group teaching is the dominant pedagogic genre in Nobody gets it right all the time: small group teaching is a
English studies, on most modules in most departments taking constant learning process. This Guide’s assumption, however,
up the lion’s share of face-to-face interaction between lecturers is that there are many things that you can do that will make it
and students. At their best, small group sessions (often referred more likely that your seminars will go well. Its aim is both to
to as ‘seminars’) allow group leaders and students to explore give practical help to those new to leading small groups, and to
and develop their ideas together – they can be exciting, life- suggest some fresh ideas to more experienced lecturers.
changing experiences. There are many pitfalls, however, and, It provides suggestions for activities you might like to use in your
despite the prevalence of the format, it is not safe to assume seminars (section 3), some ideas about ways of relating what
that lecturers, or indeed students, are naturally good at it. happens in a seminar to what happens in the rest of a course
(section 4), some tips on the detailed running of the seminar,
Small group teaching has always been tricky, but the challenges
including the suggestion that you set up ‘ground rules’ (2.4 and
are arguably greater now than ever before: larger group sizes
section 5) and some tips about evaluation (section 6). There are
and greater diversity in students’ background and learning styles
also some basic practical reminders (2.2). Seminar tips submitted
make it increasingly difficult to use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
by lecturers to the English Subject Centre database and student
Getting seminars right, meanwhile, is perhaps particularly
quotes from English Centre reports are provided as illustrations
important in English, as it is an academic discipline that tends to
of key points. Whatever your experience and expertise, I hope
timetable relatively few contact hours. This can cause problems
that you will find something useful in the pages that follow.
for first-year students who have been used at school to a
different proportion of class-time to independent study. Every
hour-long seminar in English (as is perhaps not so much the case
in some science subjects) is therefore crucial. This state of affairs
is not altogether a bad thing: it does provide today’s lecturers
with the need to think creatively about both seminar design and
seminar management.
3
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
On many English programmes, seminars are closely linked • Small groups can provide students with a ‘safe space’ for the
to lectures: a one-hour session will often be timetabled expression and development of their own ideas, building up
immediately after a one-hour lecture on the same topic. their confidence in their own ability.
(Sometimes, seminar leaders will have attended the lecture,
• Seminars can help induct students into the values and world-
sometimes not.) Some English modules are taught entirely in
view of the discipline.
two-hour seminars, with no lectures: in these cases, a seminar
will be likely to include lecture-like elements. Another possibility If your small group sessions are to do these things, a certain
– dictated by rising student numbers – is to run a lecture-only number of prerequisites will be necessary: for example, the sessions
module, in which long sessions with a large number of students will have to be constructed in such a way that as many students as
incorporate many opportunities for student involvement and possible feel able to speak and to express their ideas freely without
response. Very small group sessions, meanwhile – somewhat of feeling intimidated; and they will need to be designed in a way that
an endangered species nowadays – can approximate more to builds productively on students’ skills and knowledge.
the informal format of the tutorial. Between these two extremes,
many different structures are possible. Nine things you should know about small groups
1 The seminar is a difficult genre. Do not assume that
Seminar group size
students will automatically know how to participate, how
A 2009 survey of English departments produced the to listen to each other, or even how to learn in a seminar.
following findings:
2 Students may be uncertain about what counts as having
Seminars with fewer than 15 participants were used anything to say about a particular subject – and worried
‘regularly’ by 72% of respondents and ‘occasionally’ by 23%. about exposure in front of their peers (and you!). It is thus
a good idea to, as a teacher, make your assumptions and
Seminars with 16-30 participants were used ‘regularly’ by
practices explicit and visible.
65% of respondents and ‘occasionally’ by 23%.
3 All participants share responsibility for the success of the
Seminars with more than 30 participants were relatively
individual session or the programme as a whole.
uncommon, with 28% of respondents reporting that they
were used occasionally and only 3% saying they were 4 However, the tutor / leader does have a particular
used regularly. responsibility to structure the seminar in such a way as to
enable participation (see Section 3), maintain the group’s
Source: Alexandra Cronberg and Jane Gawthrope, Survey of the English
Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education (Egham: English Subject working environment (see Section 5) and establish ground
Centre Report 19, 2010): http://bit.ly/cTwLCm rules (see 2.4.) about preparation and participation.
4
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
would like the students to know about (or be able to do) by the
6 Seminar teaching, more than lecturing, has to be adaptive: end of the seminar. (You might or might not want to share these
you will have to adjust your approach to suit the individual things with the students in advance, so they might not precisely
characteristics of each different group. overlap with the published learning outcomes of the module.)
7 A seminar is one of the places where students learn to Using the prompts in this section, think about what your best
become fluent in the discourse of the subject – and you strategy for getting these across might be.
as tutor have to be prepared to listen as well as talk.
Arguably, the quality of your own listening will set a Desirable attributes for students of English literature
benchmark for the rest of the group.
These are some of the things that English lecturers may
8 Seminars operate simultaneously on intellectual, affective, want to find in their students. But are they what students
and social levels, although the experienced group leader desire for themselves?
will not necessarily be conscious of all of these levels all
• Pleasure in language: at levels of both production and
the time.
reading. A delight in irony, wit, pun, verbal facility, register
9 Seminars are not simply about learning in a given subject shifting, code switching …
discipline. They are also about learning to learn.
• Discursive flexibility: attention to style and register (oral
Source: Ben Knights, English Subject Centre. or written) as appropriate to both subject matter and
audience.
5
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
• What problems are students likely to have with this material? • If you distribute photocopies to students, avoid using
What do I take for granted in my own thinking about this photocopies of photocopies (‘second-generation photocopies’)
subject that students may not yet take for granted, or even and try not to reduce the size of photocopied material too much
be aware of? How can I help them acquire those ‘threshold (in order, for example, to fit everything onto a single sheet).
concepts’1 which make sense of the discipline?
• If you use ‘PowerPoint’ in the seminar, make sure that you use
• If you are going to have to explain a complex topic in a a sans-serif font (such as Arial) at point 30 and that there is a
seminar, what would be the best sequence in which to do it? sharp contrast between text and background (dark blue and
cream make a good combination).
• Think about the different things you want to do in the seminar.
Will part of the seminar involve the conveyance and/or testing
Accessible texts
of basic factual knowledge? If so, you might like to supplement
the usual discussion-based format of a seminar with a quiz or Save electronic texts for student in ‘rich text format’ (ie.
reading session. with an .rtf extension after the filename) rather than as
Word (.doc) or PDF (.pdf) files: these other file-types include
• How can I adapt what I want to do in the seminar to the
programming code invisible to the naked eye which can
resources at my disposal?
interfere with software that disabled students use to read
• How can I relate it to the rest of the module? the text.
• How do I communicate that the topic matters? that this Use a sans-serif font such as Arial or Verdana in point 12,
discussion is serious? avoiding italicisation, underlining and capitalised text.
• How can I make sure that I am using a variety of teaching Align text to the left and do not justify the lines. Make sure
methods, so that students good at different things, and students that the material you provide is clearly structured (using
with different cultural backgrounds, are equally catered for? headings where necessary) and that its usefulness is obvious
to the students. Use the ‘headings’ function in Word to
• What about the very first session? How do I begin? What can I create a clear structure for your document that users will be
do to help this collection of people become a working group? able to access by viewing the ‘document map’.
In later sessions, how can I best build on what this group did
last week?
• Consider providing guidance for students on your module
• How can I prompt this group to be one that privileges openness
using multimedia (e.g. videos, podcasts) as an alternative or
and discussion? What norms need to be put in place?
supplement to the traditional course handbook.
• What do I need to do to get as many students as possible to
2.3.2 The room
contribute?
• Check out the room you have been allocated in advance of
You will have to find the answers to these questions yourself as the session. There may be things about it that will make it
you respond to the differing contexts and cultures of each group difficult for you to run the seminar in the way you originally
you teach. The aim of the rest of this Guide is to provide you hoped: an awkward arrangement of chairs and tables, for
with materials that will help you do just this. Only you will know example, or simply a very confined space. Don’t schedule an
which of these elements will be most useful for you as you go elaborate, drama-based exercise without having first checked
about your teaching. out the space.
2.3 Practical considerations • Find out about the availability of aids such as interactive
2.3.1 Materials whiteboards/smartboards, wi-fi access, data projectors, etc.
• Make sure all students have easy access to the set texts they The availability of some of this technology might give you an
need for the seminar: check that the right books are available ideas for things to do in the seminar.
in the library and/or the campus bookshop.2 • Check that the position of chairs and tables allows everyone to
• Make sure that materials you have created yourself are see each other. Many lecturers like to run sessions with chairs
distributed in good time to the students and are as easy to use arranged in a circle: this will, of course, not always be possible,
as possible. particularly if other classes are booked in on either side of yours.
• Make as much material as possible available in electronic form, • Consider running some seminars in rooms equipped with
online. This will allow students with different requirements to computers. There are many ways in which lecturers in our
customise it as appropriate. But don’t forget also to provide subject can use electronic resources in a seminar (3.2.1), and
hard copies, as the use of computers may be problematic for for some disabled students, in particular, a computer suite can
other students. be an especially comfortable environment.
1 Jan Meyer and Ray Land, Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines.
ETL project occasional report 4 (2003): www.tla.ed.ac.uk/etl/docs/ETLreport4.pdf
2 Information about providing accessible copies of primary texts to students with visual impairments and other conditions that make the use of
hard-copy books difficult can be found in Kevin Brunton and Jonathan Gibson, Staying the Course: The Experiences of Disabled Students of
English and Creative Writing (Egham: English Subject Centre Report 18, 2009): http://bit.ly/apT4Un, section 4.4.2 (B).
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Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
• If you are teaching a very small group in your office, don’t as specially-modified keyboards. In some cases, it will help
forget that you can turn to online resources to check or the student if you modify your teaching approach: try to find
problematise your own or/and the students’ arguments. out from them what would be most useful. Sometimes very
An online computer can become a participant in the session basic problems will arise, such as the problem of holding a
in its own right. book on a table. (Solutions are often lo-tech, involving assistive
technology such as blu-tack® and drawing pins.) If you use
2.3.3 Individual student requirements
writing exercises in a teaching session, make sure you allow
Every small group contains a range of different types of
enough time for a disabled student who has writing difficulties
students, with an array of varied skills, weaknesses, sensitivities,
to finish – or make it clear to them before the session begins
social/cultural backgrounds, ethnicities, learning styles,
that you do not expect them to write as much as the others.
sexualities and personal preferences. Some of this variability
will be immediately obvious (mobility problems, for example); • If a disabled student wants to bring a helper into your seminar
others (like cognitive problems) less so. In dealing with the group, make sure that the other students understand the
requirements of a particular student, it is always best to discuss processes involved and how they can help. (Some students,
things with the individual in front of you, rather than proceed on however, will prefer privacy, and want their helper to sit in a
the basis of your own generalised sense of the requirements of different part of the room.)
a particular category of student (a generic ‘blind student’, for • Some students (for example, those using lipreading or
example)3. Here are some key things to bear in mind: synthetic speech machines) will require prior notice of the
• Some disabled students will find it very difficult to make any topic and main ideas of the seminars: otherwise, they won’t
contribution to a seminar, whilst others will wish to compensate understand all the words that you are using. (It would also
for their anxiety about their written work by engaging fully in help if they knew in advance about specific passages of text
class discussion. analysed in detail.) The same will apply to students using
personal assistants as note-takers or signers. Some students
• Some disabled students will be happy for their disability to
will require access to handouts prior to the session (ideally in
be public knowledge; others will not want other students in a
electronic form) so that they can turn them into a form that
seminar or lecture group to know about it (whilst nevertheless
they can understand.
seeking support from a lecturer). Many such students want
to maintain a low profile so that they will not be considered 2.3.4 Getting the timings right
‘different’ or ‘special’ by their peers. It is, of course, important • Try to work out how long each section of your seminar will last
to respect the student’s intentions in such cases – though you and jot down the approximate timings against a description
will need to explain to them the potential problems that the of each activity (e.g. ‘10.20-10.40 (20 mins): Groups discuss
lack of disclosure could cause. extract sheet’). Do not be too doctrinaire in sticking to
these timings – sometimes your estimates will turn out to be
• In some cases, it may be impossible for students to attend the
unrealistic; sometimes students will show particular enthusiasm
session. In such cases, try to think of other ways in which your
for a topic.
students might be able to achieve its aims: tutorials, perhaps
(time permitting), or a worksheet with questions and readings • Do not delay starting the seminar too long. Wait for
relevant to the topic missed; video conferencing to allow stragglers, but if more than five minutes after the official
students off-campus to participate; exercises in which students opening time have gone by, and some people have still not
compile a record of the session that can be viewed later by the arrived, you really should get going. Do not let pleasantries
absentee (a live blog, perhaps, or retrospective seminar notes). about TV programmes the night before stop you getting onto
the main sections of your seminar plan.
• Storage facilities in the department for bags, etc. will help
some students move around more easily. Some students • Leave enough time at the end of the seminar to sum up key
will benefit from an area where they can rest and/or take points and look forward to the next session. Just because
medication between teaching sessions. students are still talking and seem engaged with the subject
does not mean that they are keen to overrun the time slot.
• Room allocation can be a problem for some students,
particularly if classes are often scheduled in rooms up steep 2.4 Preparing together: ground rules
staircases or many floors up.
Try to remember that the success of a seminar is not exclusively
• Some disabled students, while present at a seminar, may up to you: it is the shared responsibility of everybody in
not be able to participate in the activities you have planned the group. Spending some time at the start of the module
(discussion in subgroups, etc.). If these activities seem to you establishing more or less formalised ‘ground rules’ to guide a
to be essential to the session, try to think of ways in which their group’s behaviour during its time together is a good way of
outcomes could be achieved by the student in some other bringing this fact home both to the students and to yourself, and
way. There are a wide range of helpful devices available, such of pre-empting many potential problems.
3 For more detail on disability, including a list of conditions, see Kevin Brunton and Jonathan Gibson, Staying the Course: The Experiences of
Disabled Students of English and Creative Writing (Egham: English Subject Centre Report 18, 2009): http://bit.ly/apT4Un
7
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
Ground rules can be particularly valuable with first-years new to (and thus piling all the pressure for the success of the seminar on
the format of the university seminar. They will also be particularly yourself) try thinking a bit more specifically and realistically about
important in sessions that involve a degree of personal exposure your role: you are responsible for setting up the structure of the
(for example, in creative writing classes). Having ground rules session (giving it a beginning, a middle and an end) and keeping
in place will be useful not just as a recourse to appeal to if the discussion on track. It is therefore a good idea to give some
problems occur, but as a way of giving many less confident thought to the session’s overall shape.
students a clearer sense of what small group sessions are for.
To what extent ought you to use what might appear to be
The process of formulating them with the students, meanwhile,
artificial ways of eliciting participation? Devices such as those
should help you focus your own thinking about what you see as
described in this section are well worth considering, though
acceptable or unacceptable behaviour.
clearly such structured activities should not appear arbitrary to
If you do decide to establish ground rules, remember that they the group. You will need to communicate to students why you
need to be discussed or negotiated with the group (perhaps are doing what you’re doing, which means in turn being clear
in a special session), rather than simply presented by your fiat. in your own mind about what you hope to achieve, so make
One possibility is to start by asking students to write down sure first that you have thought through the topics discussed in
individually a short list of good and bad things about seminars or sections 2.1 and 2.2 above.
classes they have been in before, and then to discuss these lists
Varying your teaching method – shifting, for example, between
in pairs. In the full group, you can build on the conclusions of the
periods of individual reading/analysis (perhaps involving small-
pairs’ discussions to brainstorm a series of rules which can be
scale written tasks), periods of small-group activity and periods
recorded and circulated.
of plenary discussion and/or debate and performance – makes
Your list of ground rules is likely to include both practical matters sense for many reasons. It will allow students to capitalise on
(such as eating or using mobile phones in class) as well as their own individual skills and learning styles.4 It is also more
guidance on discussion etiquette, (including the use of online interesting for both you and the students.
discussion boards) (4.1.3)) and on the extent of your availability
Aim to strike a balance between conservatism and innovation.
for personal consultation via email or in person.
There is no point just mixing things up for the sake of it. On the
It might include items similar to these:
other hand, you don’t want all your students to groan when your
• Disagreements will inevitably arise and they don’t matter, but old familiar strategy hoves into view for the nth time.
rudeness and personal comments are unacceptable.
If you have built up a confident and well-prepared group, it
• The seminar begins on time: we won’t wait for latecomers.
may not be necessary later in the life of a group to engage
• Everyone is expected to do their share of preparation and in structuring activity. You may prefer to use more in the
bring the required texts / copies to the class. early weeks – though of course there might well be reasons
• If you can’t attend, let the tutor know – in advance if possible. (intellectual as well as social) for carrying on structuring groups
• No-one in the group should speak for longer than three later in the semester.
minutes at a time. Planning will depend, of course, on the stage at which the
• Everyone bears some share of the responsibility for making this particular group you are teaching is. Rigid structure, for example,
seminar a success. People who speak are not just addressing might help a group focus on a key issue new and/or alien to
the seminar leader. them. Alternatively, several weeks’ work on a module might
• At any point in the session, for whatever reason, anyone can mean that a group is ready for a mature, freewheeling discussion
call ‘time out’. There will then be a five-minute pause for silent of where they have got to.
reflection/note-taking on the discussion so far. The suggestions for seminar activities that follow can be used
Even if you feel that ground rules are not for you (devising both as the basis for whole sessions and as sections of sessions:
them will often seem a bit excessive for very small groups), it is feel free to mix and match!5
always worthwhile broaching some of these topics early on in
3.1 Teaching the whole (plenary) group
the module, so that the students know what is expected of them
Whether or not you will want to break your seminar group
and of you.
up into smaller groups will depend partly on the number of
students you start with. On the whole, groups of six or less
3. Types of small-group activity work well without being subdivided. If undivided, larger groups
Don’t take it for granted that a group of students sitting round a (particularly groups of 13 or more) run more dangers: of students
table or spread around a room will know how to have a focused, developing simplified views of each other’s personalities; of
informed discussion. Often they will fall back on you as seminar student/teacher roles hardening into caricature; of informal,
leader to run the discussion. (They may also expect you to do possibly hostile, subgroups emerging; of, more generally,
most of the talking.) Rather than falling in with such expectations higher student anxiety. The more students there are in a group,
4 Though the fully-developed theory of ‘learning styles’ (whereby particular people are classified as, say, ‘kinaesthetic‘ or ‘visual’ learners) is
controversial (see, for example, Frank Coffield, et al., Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning : A systematic and critical review (2004):
http://bit.ly/7wS4Oj).
5 You can find many more ideas in ‘T3’, the English Subject Centre’s database of teaching tips, at http://bit.ly/b10Jnz, and, with more detailed
information, in the ‘Activity Ideas’ contributed by Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster to the English Subject Centre website at http://bit.ly/a2xKor
8
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
however, the deeper the reservoir of talent and skills you 3.1.2 Rounds
can potentially draw upon. There should, then, be some real Everybody in the group takes it in turn to give a short answer to
advantages in teaching the plenary group all together, at least a question or to express an opinion about something. This seems
some of the time. What are the best ways to go about it? fairer to students than picking out one random student to answer
a question, though with very big groups it can be cumbersome.
Big group dynamics
3.1.3 Public groups
‘Whereas in the small group it is easy to think but difficult You can also combine group discussion with plenary discussion
to feel, in the large one the opposite is likely to be the case. by limiting the permission to speak to a certain group with the
It becomes difficult to mobilise the intellect, issues become group, requiring everyone else to listen and watch. (For an
polarised, splitting (‘I all right/ you all wrong’) takes over example, see 3.2.2 , on ‘Fishbowls’.)
as a defence against anxiety about chaos, and, in order to
For more on the dynamics of plenary discussion – and some of
manage this, people are likely to stereotype each other.’
the problems – see section 5 below.
Source: David Jaques and Gilly Salmon, Learning in Groups: A Handbook for
Face-to-Face and Online Environments (London: Routledge, 2007). p. 10. 3.2 Teaching subgroups
The time-honoured words ‘Now, let’s split into groups’ are the
3.1.1 Brainstorming basis for many of the most useful ways of structuring seminars.
Many students will feel more comfortable voicing their opinions
Students call out ideas about a particular topic and you write
in small subgroups than in the seminar group as a whole, and
them down on the board (or type them into a computer linked
structured small group work can generate an energy, a sense of
to a data projector). Strictly speaking, a brainstorm should
excited involvement, that sometimes leaks away in whole group
involve four things: a stress on quantity of ideas (encourage
discussion. Rapid-fire, apparently artificial activities often excite
students to call out whatever comes to mind), restraint in
intellectual energy and start ideas and connections going. They
criticising the ideas, the welcoming of unusual ideas, and a
force people to focus, and you and the students will, ideally,
secondary phase in which you and the students together work
follow up these ideas and connections in more detail later.
on sorting the ideas out, grouping those that are similar and so
on. Brainstorming is an excellent way of thrashing out key points You need to think about the composition of these groups. Will
and issues that you can concentrate on in the rest of the seminar you employ ‘home groups’ which retain the same membership
– either in plenary discussion or in small groups. It is also very whenever small group activity is called for? Or re-allocate each
effective at building a sense of common purpose in the group. time? Will you allocate membership on a random basis, or let
Sometimes you will want brainstorming to follow and depend students choose for themselves? (Caution: letting friendship
upon input of some kind from yourself – maybe a set text, or a groups work together often reduces the value of the work done.
way of dividing up a topic suggested by you. And it doesn’t help members of the larger group to get to know
one another.) Effort put in to organising the learning group at an
SEMINAR TIP early stage in its life will be amply re-paid later.
Baudrillard’s theory of the sign 3.2.1 Types of material to give to subgroups
George Selmer, Anglia Ruskin University
Such groups can all be asked to do exactly the same thing
(such as analysing the same bit of text), or can be asked to do
‘Following a lecture on or a set reading of the relevant
roughly equivalent things (such as analysing different bits of
parts of Baudrillard’s Simulations, provide the group with
the same text), or can be allocated completely different tasks:
a handout detailing Baudrillard’s four stages of the sign as
each subgroup, for example, could be given a different topic to
a reminder. Divide the whiteboard into four columns – one
research in a different way. Usually you will want to follow this
for each of the proposed stages. Brainstorm examples and
group activity with a plenary session picking up on it and taking
get the group to attempt to classify each example into
it forward in some way.
the appropriate stage of the model. As they do this, and
find that some examples sit less easily within one category There are many different types of material you can provide for
than others, they should be able to begin to critique the your subgroups, of which the following are just a sample:
model, by exposing its strengths and weaknesses through
• Handouts containing a critical extract or a set of propositions
attempting to apply it. I find this a useful way of not only
encapsulating a particular aspect of the subject to hand. Groups
getting students to grapple with theory ‘hands on’, but also
could simply discuss the ideas among themselves, or you could
to encourage them to take issue with it where necessary.’
ask different groups to prepare arguments for and against a
Adapted from an entry in ’T3 – Teaching Topics and Texts’, particular point of view for presentation to the plenary group.
English Subject Centre website (http://bit.ly/b10Jnz).
• A particular topic or text to discuss in relation to the set text.
6 Texts can be broken up electronically for analysis using ‘Word’ to form the basis for this sort of activity: see Barbara Bleiman and Lucy
Webster’s webpage on the English Subject Centre website, ‘Activity Ideas: Number Crunching a Text with ‘Word’’, at http://bit.ly/crTcM7
9
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
• Ask each group to devise questions – perhaps even essay • Specified roles and activities within the group. Each student
questions for their next assessment. in each group is assigned a specific role: examples might
include ‘facilitator’, ‘referee’, ‘scribe’, ‘devil’s advocate’ and
• Random quotations from the set text. Each group will then, in
‘summariser’. Alternatively, you could make rules about the
the plenary session, have to make a case for the significance of
order taken and the amount of time spent by each student in
their particular quotations.
the discussion: for example, you could require that, in pairs,
• An extract from the text under discussion (or from a related text each partner must wait for a certain period (say three minutes)
– eg. something else by the same author) for close analysis. while their partner speaks before butting in.
• Give each student topics to research before the session that • Metamorphic groups. Another possibility is to find ways for
they can share in small groups, preferably with students who groups to change personnel in the middle of their discussion,
have researched different but related topics. opening up the conversation to more voices and/or giving
a developmental structure to the seminar. For example,
• If you are able to use a computer suite, or a room in which wi-fi
following a period of discussion in pairs, students can swap
access and laptops are available, students can be asked to look
places with each other before continuing the discussion with
in pairs at material from an online text archive such as Early
new partners. In bigger groups, each subgroup member can
English Books Online (EEBO) or to search within an electronic
be given a number (in each group starting with one) then, after
copy of the set text to find the contexts of specific words and
a certain time, you can ask all the number ones to form a new
phrases. You can allocate particular words to different pairs
group, all the twos to do the same, and so on.
and discuss the findings of each pair in a plenary discussion.
Many online activities currently set as out-of-class student tasks • Passing material from group to group. A good way of
can work very well within seminars as 10-20 minute tasks for developing students’ understanding of a complex topic is for
pairs of students grouped around a computer. subgroups to pass material from group to group in a way that
allows one group’s ideas to be built upon and/or explored
• Ask groups to work on ‘translating’ some figurative language
by others. Pairs of students might produce some material
from the set text into more prosaic form.
(perhaps listing examples of something) and then exchange
• Paratexts (dedicatory letters, etc.) to think over in relation to it with parallel or related material produced by another pair.
the set text. Each pair then comments on or analyse the first pair’s list. If
you have enough space in your classroom, you could ask larger
• Textually variant versions of the set texts or related texts
groups to move around from table to table leaving material
(eg. extracts from the different versions of The Prelude):
behind on each table in the process: one large sheet of paper
ask students to analyse the significance of the variation.
on each table, for example, could be annotated by a sequence
• A parallel set of passages from the set text to compare of groups. Alternatively, groups can send ‘envoys’ to find out
(soliloquies, descriptions of characters looking out of windows, about what other groups have been talking about.
extended metaphors, etc.)
• Pyramids/Snowballs. This type of subgroup is useful for
• Ask the group to create a poster. This activity relies on having topics which would benefit from development in a sequence
a flip chart or large sheets of paper available – and a good deal
10
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
of different stages. Discussion occurs in groups that regularly groups in advance to choose a spokesperson and scribe (and
double in size. In a typical example, each student will even provide them with big bits of paper), so that they have
individually perform a written task. Students will then compare something written down to report back to plenary group.
notes on the task in pairs. In fours, each pair will introduce
• An alternative approach is simply to ask if anybody has
each others’ work. The findings of the group of four will then
anything in particular that struck them during the small-group
be built upon by a group of eight whose task is to develop
discussion. Sometimes it is a good idea to ask a more specific
more general principles. The group will then open out into a
question such as ‘What were the main disagreements in your
plenary session. There are lots of possibilities.
group?’ or to ask a topic-specific question that shifts the
• Fishbowls. An inner group discusses something, watched debate to a more complex level.
by an outer group working at a ‘meta’ level – looking for
• You could follow small group discussion with a brainstorming
patterns, themes, general soundness of argument, etcetera
session (see 3.1.1) on the same topic, perhaps providing
in the inner group’s discussion. This approach generally works
some categories of your own to which students can relate the
best if the outer group is given something specific to do. In
findings of their subgroup.
one variation, the inner group contains an empty chair to
which anybody from the outer group can come to make a • If you have asked the subgroups specifically to prepare
statement or ask questions. Alternatively, you might set up a something to present in the plenary (arguments in a debate,
system of rules whereby people from the outer group regularly for example), the transition should be smoother. (It is
change places with people from the inner group. Fishbowls surprising, though, how often small groups drift away from very
can be generated out of previous small group discussion: for specific instructions and end up having intellectually valuable
example, representatives of each of a number of prior groups conversations that are strictly speaking ‘off-task’. Try to be
can together form an inner group to discuss their original sensitive to this possibility.)
groups’ findings, watched from the outer circle by all the other
members of the seminar. 3.4 Writing exercises7
Interrupting the oral mode of a seminar and asking the students
3.2.3 Supervising subgroup discussion to do some writing can work wonders, providing a change in
Many lecturers like to go round the subgroups during their pace and refocusing minds on the details of a topic. It can also
discussion to ask them about how they are getting on and to be a powerful way to help students get to grips with essay-
find out what ideas they are producing. One advantage of doing writing skills.
this is that it will give you some points to refer to when or if the
groups recombine for a plenary discussion (see next section, • ‘Free writing’. Call ‘time out’ from the seminar and ask
below). It will also be an excellent opportunity to talk directly everyone to spend five minutes writing down their reflections
to quiet members of the group who may be too shy to speak on what has just been discussed. You could allow ‘free
during a plenary discussion. You could be tactical about it and diagramming’ as an alternative: everyone draws a map/
target groups you think might be having particular problems – diagram of the discussion so far.
you don’t have to visit all the groups. • Give students an extract from the text under discussion and
How long should you allow for subgroup activity? Anything ask them to rewrite it in some way (from the point of view of
over twenty minutes or so will need to involve a task of some somebody else, say, or in non-figurative language).
complexity. Generally you will be able to tell when the groups • If the group agrees on a particular point about a topic or text,
are ready to move on: the hubbub will have died down, most ask everyone to write down their own version of this point/
people will have stopped writing. You may have to change argument. Everyone then compares what they have written
the structure of your session if the group-work ends up taking down with a partner.
much less or much more time than you originally planned for –
• Students write down lists of reasons/examples to support
sometimes the session is all the better for the adjustment.
a particular argument. Each then passes her or his list to a
3.3 Returning to the whole group neighbour who makes the list into a passage of continuous text.
Often – not necessarily always – you will want to return to plenary • Everybody reads a passage from a text and writes an
discussion after a small group activity. This can be a tricky moment immediate one-paragraph personal response to it, using the
to negotiate: the shift to the glare of the full group’s attention can word ‘I’ as freely as possible. Each student then swaps with a
make students who have been merrily chattering away in their partner and tries to elaborate her or his partner’s paragraph
subgroups suddenly clam up. How can you best deal with this? into the sort of point about the text they might want to make
• Perhaps the most common approach is to go round all the in an essay.
groups asking each to report on its findings. The pressure • Give the students a short extract from a piece of critical writing
is then on you to make links between the various different and ask them to write a one-paragraph response to it.
reports back. You will be helped in this process if you listened
in on some of the subgroups’ discussions, as you will have • Ask students to write down three questions they have arising
more student-made opinions to draw on. You could ask the out of the seminar discussion so far.
7 For more on this method of teaching, see the excellent ‘Thinking Writing’: A guide to writing-intensive teaching and learning’ website
produced by Sally Mitchell at Queen Mary, University of London: www.thinkingwriting.qmul.ac.uk/
11
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
• Students are given a passage of a literary work to read and One place to start is James Stredder’s The North Face of
asked to write their personal response to it. They are then Shakespeare: Activities for Teaching the Plays (Cambridge
given an extract from a piece of critical writing on the same University Press, 2009), an invaluable anthology of drama
passage. In pairs, they compare what they have written with workshop techniques applicable to many topics other than
what the critic has written. Shakespeare.
• Role play. One option is for one student to take the part of an
SEMINAR TIP
author, critic or theorist, and, in character, answer questions
Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney) from other students. There are many other possibilities: for
Helen Smith, University of York
example, students could also role-play the original readers/
audience of a literary text, using materials researched and
‘Students can be asked to research Old English formal
provided either by you or by them.9 Or they could stage an
conventions and their use in Beowulf prior to the seminar.
impossible confrontation between, say, a modern critic and a
Alternatively, you can briefly run through certain key
nineteenth-century author.
features: alliteration, four stresses, kennings, etc. They
should then be asked to see which of these features
SEMINAR TIP
Heaney (or another translator) has preserved. Again, it may
be helpful to provide examples from a handful of other Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
Eoin Flannery, Oxford Brookes University
translators as points of comparison. Students can then be
asked to collaborate in small groups to produce their own
‘In groups of three, students are required to prepare, over
mini-epic, whether based on an episode from Beowulf or on
a number of weeks, questions and answers for an imaginary
their student experiences, preserving or using as many OE
interview with Jean Rhys. One student plays the author,
formal features as they can, and being prepared to describe
whilst the other two are interviewers. The interviews are
and justify their choices to the seminar group.’
performed in class, perhaps for peer review, encouraging
Adapted from an entry in ’T3 – Teaching Topics and Texts’, interaction with the larger group. Following the interviews,
English Subject Centre website (http://bit.ly/b10Jnz). students are required to write up the script of their interview
and to submit a preparatory log.’
3.5 Performative techniques
Adapted from an entry in ’T3 – Teaching Topics and Texts’,
Drama workshop techniques are obviously useful for teaching English Subject Centre website (http://bit.ly/b10Jnz).
plays: there are many ways of getting to grips with dramatic
texts by using with students the sort of techniques actors use • Debates are better established than most other drama
in rehearsal (marking punctuation in a speech by particular techniques as a method of teaching English and can be a good
movements, physicalising the status relationships in a scene, way of opening up the complexities of a topic to students (one
shortening scenes, reallocating lines, transforming text into option is to ask students to argue for an opinion contrary to
mime, and so on). But it is equally possible to use these methods the one they hold). For debates to work, students will have to
when teaching other texts or topics, recasting literary or have been given time, in teams, to prepare their arguments
conceptual elements in dramatic terms. Groups can, for example, in detail, perhaps before the seminar.10 They can be helped
be asked to form visual tableaux or improvise short scenes by specially-produced handouts. You could ask other seminar
summing up particular aspects of a topic or text. Many topics in groups or members of staff to sit in on the session as a jury.
English Language could be taught using exercises in gesture and
movement to explain and analyse specific linguistic features.8
SEMINAR TIP
Drama workshop techniques are commonly used at pre-HE Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
stages of education to clarify students’ knowledge of the events Britta Martens, University of the West of England
of a play or teach them very basic facts about a topic. To fulfil
the more analytical objectives of an HE seminar, it will often be ‘Give students a few quotations from critics that take
necessary to supplement such exercises with more conventional different views on whether Fanny is a positive heroine or an
discussion/reflection. anti-hero. Let students take sides in small- or whole-group
discussions and argue their case with reference to the text.’
If you plan to make extensive and elaborate use of drama
workshop techniques, make sure that you are aware of any Adapted from an entry in ’T3 – Teaching Topics and Texts’,
health and safety ramifications in your institution. You will also, English Subject Centre website (http://bit.ly/b10Jnz).
8 The CAPITAL centre at the University of Warwick, now part of the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL), worked extensively in
this area: see their website at www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/capital/.
9 For a detailed example, applied to the Lyrical Ballads, see Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster’s webpage on the Subject Centre site, ‘Activity
Ideas: Contemporary Readers – A Contextual Role Play’, at http://bit.ly/9rQvWK
10 For a detailed example of how a debate might work in practice, see Stella Bolaki’s English Subject Centre case study ‘Turning the Classroom
into a Debate Hall: Arguing about Racism in Heart of Darkness’, at http://bit.ly/cm4UQX
12
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
• In groups, students make pictures/maps or diagrams arranging • In a variant of the previous activity, ask students instead to
elements of a topic or text in a visually striking form. There are arrange visual representations of concepts relevant to the
many ways of organising this: for example, one student in a seminar topic (pictures cut out of magazines, for example).
pair might begin a drawing that must then be completed by • In groups, students design a board game (or a similarly
the other student in the pair. 12 complex artefact) based on the text or topic under discussion.
11 For much more detail on the use of continuum lines, see Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster’s English Subject Centre webpage ‘Activity
Ideas: A continuum line – Exploring and Comparing Texts, Genres, Interpretations’, at http://bit.ly/bWhTv0
12 For more on pedagogical uses of drawing, see Pauline Ridley and Angela Rogers, Drawing to Learn: Arts and Humanities (University of
Brighton, 2010): http://bit.ly/aN0tl8M
13
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
13 For a detailed case study including sample guidance material and student evaluation forms, see Arran Stibbe’s English Subject Centre case
study ‘Emergence: A Person-Centred Approach to Oral Rhetoric’, at http://bit.ly/dpzv51
14
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
4. The space between: what students • Asking students to keep a reading log in which to record their
immediate reactions to their reading, either in a structured
can do before and after small group way related to the themes of the course or as completely
sessions free ‘response statements’. The log could form part of the
assessment, or be entirely optional. It could also take a number
4.1 Complementing the session of different forms: a physical logbook, a ‘Word’ file, a blog, a
The time spent between the sessions is just as important as video or audio diary.
the contact time itself – in fact, arguably, it is more important, • Setting small-scale assessment tasks linked to out-of-class
given the stress English places on independent student work. So reading.
giving students a sense of how their time should be spent is a
must, particularly for first year students. Simply asking students • Asking students to post reports on their reading on an online
to read the set text and think about it will not always be enough discussion forum (cf. 4.1.3, below). Again, this could be
to generate a good group discussion. More specific instructions structured or free, and perhaps form part of the assessment.
will generally be a good idea, and are worth planning with as Students could be asked to post after reading a certain
much care as the group activities themselves. number of lines or chapters, and/or post answers to specific
questions, on particular topics, or in the personae of characters
4.1.1 Detailed instructions about work between sessions from the book.16
• Make sure you have explained the requirements of the module
as clearly as possible – making clear in reading-lists (sent out • On a first-year course, holding a special note-taking seminar,
early) and/or other course material which books (or parts in which all participants discuss different ways of reading and
of books) are compulsory reading and which are optional. annotating a particular passage.
Providing long lists of books and articles without any indication • Encouraging or requiring students to form out-of-class support
of how and why students might engage with the material will groups linked to particular classes (see 3.8, above).
cause unnecessary anxiety.
• Working in class with one of the many study skills books
• Ask students to read the set text with particular topics in mind: on the market, and/or with online resources designed to
you could ask everyone, say, to come to the seminar with two support note-taking. One possibility might be to discuss
questions they would like to ask about the reading. recommendations made by these sites in a special session –
• Students can be asked to write short pastiches of the set text or even try out different methods with students and critique
in advance of the seminar. The experience of creative rewriting the results, linking the activity to specific themes/structures in
will provide valuable material for discussion.14 set texts –developing study skills and curriculum knowledge
simultaneously.
• Many other types of short writing exercise (see section
3.4, above) can be set as inter-seminar tasks: short pieces • Help students with their time-management skills: encourage
of creative writing related in some way to the set text; them to break down large tasks into smaller elements, and to
paraphrases of a topic or book in a set number of words; book take advantage of calendar software.
or article reviews. These pieces of writing could be gathered 4.1.3 VLE-based activities between sessions
together in a portfolio to form part of the module assessment.
STUDENT OPINION
• Work with electronic text archives such as Early English Books
Online discussion between seminars
Online (EEBO – cf. above, 3.2.1).
14 Guidance in using this approach can be found in two major works on English pedagogy: Rob Pope’s Textual Intervention: Critical and
Creative Strategies for Literary Studies (Routledge, 1994) and Active Reading: Transformative Writing in Literary Studies (Continuum, 2007)
by Ben Knights and Chris Thurgar-Dawson.
15 See, for example, the sample quizzes posted by Matthew Sauvage on the HumBox website: eg. http://humbox.ac.uk/375/
16 For a worked example of what can be done, see Rosie Miles’s English Subject Centre case study, ‘Text.Play.Space : Creative Online Activities
in English Studies’, at http://bit.ly/b1kKHR
15
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
The use of VLE (virtual learning environment) discussion boards 4.2 Links with assessment tasks
between sessions can be a powerful adjunct to work in the Exam-based courses often timetable some seminars specifically
classroom. More details are available in the Subject Centre’s as revision sessions. There are ways of addressing coursework
recent Good Practice Guide to online discussion.17 There are assessment directly in your seminars too, which will help
many benefits: it can help build a bridge between academic students both before and after the hand-in date(s).
work and the rest of a student’s life, students can explore topics
discussed in a seminar in more detail and quieter students might • Run a session discussing the course handbook’s guidelines
find it easier to make contributions. Not least, you will gain an on essay-writing and/or the official assessment criteria (for a
enhanced insight into your students’ enthusiasms and ideas. sample session structure, see the box below). The discussion
could be complemented by sample essays (either genuine
• You can set up online discussions to run as preparation for a student essays from past years, used with permission, or
seminar: students can compare notes on the set reading, work specially-composed models). The discussion need not be
together on particular questions and collaborate on material abstract – it could be integrated into discussion of a particular
that can then be brought into the session. Any pre-seminar author/text.
preparation task (reading logs, small-scale writing tasks,
etcetera) can be channelled through the discussion board.
SEMINAR TIP
• Alternatively, online discussions can be timetabled to follow An assessment criteria workshop
Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange (ASKe),
sessions, enabling students to open out the topics discussed
Oxford Brookes University
in class. Or, of course, they can form a bridge between two
sessions, focusing on a topic shared between the subject-
1. Working in small groups, students discuss the individual
matter of two successive seminars.
marking of sample assignments and agree a group grade
• The discussion could focus on a topic related to but distinct and rationale.
from those covered in class: students could be asked, for
example, to find contemporary examples of a topic discussed 2. Small groups feed back to the plenary group their agreed
in relation to a pre-modern text. grades and rationale.
• Online discussions can take place either in the whole seminar
group or within subgroups (‘workgroups’), much like class- 3. Tutor compares small-group rationales with the
based discussion. assessment criteria, and explains each criterion.
17 Rosie Miles et al., Online Discussion in English Studies: A Good Practice Guide to Design, Moderation and Assessment (Egham: English
Subject Centre report 21, 2010): www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/reports.php
16
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
• Allow students to submit essay-plans and/or drafts. There are Making clear the level of your availability early on will stop you
many different ways of doing this: on a one-to-one basis; as from being constantly emailed and texted day and night.
in-class peer assessment; in lieu of detailed feedback on the
• Be clear about what the purpose of the session is. At the
final essay; as part of a portfolio. One possibility is to redesign
beginning of the module try to make sure that students are
the assessment structure of a module to include a two-stage
clear about its aims, and, when you are explaining things, be
assessment, the first part involving notes/preparatory
careful to give them sufficient time to ask questions. Talk
materials such as an essay plan and a second part consisting
them through the module guide and the assessment régime.
of a formal essay.
Find out the answers to questions promptly if you don’t know
• Run a peer feedback session in one of your seminar slots. You them immediately.
could ask each student’s assessment to be reviewed jointly by
• Begin the seminar with a short summary of what you are
two peers.18
planning to do in it (and also talk, if it feels necessary, about
• Encourage students who might benefit (not just dyslexic the relationship of the session to earlier seminars in the course
students) to use graphical organising (or ‘mind-mapping’) and/or about upcoming assessments and later sessions). You
software to think through their ideas and plan their work do not need to be so detailed as to remove any elements of
visually. Programmes such as ‘Inspiration’ and ‘Mind Manager’ surprise: a bare minimum of information will be sufficient to
allow students to view information both as visual images and prevent students from feeling uncertain and disorientated.
in written form, enabling ‘Word’ documents to be reformatted
• Consider starting the module by drawing up ground rules with
diagrammatically. The production of these diagrams can be
the students (see 2.4 above).
discussed within the seminar in a peer feedback session.
• Summarise key points at the end of the seminar, making
• After you have marked an assessment, devote some time in
sure that you give sufficient weight to the students’ own
the next seminar to an overall discussion of the students’ work,
contributions to the session. You could write up some of these
highlighting both good and problematic elements in order
key points on the board.
to help students develop and improve their work.
• Leave enough time at the end to deal with any questions,
• VLE-based discussion (as described in the section above) can
loose ends, practical matters, etcetera and to look forward
form part of the assessment of a module: see section 3 of
briefly to the next session: you can set work for it and/or
the English Subject Centre’s Good practice Guide to online
explain how it will build on what you have just discussed.
discussion.17
5.2 Enabling and guiding whole group (plenary)
5. Keeping it going discussions
5.2.1 Asking the right questions.
Managing a seminar group has been compared to the process of
When asking questions in a seminar, or making points that you
teaching a small child to ride a bicycle: it is a tricky combination
are hoping students will build on in further discussion, try to
of knowing when to offer support and guidance, and when to
make sure that you are pitching the question at an appropriate
remove your steadying hand.
level of detail. Very general, open questions are, paradoxically,
Dangers and temptations are many and various, and you will particularly hard for students to answer
develop your own methods of pre-empting and dealing with the
In general, it is better to start with small tasks, specific questions
most common. Some of the tips and ideas below might help.
or specific quotations rather than some gambit such as ‘what
5.1 Starting things off, drawing things to a close do you think?’. (Though the latter could work well if you have a
• Try to learn the students’ names. This will always help the small and cohesive group with a clear sense of previous weeks’
dynamic of your seminar, particularly with first-year students, discussions as a context for the question.)
many of whom will have had a much closer relationship with
their A Level teachers than they will with their lecturers. At the STUDENT OPINION
beginning of a module, if there are not too many, ask everyone Question etiquette
to introduce themselves individually. (Make sure you introduce
yourself as well.) You could ask group members to wear
‘Verbal questions can cause problems if they aren’t specific
badges, and/or identify themselves when first contributing to
and don’t have an obvious purpose (ie. if they’re woolly or
the discussion. Finding out about what other courses students
rambling), or if they are asked aggressively’
are doing, and what their interests are will be useful later on in
the module, as you find yourself wanting to draw on individual
Source: Student quoted in Kevin Brunton and Jonathan Gibson,
students’ expertise.
Staying the Course: The Experiences of Disabled Students of English
• Establish clear lines of communication. Tell the students in the and Creative Writing (Egham: English Subject Centre Report 18, 2009):
http://bit.ly/apT4Un
first session when you will be available for consultation, email
etcetera and take contact details from the students.
18 For detailed guidance on running peer feedback sessions, see the resources available on the Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange
(ASKe) website at Oxford Brookes University: www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/resources.html
17
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
19 For more on this idea see Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill, Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for University
Teachers (Open University, 1999).
18
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
• In a free-flowing seminar, in which frequent student a rule, for example, stipulating that after speaking any student has
contributions change the course of the discussion, record the to wait for three other students to speak before contributing again.
main ideas as they develop on a board (or ask a student to).
5.2.8 Quiet students
Revisit the board at the end of the seminar.
Quiet students may not be having problems. They may, however,
be slow at processing information. Give opportunity for written
STUDENT OPINION
contributions to the session, either written beforehand (for
Concentration example, free writing (see 3.4, above) or in the session itself.
19
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
6. What do you notice about the typical patterns of • Asking everyone to write down the one thing in the module
interaction in this group? For example, is it dominated by they would change if they were able to.
a few individuals? Is there a sub-group of students who • Asking how an exercise might be changed to make it more
appear to be at sea or have withdrawn from the action? interesting or useful.
7. Do you notice anything particular about the non-verbal • Asking if an accumulation of exercises or discussion has helped
interactions? to progress understanding.
8. Who initiates changes of direction? Are these always • Student blogs and diaries (perhaps part of the assessment of
initiated by the lecturer / tutor? the module).
9. What did you notice about the pace of the seminar? What • In-seminar polls using an electronic voting system.20
were the most energetic moments? And what its most
• Asking students at the end of a module to write an imaginary
listless?
letter to a future student on the module describing their
10. If the lecturer / tutor talks a lot, why do you think this is? experiences.
11. How does a topic emerge? Who is responsible for its You can ask questions in the seminar itself, and/or on the module
emergence? Does the tutor plan ahead with the group? pages on the VLE.
12. How does the class scaffold or prepare the way for The formal end-of-module student satisfaction survey can be a
individual study? useful formative tool if it asks the right questions and is analysed
formatively rather than summatively. Telling students what
13. How did the tutor handle difficulties, for example,
has been changed as a result of their feedback, meanwhile,
interruption by latecomers? Irrelevant observations?
encourages them to provide good quality feedback in the future.
Students without copies of the text, or who hadn’t done
the preparation? Reluctance to carry out a specified You might find it useful to supplement the official end-of-module
task? Silent students? Over-bearing or dominant survey with mid-module questionnaires of your own. (Some
students? lecturers give students a very skeletal questionnaire to fill in
after every session in a module.21) Gathering student opinion
14. How effective were the pre or post seminar activities on
about matters such as problems with the room, the speed of the
the VLE in terms of participation, interaction etc?
course and so on before the module finishes is one of the best
Source: Ben Knights, English Subject Centre way of improving students’ experience.
20 For example ‘Turning Point’. See ‘Enabling Interactive Learning in the Classroom with Turning Point’, an English Subject Centre case study
by Nuria Yáñez-Bohza at http://bit.ly/9ESUXq
21 For an example, see the detailed description of a regular ‘critical incident questionnaire’ in Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill,
Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for University Teachers (Open University, 1999).
20
Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
Rosie Miles et al., Online Discussion in English Studies: Using Discussion in the Classroom (www.schreyerinstitute.psu.
A Good Practice Guide to Design, Moderation and Assessment edu/tools/Discuss/). A page of resources and weblinks from
(Egham: English Subject Centre report 21, 2010): www.english. the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State
heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/reports.php University. This is a good starting-point from which to explore
the wealth of online US-based resources on the topic
Information about providing accessible copies of primary of ‘discussion teaching’.
texts to students with visual impairments and other conditions
that make the use of hard-copy books difficult can be found Books
in Kevin Brunton and Jonathan Gibson, Staying the Course: For further suggestions, see the ‘Teaching Library’ page of the
The Experiences of Disabled Students of English and Creative English Subject Centre website, at http://bit.ly/9PePet
Writing (Egham: English Subject Centre Report 18, 2009):
http://bit.ly/apT4Un, section 4.4.2 (B). Much very useful curriculum-specific material is available in
the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series
T3 – Teaching Topics and Texts (http://bit.ly/b10Jnz). An online
(www.mla.org/store/CID39).
database of concise seminar-teaching ideas, classified by topic,
text and pedagogic approach. Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill, Discussion as a Way
of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for University Teachers
Case Studies (http://bit.ly/aPW7db) More detailed descriptions
(Open University, 1999). Stimulating, thoughtful and practical.
of innovative teaching, contributed, like T3 entries, by lecturers.
Sally Brown and Phil Race, 500 Tips on Group Learning
Seminar Teaching – Activity Ideas (http://bit.ly/a2xKor). A rich
(Routledge, 2000). Focuses more on group dynamics than
collection of detailed teaching ideas contributed by Barbara
on session design.
Bleiman and Lucy Webster of the English and Media Centre.
Ellie Chambers and Marshall Gregory, Teaching and Learning
The Subject Centre website also includes material on the
English Literature (Sage, 2006). Includes detailed material on
teaching of particular curriculum areas (such as, for example,
seminar teaching.
Victorian literature: see http://bit.ly/cGLBC8) and on other
teaching topics, such as assessment (http://bit.ly/9DliwO). Kate Exley and Reg Dennick, Small Group Teaching: Tutorials,
Seminars, and Beyond (Routledge, 2004).
The English Subject Centre commissions and edits a series
of books on the teaching of specific areas of the curriculum, Sue Habeshaw, Trevor Habeshaw and Graham Gibbs,
Teaching the New English, published by Palgrave. 53 Interesting Things to Do in your Seminars and Tutorials
For details see http://bit.ly/cAsN9s (Bristol: TES, 1992). Does what it says on the tin.
Other websites David Jaques and Gilly Salmon, Learning in Groups: A Handbook
for Face-to-Face and Online Environments (London: Routledge,
Drawing to Learn: Arts and Humanities (http://bit.ly/aNOHBM).
2007). A stimulating grab-bag both of theories about group
A downloadable pamphlet by Pauline Ridley and Angela Rogers
work and of ideas for managing groups.
uses for drawing in HE humanities teaching. Part of a broader
project on ‘visual learning’ based at the University of Brighton: Ben Knights and Chris Thurgar-Dawson, Active Reading:
www.brighton.ac.uk/visuallearning/ Transformative Writing in Literary Studies (Continuum, 2007).
Like Pope’s book (below), a key text on the use of creative
HumBox (www.humbox.ac.uk/). Humanities teaching resources
writing in literature teaching.
(handouts, online quizzes, etc.) submitted by lecturers and freely
available for reuse. Rob Pope, Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies
for Literature Students. (Routledge, 1994). Combines theory and
Openlearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/). Free access to Open
teaching ideas with references to relevant pedagogic research
University course materials.
Elaine Showalter, Teaching Literature (Blackwell, 2002).
Teaching as a Ph.D. student (http://issuu.com/
Experiences of many lecturers collated by a major critic.
historysubjectcentre/docs/teachingasaphd). Although written
primarily for History PhD. students, this pamphlet by Kate James Stredder, The North Face of Shakespeare: Activities for
Bradley, available both online and in hard copy from the HEA Teaching the Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
History Subject Centre, is full of friendly and practical advice Hundreds of ideas for drama workshop teaching, applicable
useful for any beginning Humanities lecturer or tutor. far beyond Shakespeare.
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Small Group Teaching in English Literature: A Good Practice Guide
22
The English Subject Centre supports all
aspects of the teaching and learning of
English Literature, English Language
and Creative Writing in higher education
in the UK. It is a Subject Centre of
the Higher Education Academy.