Many students are reluctant to take part in discussions, especially when they’ve just started at university, or on a new course. Students may feel nervous about whether their opinions have values, or a group of students might have one person who takes over and dominates the conversation. To enable students to feel more confident about talking through ideas with their peers, you might ask them to form into pairs to answer a question. However, if students are solely working in pairs, it might mean that they’re not exposed to the full range of experiences and knowledge of the rest of the class. Snowballing is one technique which enables students to initially think about their own response to a question, then converse with just one other person, and then join together with other pairs to enable a wider discussion.

This is how you might run a snowballing activity:

1. Give learners a task to do individually for one minute. For example:
   “What you think are the three most important points from the last section of the presentation?”, or
   “What two suggestions you would come up with to solve the problem presented?”, or
   “Suggest three responses you could make in the scenario I have just outlined.”
2. Individuals form pairs and have two minutes to hear what each other has come up with and agree on their joint response.
3. Pairs form groups of four and have three minutes to agree on their joint response.
4. Fours form groups of eight and have three minutes to agree and appoint one person ready to announce what they have agreed as a group.
5. At this point you may want to hear briefly from each group of eight and comment on or record their suggestions. In a sense, what you do at this point is less important than the previous stages because everyone in the group, however large the group is, has had to talk and be actively involved in the task.

Have you tried snowballing? How did it work for you? Have you got any other ideas for engaging students in discussions?

In part of Establishing a Teaching Persona (ETP), Ruth, one of the Lecturers in Educational Development at City, who is the school liason for Cass, discussed small group teaching with some of the participants. Ruth led a reflection about teaching in small groups, thinking about the advantages and disadvantages, and the ways in which students might feel included or excluded. She explored a teaching incident where the teacher, frustrated at the types of answers she was getting to her questions, made a disparaging remark about a student. This demonstrates the ways in which acting towards a student without compassion (something we discussed during ETP) can be harmful to the relationship with a whole class.

Ruth also shared some ideas for activities which can be used with small groups to encourage active learning: from the fishbowl to the jigsaw classroom. Take a look to see which might be useful for your classes.

Frequently, you’ll be asked to teach first year undergraduates in a seminar setting. Even with these students, who are just beginning their university journey, it might be easy to assume that freshers week means that the students all know each other. Actually, this is rarely the case, and often students will begin a term not knowing anyone in their seminar group, or clinging to the one or two people that they’ve already met as they’re living near each other in halls, or have something obvious in common like a shared nationality or home town (when I started my first degree, the other two Welsh students in the college excitedly sought me out as there was a list of where everyone had done their A-levels and they’d noticed that I’d done mine in Cardiff).

So, how do you get students to socialise with everyone in the class rather than stick to the people they already know? I can’t be the only person who finds the pressure of  having to come up with something ‘interesting’ about themselves, or a funny or embarrassing anecdote, to share with the class really stressful and awkward. One useful method is speed-meets – kind of like speed dating, where students have short conversations with each person in their class. It’s not just beneficial for first years – if the programme you teach on has elective modules, it can be great to do something like this at the start as it may be that students on the module you’re teaching on haven’t met before, especially if there’s a big overall cohort.

Dr Theo Gilbert from the University of Hertfordshire has used found this is really effective, and explains why that is and how to run a speed-meet in a short video:

One of the first things I did when I started my PhD was to go to the library, and take a look at other PhD theses which had been written by students who’d had the same supervisor as me. This was because I felt like I had no real idea what I was doing, or what a PhD looked like – no-one else in my family had done one, and I’d only applied for mine as I’d enjoyed my BA and MA and was naively hoping it would be more of the same. Reading other theses was reassuring – it let me know what I was supposed to produce, and made it seem much more tangible.

I think this is the same for all students, and so I’m a big fan of providing students with examples of other students’ assessments so that they can understand what they’re doing. As someone who’s likely to have studied for many years in your subject by now, it may seem obvious to you what needs to be done if students are required to write a 2,000 word report, or a 1,600 word essay, or answer 3 exam questions in 2 hours. But often it can be completely unknown to students. The module leader may have provided guidance in the handbook, but if you have students in a small group session, it can be invaluable to spend some time looking at examples, and discussing with students how well they might meet the criteria and why this is – looking at features of the writing as well as the content.

Obviously, if this is the first time you’ve taught on this module, or if you’re not involved with marking summative assessments, you won’t have any examples of previous students’ work. Ask your module leader – many will happily share these with you to use in class (don’t forget that you or the module leader will have to get permission from the students to use the essays – if you explain why you want to use them, I’ve found that students are usually quite flattered to be asked). I have, however, encountered lecturers who don’t like giving out examples. If this is this case, possible solutions are:

• agreeing that the students will work with printed copies of the assessment example during a session, but they won’t be able to take these with them afterwards
• agreeing that you’ll work with sample paragraphs from the assessment, rather than a whole essay or report
• using an example from a slightly different question that’s been used previously
• using your own work, if you previously did a similar assessment as a student
• using the University of Plymouth’s online bank of student writing examples, WRASSE, which is searchable by subject and level, to find examples

Once you have some relevant examples, you can set up an activity which examines the example in the context of the assessment criteria. I would usually divide students into groups of 3 or 4 for this. If you are able to, it can work better to give students an opportunity to read the example before the session. Otherwise, be aware that there will be differences between students of how fast they are able to read through the material, so it can be useful to split the example into essential reading (perhaps saying something like ‘you need to look at the first and third paragraphs’) and extra reading that can be done by the faster readers (the rest of the example).

Then, ask students to work through answers to questions about the examples. I usually include some more basic factual ones, as well as ones that are more difficult and really require students to think about the structure, style and content of the writing in each example. I prefer to use two or three different examples, to show students that a range of approaches can be effective and there’s not one correct way to approach the task. After the groups have had a chance to answer the questions, I’d bring them together as a whole class to discuss their answers.

Here’s some examples of questions that I used with students who were looking at examples of an assessment which involved students writing a 2,000 word report on a brand communication campaign – these could be easily adapted to other kinds of written assessment, and you might want to use more or fewer depending on how much time you have for this activity (it’s something that can be beneficial to devote a whole seminar to). They had to include information on e-marketing (part A), present the digital consumer persona for their brand (part B) and make recommendations for a brand engagement strategy using social media (part C). You can find the whole handout that I made at Learnhigher – this is a really useful website with lots of resources for developing student learning in Higher Education.

• How many items in the reference list?
• What kinds of items are referenced? Are these all academic and appropriate?
• What sections does it have?
• At what points does the writer explain the structure of the report/ section? Is the explanation clear? Does it make you want to read on?
• How many paragraphs does it have?
• How many times does it use linking words to show similarity (e.g. similarly, moreover, additionally) and are these varied?
• How many times does it use linking words to show difference (e.g. however, yet, nevertheless, in contrast, unlike, despite) and are these varied?
• How many times does it use words to show conclusions (e.g. therefore, consequently, ultimately, thus) and are these varied?
• Is a personal voice used? If so, give examples and explain the effect.
• Does the writer sound authoritative/ as if they know what they are talking about? If so, give examples.
• Does the writer sound objective? Do they present a balanced view of different ideas/ opinions on each subject? If so, give examples.
• How concise is the writing? Does the writer repeat themselves? If so, give examples.
• Has the writer shown a connection between theory and their brand/ consumer persona? If so, give examples of how this has been worded.
• Has the writer shown a link between parts B and C of the assessment? If so, give examples of how this has been worded.
• How clear is the writing? Are there any parts where the writer hasn’t explained themselves properly? If so, give examples.
• Does the writer explain the significance of the information? If so, give examples, and show what kinds of language they use.
• Is the writing critical? Explain the reasons for your answer.
• Is the writing academic? Explain the reasons for your answer.
• Do you find the writing interesting? Explain the reasons for your answer.
• Can you see any issues with spelling or grammar? Do these get in the way of your understanding? If so, give examples.

Is this something that you think might work for your teaching? Do you have any other useful questions to add to this list?