There has been some very good discussion thus far, and some techniques
that have worked well for me have already been posted. A couple of things
that might also be worth considering:
1. Have you assessed -- and I mean looked at a watch or timer -- how long
you are waiting for the student's to answer? One of the most common
mistakes new teachers make, and I am assuming you are fairly new because
you are teaching as a graduate student, is to jump to a probe or answer
too fast. What seems like a long period of time when you are standing in
front of the room is very short for individuals that are trying to
formulate a coherent answer to a complex question. And students very
rapidly get trained to expect you to provide an answer, which only
exacerbates the problem over time.
A very good technique for ensuring your students have adequate time to
prepare an answer to a question is a variation on the nominal group
technique. First, make sure you have a clear question. Second, tell the
students you are going to give them a fixed amount of time to write down
3-5 ideas, alternatives, or whatever is appropriate and that you will not
collect this. Then write the question on the board and time yourself. 3-5
minutes is usually adequate for everyone to formulate their ideas. Now,
what do you have? A good question (this is your responsibility) and a
room full of people that have thought about it and recorded their
thoughts. All you have to do is start asking individuals what is the
first item on their list, if anyone has the same thing, if anyone has
anything different, etc. You have a guided discussion, and it is fair
because everyone has something written that they can either (1) read, (2)
report is the same as something already recorded. One note, you need to
have a good board plan worked out in advance to organize responses so you
can pull together everything once you have elicited lots of discussion.
This technique is genuinely failproof, and the discussions can get very
lively, even with a shy group, because the students own the ideas.
2. Since I was a "shy" student a few decades ago, I have never been
comfortable with participation by force. But I know the ability to
verbalize ideas and participate in discourse is critical to management
success, even for those who are content to spend their lives working with
accounting spreadsheets, so I have tried to encourage and reward
participation. But I have tried to do this by creating participation
options that allow students to be engaged on their own terms. Some of the
things I have done that worked well are:
*current events. I use this in teaching strategy. I start every class by
asking for current events from members of the class and having a
discussion about the relevance for firms, why a current event is
important, and how firms might respond. Because it all starts with a very
factual question, it is very easy for students to bring something in.
Since you have a very small class (at least 55 sounds small to me ;)), you
can easily track individuals and forewarn them that you want them to
bring in a news article. It is easy for them to take something out of the
newspaper and read it in class, and I do not push it any further. It is a
start on participation, and I can build from there. Also, it is amazingly
easy to find something to link to class out of 3 current events.
*alternative forms of participation. This is a technique that has worked
well for me in the U.S. and Asia. I have participation as a course
requirement, but I give the students many options for fulfilling this
requirement, including participating in class discussions. But I also
include options such as the submission of written comments and
observations, reports applying material to the student's own experiences,
submission of magazine/WSJ/newpaper articles along with a short write-up
and analysis of the relationship with course materials, and hypothetical
exam questions with an answer key (I bounce these back if they need
additional work). The amount of optional work students will put forth for
10% of their grade is stunning, and I have also found that students
generally will do some of everything. In addition, the student that has
spent time relating a magazine article to the course material is very
often primed to participate in class at some point.
3. I think the comment about leadership is a good one, but I would take
it a step further. There is a culture of sorts in every classroom, and it
is a culture of our making. If we think about what we want to accomplish
and who the students are, we can probably build a culture of
participation. For instance, I have taught in Asia and faced the
reluctance to participate and share experiences. The way I worked with it
was to have a participation requirement and to give the class 10 minutes
at the end of every class (180 minute sections) to write out an experience
or comment that related to the class material, and I allowed this to
count for credit. I "graded" these immediately, then I started the next
class by sharing 2-3 of the best comments/observations with the entire
class, identifying the author and encouraging others to share similar
observations. I found classroom discussion increased dramatically within
2 weeks, led by the people that had a great deal to offer and pulling
everyone along. By legitimating the students experiences and specifically
identifying the learning possible by sharing of experiences, I made
discussion valued. And many more amazing things happened. The number and
length of written contributions took off (I commented on every one and
emphasized the positive contributions; this was a lot of work, but I
could process 120 papers in about 4 hours). And students started inviting
me to their plants and factories to see their workplaces and share their
problems. These were students that had been taught by American faculty
for a full year, all of whom attested they were "shy." I think not. They
just needed the latitude to participate on their own terms.
============================================= Jack [
Brittain@UTDallas.edu]
On Thu, 13 Feb 1997
V55788AV@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU wrote:
> I'm interested in anyone's suggestions for dealing with a
> very shy class of OB students. It's like pulling teeth to get
> any participation in this class. I've tried asking easy questions
> or making unpopular arguments about things to see if it'll get
> them going, but it doesn't seem to be effective. It is a large
> class (55 students). They even seem to be inhibited when they are
> speaking to me from their groups. As a grad student, I'm assuming it
> is partially something I'm doing, but I'd appreciate any secrets you
> can share!
>
> Karen Thompson
> SUNY Buffalo
>