The Guide to Teaching
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Creating the Classroom Atmosphere
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 12:22:45 -0700
From: Steffen Schmidt <sws@iastate.edu>
I set up a discussion group on my internet-web site. I post questions relevant to this sort of issue and ask students to respond. I then ask students to comment on the responses and the whole class reads this debate. I then bring to class (or access live and project on a large screen from the site) the comments especially some of the more controversial or provocative remarks (and there were some the last time that were VERY hot on the issue of immigration, sex in the military, and on diversity/affirmative action).
We then use this mother lode of student generated debate to try and refocuse their thinking into conflict resolution, more substantive policy strategies for making a racially and otherwise diverse society work, and of course, discuss the real emotional thread that runs through the dialog (or lack thereof) between Latinos, African Americans, whites, Asian-Americans, American Indians/native Americans, Gay's and Lesbians, people with disabilities and other diverse groups (including by the way deeply religious people of whom in Iowa and the bible Belt we have many).
The impersonal "discuss" asynchronous web site allows people to express themselves much more freely than I could EVER get them to in the classroom. It has been a huge sucess on many scores but especially in areas related to diversity.
If you want to look at some of this go to:
http://classnet.cc.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/main-menu
Choose the class U. St 235
Choose the name "Guest, Guest" and enter the password "ISU"
Click on "Discuss" and you will find a whole bunch of topics and
responses to browse. Some are pretty bad! But, it was a wonderful way to get students to
open up and it then offered a "loop" to bring all of this discussion back
into the classroom.
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