English Instructor: Deborah Green
p 3 seminar packet
BOOK SEMINARS
Introduction By becoming aware of possible kinds of participation in seminar, you can deepen your understanding of your own seminar interaction and what you might do to make seminars more productive, lively, and interesting for all. The intent is to help you develop interactional styles that further learning. Optimal learning takes place through engaging with the text and with others.
For a seminar to work, participants need to have read, thought, and written about a particular text. To help create a good seminar, you need to prepare and to help the group look deeply at the text, often referring to the text.
Description of Kinds of Seminar Participation
1. Silent: Participant gives no response throughout the seminar. Sustained silence can sabotage the seminar and restrict learning. Others don’t have a way to interpret a participant’s silence. They might wonder: why does the person choose to not engage? Is the person prepared? Is the person unaccustomed to speaking in a group? It is important that silent participants write reflections about their own silence and try to find a way to voice their thoughts in subsequent seminars.
2. Silencing: A participant’s opinions or personal experiences dominate, without much consideration for the text or for others in the seminar. “Silencing” or dominating behavior indicates an inability to engage and sabotages the seminar. Possibilities for learning are greatly reduced.
3. Testing the water: A participant may make a few tentative remarks or give quotations from the text without analyzing them. The person is still struggling a bit with feeling overpowered by the material or by others in the seminar, but it is important to be trying to engage.
4. Engaging: The participant is interacting constructively with both the text and the seminar community. “Engaging” is usually accompanied by an emotional as well as an intellectual response to the material. Participants are generally enthusiastic. Among possible responses are
determining what the writer is saying
analyzing what the text means
discussing the position and biases of the author
seeking to make meaning from quotations
asking questions or responding to questions
making connections, or clarifying each other's positions
articulating one's own thoughts
Ways of facilitating the group process include
focusing the conversation
bringing the group back to the text
linking or interpreting comments
helping manage conflict or problems
______
These descriptions of seminar behavior are adapted from the work of Margaret Scarborough, Ph.D., former instructor at Edmonds Community College, who worked with seminars for 12 years from 1986-1998
EnglishInstructor: Deborah Green
p 4 seminar packet
Book Seminars: Some Guidelines for Possible Ways to Run a Seminar
Prepare
Bring your written preparation and your marked text. You should be present and participate in the seminar, and you can’t participate adequately if you are not prepared. (The circle should include only those who have done full written preparation.)
Preseminar small groups (about 20 minutes)
Discuss the preparation you each did, your main thoughts, and what you find most interesting about the text. Decide together on a good topic to discuss in the seminar and a brief passage from the text as a lead-in to discussion. One of you writes on the board the topic and the page number of the passage.
Alternative: In seminar circle, go around the circle to learn from a sentence or two what each person wrote about. The seminar group can determine the agenda from this.
Select a volunteer "starter" and an "observer"
The starter, perhaps with the group, determines a good order for the agenda items, probably starting with specific topics about what the text is saying (see the Harnish questions). In a very low key way she or he keeps the group on track, relating to the topic and the text, getting depth of discussion, and sticking to the ground rules--actually all are responsible for staying aware of and acting on these issues. The "starter" watches the time and suggests when to move on to a new topic. He or she is discouraged from taking a leader or "teacher" role, which is easy to slip into. The point is that all are equally responsible but this person quietly does a few tasks.
The observer sits outside the circle observing the depth of the discussion and the quality of the interaction. She or he takes notes and reports to the group at the end of the seminar in the debriefing period.
Seminar (40+ min)
After the agenda order is clear, the starter asks the first group to introduce their topic or question, say why they chose the topic, tell why they chose the particular passage to begin discussion, and read it aloud.
The aim is to exchange varied points of view about the topic, referring to selected parts of the text.
Each topic should be discussed in some depth. (There may not be time to cover all the topics.)
Guidelines for seminar discussion are suggested in the Harnish handout and on the page 3 list of Kinds of Seminar Participation. All voices should be heard. No one, two, or three voices should dominate.
If a problem arises, those in the seminar should take responsibility to help the group pause, discuss and resolve the problem; or shift in a way that deals with (or diverts from) the problem. If someone makes this kind of shift, others can support the attempt. It is usually valuable to suggest referring back to the text when the group is getting away from a topic related to the text.
Debrief (15 min)
Participants discuss how the seminar went, including specifics. Evaluate the seminar on a scale of 1-5, considering the depth of the conversation and quality of the interaction.
Observer reports to the group, using the same criteria. Participants may want to respond to this.
Instructor may comment.
Each participant writes her or his reflection on the ongoing reflection/self-assessment sheet.
Student______REFLECTIONS ON SEMINAR Instructor: D. Green
p 5 seminar packet
For each seminar, pleaseread and reflect on the following:
a) What was your own participation in the seminar?
b) What did you learn? (content or about group or self)
c) What interactions or contributions by others moved the seminar forward or deepened the conversation? Describe specifically how and why.
Possible Instructor’s comment
Seminar # date______
a) My participation:
b) Learning:
c) Others’ contributions:
Seminar # date:______
a) My participation:
b) Learning:
c) Others’ contributions: