Some suggestions for Facilitating Class

Your task is to engage your colleagues in conversation around our class theme: the role of religion and culture in shaping how people perceive and experience the body AND technology. This is what your questions should be about. So you want to have in mind 3 or 4 passages in the day’s reading that address this theme.

Then write 4-5 questions – keeping in mind that I might want to steal some of your time, so you may not have the whole class period.

  • Your questions must be OPEN-ended, that is, they are not seeking a short factual or informative kid of answer: their intent is to get the class engaged with the reading, so they should must be open to multiple kinds of answers, different takes from different perspectives.
  • Your job is not to master the readings. Nor is job to be the professor. Your job is spark intellectual curiosity in whatever way you can. What is important about this reading? Why care about it? Be creative!! You can start us with a video clip, or an image – anything! Well, anything except power point! No power point permitted because it does not create conversation and engagement.
  • You should not know the answers to most of the questions that you ask.
  • You must have an idea of a passage or two in the reading to draw our attention to, if people do not know where to start to respond. Best is if you can draw our attention to a passage, let us discuss it, and then follow up with another passage that complicates the first, adds to it, raises questions, or in some way deepens our discussion of the original question or topic.
  • When the discussion starts to wander, it is your job to bring it back on track.
  • Prioritize your questions! Life is short and so is class – especially if your professor yada yadas on the way we tend to do! Don’t beat around the bush – get right to it.

We have 16 class days – and 20 of you: so if you would like to work in a pair – please do!

Finally, if you are facilitating on a day when the class as a whole has a written assignment due, I will let you hand in your writing a little later so that you can prep for class. If you would like to take advantage of this, please let me know that day so that I can give you a new due date.