Teaching Political Science Sections

Facilitating Active Participation

Make eye contact with your students. Smile at them when they speak.

Take opinion polls by a show of hands at the beginning and conclusion of a new topic.

Ask those individuals who are reluctant to speak questions that you know they can answer to build their confidence.

Pose multiple choice questions to the class as a group and then poll the class as to how many said A, B or C. Ask those for whom participation is a problem for an explanation of their choice.

Randomly ask students for the answers to questions you posed to direct their reading at the end of the last section.

Randomly ask students what question they might ask if they were the professor to elicit the material assigned for the day.

Try using " one minute papers", (on the reading, the professors lecture, your previous section, or possible exam questions), to get the students to write something on paper. This is a good intermediate step toward speaking. You can then ask individual students "What did you write?".

The point is to actively engage the students in the material. If they have to do something, like raise their hands, or write down their thoughts, or choose an answer from multiple choices, you are more likely to maintain their attention and they are more likely to think about the material.