Improving Student Interactions
It's a Constant Opportunity for Growth
An instructor’s interactions with students are precious, as precious as platinum or gold. A high quality to interactions can spur students to new heights or sustain them through critical periods of learning. A poor quality to interactions can deaden their spirits and retard their growth. Consider these recommendations from Dr. Stavredes’s Effective Online Teaching on how to use your interactions with students to promote positive and productive critical thinking among students:
1. when students hesitate to respond, use prompts restating or clarifying the question, or suggesting a possible answer;
2. when student comments are sound but basic, request elaboration of responses to deepen and broaden thought;
3. request clarification of underlying logic, rule, or reasoning, to address unclear or confusing responses;
4. to move discussion forward, synthesize responses around patterns, while raising new questions;
5. to extend limited discussion, seek alternative perspectives such as asking students to assume roles or change roles;
6. to reveal underlying logic, ask students to share inferences and assumptions underlying their responses;
7. to demonstrate discussion’s significance, ask for implications of the conclusions students have drawn; and
8. to conclude discussion, ask for summaries of discussion points that prioritize concepts according to their value.
Simply communicating at all with students may seem like an achievement. It’s not. The achievement is to help students communicate clearly, rationally, and critically. Focus on that deeper instructional goal, over simply sustaining student interaction and relationships.
