RATIONALE:
Leading class discussion encourages you to synthesize the week’s
readings, and provides an opportunity to hone your leadership skills. The
ability to direct meetings or discussions is an often-overlooked but important
component of organization-building and teamwork. Furthermore, your classmates
will benefit from a diversity of opinions and leadership styles as we cycle
through different class leaders.
LOGISTICS:
By Friday at noon the week prior to your discussion, you will need to post
discussion questions to this website.
Your questions should address the reading for that day; where appropriate,
they should also be tied to the class’s service learning work.
On the day you’ve signed up to lead class discussion, you and your partner will be responsible for approximately one hour of discussion time. You should plan to begin with a short presentation (about five minutes long) introducing the material and tying it to your discussion questions. Then you’ll be responsible for chairing the discussion – not just posing the questions, but finessing the conversation and helping it to move along smoothly.
For all of these tasks – posting questions, preparing the presentation, presenting, and actually leading the discussion – you and your partner can work out the division of labor however you’d like. Please be aware that attempting to stick your partner with all the work will not only make them unhappy, but also be fairly obvious to me (and probably the rest of the class).
GRADING:
You and your partner will receive a shared grade, based on this
rubric.