The aim of this professional development series is to strengthen our campus-wide capacity to create welcoming, engaging, and academically rigorous classroom environments in which students experience productive classroom discussions on important issues and topics.
Our Mission
Engaging discussions are one of the most rewarding and memorable activities that students and faculty alike can experience in the classroom. Recent research shows that classroom discussion deepens learning, creates community, and helps students form an academic identity.
At the same time, classroom discussion is a challenging pedagogical undertaking. It requires the instructor to orchestrate learning among a group of students who likely do not know each other, come from a diversity of backgrounds, possess a range of political commitments, arrive with varying levels of familiarity with the course material, and have different levels of comfort speaking in class.
Inviting students to discuss also comes with some risk because we don’t know what students are going to say. That unknown means that the instructor will have to be ready to follow one student’s interesting and unexpected line of thought, correct another’s misunderstanding about the material, and also be prepared to respond to any number of possibly off-topic, inappropriate, hostile, or naïve comments.
To address these promises and challenges, the School of Education has designed a professional development program for UW faculty and teaching staff. See the Program Overview page for more details.
Who should apply?
- We accept applications from faculty, teaching staff, and teaching assistants who are teaching a course at UW-Madison the during the semester for which they apply.
- Ideally, applicants should be teaching a course with fewer than 50 students.
- In order to be eligible, applicants must be available to attend both full-day sessions and one half-day mid-semester session.
- Please note that the application is not on a first-come-first-served basis and that we have limited availability for teaching assistants. For the purposes of our study, we will be constructing cohorts based on a number of factors. We will contact you as soon as we can to confirm participation. We will aim to notify participants 6 weeks in advance of the training for which they are confirmed.
When can I apply to the program?
- The 2019-20 cohorts are all full. We will be posting our application for 2020-21 in late February or early March 2020.
Dates for 2020-21 Discussion Project Trainings (application will open spring 2020)
| Cohort | Day 1
8:30am-4:30pm |
Day 2
8:30am-4:30pm |
Day 3
8:30am-12:30pm |
| 1 | Mon, 8/10/20 | Tues, 8/11/20 | Fri, 9/25/20 |
| 2 | Thurs, 8/13/20 | Fri, 8/14/20 | Fri, 10/2/20 |
| 3 | Mon, 8/17/20 | Tues, 8/18/20 | Fri, 10/9/20 |
| 4 | Thurs, 1/7/21 | Fri, 1/8/21 | Fri, 2/12 |
| 5 | Mon, 1/11/21 | Tues, 1/12/21 | Fri, 2/19/21 |
| 6 | Thurs, 1/14/21 | Fri, 1/15/21 | Fri, 2/26/21 |
All trainings will be held in the Education Building, Wisconsin Idea Room (Room 159)
Media Highlights
- Mellon Foundation bolsters support for The Discussion Project -2019 Summer
- ‘The Discussion Project’ cultivates engaging, welcoming classroom conversations across campus – February 7, 2018
- ‘Badger Herald’ Puts Spotlight on ‘The Discussion Project’ – September 22, 2017
- School of Education launches new program aimed at fostering productive discussion – September 19, 2017
- UW Discussion Project Aims to Get People Talking Across Racial Lines – May 31, 2017
- Project Aims to Create Engaging, Welcoming Classroom Discussions – May 16, 2017
“The Discussion Project was, by far, the best teaching workshop I’ve experienced. Not only did we receive new tools for facilitating discussion, we also got practice using them. The workshop was especially helpful for learning how to hold discussions on controversial political and ethical issues, how and when to share my own views as an instructor, and how to create the right mix of comfort and discomfort in the classroom.”
– Andy D., Department of Geography