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. The program will be offered in both the 2017-18 fall and spring semesters. See the Program Overview page for more details.
Who should apply?
- Faculty and staff who are teaching a course at UW-Madison during the semester for which they apply. At this time, we are not accepting graduate students.
- Ideally, applicants should be teaching a course with fewer than 50 students.
- Applicants must be available to attend both full-day sessions and one half-day mid-semester session.
Dates for the Fall 2018 Cohort
Please check back in April for more information regarding our fall 2018 professional development series.
Dates for the Spring 2018 Cohort
Location: Wisconsin Idea Room located on the first floor of the Education Building.
| Date | Time | Session(s) |
| Tuesday, January 16 | 9:00am – 4:30pm | Getting Students Talking Designing Effective Small-Group Discussions Facilitating Whole-Class Discussions |
| Wednesday, January 17 | 9:00am – 4:30pm | Developing Facilitation Strategies Assessing Discussion |
| Thursday, March 1 | 1:30pm – 4:30pm | Ethical Issues Related to Discussion |
Media Highlights
- ‘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