What have we learned?
In the first two years of The Discussion Project, survey results have consistently shown that participants deepen their knowledge about what discussion is and the characteristics of good discussion. Participants report feeling better able to prepare students for discussion and for treating discussion as an academic skill that can be taught and assessed. Participants enjoy the hands-on approach to the training, and they greatly appreciate the opportunity to discuss teaching and learning with colleagues from across campus.
Where are we headed?
The Discussion Project has received a two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to study how the Discussion Project training affects participants’ instructional practice and how their students experience and learn from discussions in class. As part of the study, we are expanding from two to six cohorts per year, and in the second year of the study, we will investigate how well The Discussion Project translates to campuses that differ from UW–Madison. The main questions for the study include:
- How do The Discussion Project training and resources affect instructors’ abilities to create and facilitate high-quality classroom discussion?
- How does The Discussion Project affect how students experience and learn from discussions in courses taught by instructors trained by The Discussion Project?
- What are the best mechanisms to both scale The Discussion Project and extend it to other institutions of higher education (IHEs) with demographically different students than UW–Madison (the institution in which it was developed)?
Affiliation of Participants
| Accounting & Information Systems | African Cultural Studies | Afro-American Studies | Agricultural & Applied Economics | American Indian Studies |
| Anthropology | Asian Languages & Cultures | Business | Center for South Asia | Center for the First Year Experience |
| Chemistry | Civil Society & Community Studies | Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies | Communication Arts | Community and Environmental Sociology |
| Composition & Rhetoric | Computer Sciences | Curriculum & Instruction | Dairy Science | Economics |
| Educational Policy Studies | Educational Psychology | English | Gender & Women’s Studies | Geography |
| German, Nordic, & Slavic | History | Horticulture | Human Development and Family Studies | Information School |
| Institute for Regional and International Studies | Integrative Biology | International Studies | Journalism & Mass Communication | Kinesiology |
| Law | Liberal Arts & Applied Studies | Management and Human Resources | Math | Medical History and Bioethics |
| Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies | Nursing | Pathobiological Sciences | Pharmacy | Philosophy |
| Physics | Planning & Landscape Architecture | Political Science | Psychology | Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education |
| Social Work | Soil Science | Spanish & Portuguese | Wisconsin Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning | Writing Fellows Program |
“This is probably the most valuable teaching-centric experience I’ve had in my 11 years on campus.”
– Catherine Arnott Smith, Associate Professor, iSchool