The Discussion Project Measurement Study, 2022-2023
Existing research provides highly suggestive evidence that the use of classroom discussion improves students’ academic engagement, social integration, and academic achievement, all of which are important predictors of college completion. However, very little research thus far has attempted to investigate a direct connection between the use of classroom discussion pedagogy and student outcomes. In part, progress in this area is limited by the absence of high quality, scalable, valid, and reliable measures of the quality of classroom discussion.
In the 2022-23 academic year, the Discussion Project will be developing and testing a suite of tools for describing classroom discussion and instructor practice, and we will demonstrate how these tools can work together to understand the benefits of classroom discussion and the Discussion Project training for student academic success.
The measurement tools will include rubrics for use by trained classroom observers, instructor reflection questions, and student surveys (both post-class and end-of-semester). We are particularly interested in learning the extent to which these three diverse perspectives can yield greater insight into what happens in the classroom.
The Discussion Project’s ambitious research agenda for 2022-23 has the potential to fill critical gaps in research capacity in higher education by providing new, scalable, validated measures of the quality of instructional practice and of classroom discussion. Moreover, we will use these new measures to expand the evidence base in support of discussion pedagogy in higher education.