Dialogue Education in Higher Education
by
Rhonda McEwen
Consultant
I think this concern
[of teaching Dialogue Education to large groups] is especially
relevant for higher education where class size is often large
and the instructor has no control of this.
I recently taught
a graduate course with 35 people and tried to be intentional
about applying the principles and practices of Dialogue Education.
As others have
suggested, I tried to vary the pairs and trios with larger small
group learning tasks – such as 5-6 in a group. Rather than
whole group debriefs, sometimes I would also vary this with
two-three large groups debriefing together – so there would
be 12-15 in each group – and the smaller groups would each
share within this larger group. This allowed for more voices
to share than if we had just gone from small groups to the one
large group.
On a smaller
scale, pairs could then share their insights with another pair...
and so on... once again trying to allow for more voices.
Tasks which utilized
charts, large post-its, or other ways in which each person within
a group had opportunity to be engaged were also helpful. This
way, even if each voice was not heard in the larger group, there
was still a posted record of each person’s contribution
– whether pictorial or written.
One other thing
that seemed to work well was more substantial group tasks –
where a product/presentation was expected at the end and there
was ample time allowed to work on this. That way, each person
was engaged in a meaningful dialogical task within a smaller
group environment for an extended period of time – perhaps
a certain time each day for several days.
