1 quick tip to improving student participation in your class (motivated by a principle in poker)

There’s a principle in poker that success is determined not so much by successful bluffs or close calls, but (a) the ability to fold a losing hand before it’s too late, and (b) the ability to get the most out of your best opportunities. The most important thing is not just to win with your good hands, but, when you win, to win big. To put it another way, success requires not being satisfied with small victories. The real pressure comes not when you have a mediocre hand and you’re agonizing over whether to stay in, but when you have the nuts and you’re trying to maximize your gain.

I was thinking about this the other day after having a conversation with a small group of students about how I could get more participation in class. As with many teachers, I often have difficulty getting students to speak up in the classroom. My main trick is to have students work in pairs, and there are a few other things I do—-for more on this, see chapter 1 of Active Statistics—-and it kinda works in that students do stay busy and focused in class, but we still don’t get the sort of lively discussions I’d like to see.

But this latest conversation in my office gave me an idea. In this mini-brainstorming session, different students in the group had suggestions, and I responded to each. And then I suddenly realized a pattern: after every student spoke, I responded. That’s natural: they’re talking to me, also they’re talking on a topic I’ve thought a lot about before, so when they say something, it’s natural that I’ll have immediate followup thoughts. Indeed, new ideas will typically come to me even before the other person has stopped talking. Also, that’s how conversation usually goes: someone will speak, I’ll reply, they’ll respond, etc.

But in roomful of students, if I do what seems natural and follow up each student’s question with my response, this takes away much of the life of the discussion. What I need to do, when student A speaks, is to just say nothing, or maybe make a brief nod of acknowledgment, to give the opportunity for students B, C, and D to join in. As it is, I’ve implicitly trained them to wait for my response, and that’s not good.

OK, this won’t always work, especially not at first. I’m waiting for class participation and, if I’m lucky, one student will speak up and say something, and that’s it. At that point it can help for me to keep the conversation going. But when students show some interest, when multiple students are leaning forward, ready to jump in, that’s the time for me to be careful and keep the student involvement going. In poker terms, this is the chance for a big win, and it’s important to do things right.

To put it another way, rather than getting frustrated at the times that I feel students should be participating but they’re not, I should just be willing to “fold” in such settings. My extra effort should be going into facilitating active participation in those settings where I’m holding some good cards, as it were, and students are ready to join in.

I’ll try this in future classes. I doubt it will work all at once–sometimes you just have to wait until you get a good hand–but I’ll try to remain aware of the possibility and take advantage when it happens.