Discussion is the De….

One of the things that I keep coming back to here when I talk to profs and instructors, especially those in large classes, is that discussion is something that should be part of every course, and every course can make use of discussion. Why? Because there is passion or controversy in every subject. there is something interesting to talk about even the the deepest geekiest thing that there is, and if you want your students to care about your content, you have to care about how they are thinking about that, and the easiest (or one of the easiest) ways to do that is to talk to them.

In that light, this morning’s TechLearning article about blogging not being the enemy. Blogging and discussions are ways to extend the classroom – something that I try to explain, but that doesn’t always get understood (along with the notion that teaching with technology will as often as not increase an instructor’s workload, at least for the first while).