4 Strategies to Enhance Small Group Discussion

Incorporating discussion activities in an online classroom is an excellent student engagement strategy that helps students share ideas and information, and gain greater insights about a topic. However, using the same strategy for every discussion can make classroom discussion activities feel repetitive and dull. For more imaginative and collaborative activities, consider these four discussion strategy alternatives: 

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  Think–Pair-Share. A think-pair-share activity is a discussion strategy that works well for groups that are hesitant to speak during a large group discussion. To conduct a think-pair-share activity in your online classroom, give students a question prompt in the main room and ask students to write their response in chat. After they have written their response, pair students together in breakout rooms so they may discuss their response with their breakout room partners. After the breakout room discussion is complete, students can report out to the main group.
  

• Snowballing. Similar to think-pair-share, snowballing is a discussion strategy that allows students to start a discussion in smaller groups then build to a larger group setting. To complete a snowballing discussion activity in your online classroom, start with a think-pair-share activity by pairing students in breakout rooms. After 5 minutes have passed, join two breakout room pairs together (using Zoom’s “Move to” option shown below) so the new group can discuss the prompts further and gain new insights from each other. Continue the process until the group is eventually fully reunited in one large group.

• Jigsaw. A jigsaw activity is a cooperative learning discussion strategy that gives students the opportunity to learn and teach each other. To perform small group discussions using the jigsaw strategy, simply break a lesson into smaller parts and assign groups to review and teach each part. For example, if you wanted to review chapters 1-3 of a textbook, you could create three breakout rooms and assign one chapter per breakout room. Each breakout room group will be asked to summarize the most important aspects of that chapter and present it to the rest of the class when students return to the main room. 

• Station Rotation. For this discussion strategy, each breakout room will have a different problem to solve or task to perform. Using the “Let Participants Choose Room” option in Zoom when creating breakout rooms, students will be allowed to choose which problem or task they would like to complete. For example, students who join Breakout Room 1 can discuss Case Study 1 and students who join Breakout Room 2 can discuss Case Study 2 (and so on and so forth). After students have completed their first breakout room activity, they can join another room. The activity ends when students have returned to the main room and reported their findings to the rest of the class.  

This is the third article of a four-part series that focuses on strategies for better conversations in online classrooms. In the next article of this series, we will examine how to have better conversations with dialogue. Click here to visit the first article providing an overview of the series.

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