Breaking up discussions: My 2019 redesign of CS 239

Although I’ve taught CS 239 (Social and Professional Issues) many previous semesters, I have not been assigned to teach it for a few semesters. Spring 2019 changed that, so I took the opportunity to revisit the learning environment I provided for the course.

This course is a one credit hour course which meets once per week for 50 minutes. Historically, I led lectures and discussions for a third to half of the weeks. I assigned the remainder of the weeks to groups of three to five students to research and present their assigned topic. Usually the group presentations consisted of lecturing, despite my encouragement to do something different.

This semester, I wanted to focus on getting the students engaged in the material. I decided to not utilize group presentations or lecturing. I focused on discussions, but also felt that keeping students engaged in fifty minutes of class discussion was a bit of a stretch. I wanted them to dig into the material and explore its importance and applicability to them as future computer scientists. With a bit of thought, I developed a plan to break each week’s fifty-minute class into a series of short discussions which focused on the week’s material in different ways.

Prior to class each week, I expected students to read an assigned chapter or topical material and find a recently published article related to it. (I called this assignment “In the News.”) Each 50-minute class session roughly followed this schedule:

1. Announcements/reminders/questions (5 minutes)
2. Chapter/topic quiz via clickers (10 minutes)
3. Review/impression of the chapter/topic (18 minutes total)
1. Assemble groups of 4 people (6 minutes)
1. Agree on exactly 4 words (single words and/or a phrase) to describe the chapter
2. Groups report their words (5 minutes)
3. Groups choose one word/phrase from the accumulated list (2 minutes)
4. Groups report back (2 minutes)
5. Discuss common themes of (selected) words/phrases (3 minutes)
4. In the News discussion (17 minutes total)
1. Assemble new four-person groups (7 minutes)
1. Very briefly discuss each person’s ItN article
2. Select the most interesting or important article
3. Prepare a 60 second (non-tech supported) presentation which includes:
1. Topic and very brief description
2. Why interesting or important?
3. How related to the course material?
4. Which word/phrase from above list does it relate to?
2. Individual 60-second group presentations (10 minutes)

Thus, my objective each week was not to lecture, or directly discuss the content of the reading, but to have them engage with the material, first individually, then in small groups, and finally the full class. They first read the assigned material outside of class, and critically thought about the content as they selected a related article for the In the News assignment. Then in class, we had a short quiz, which was easy to pass if you’d done the reading, but a bit more challenging, if not. The quiz was intended to encourage coming to class prepared. If more than a few students missed a given question, we’d briefly discuss it before moving on to the next one.

After the quiz, the class split up into four-person groups to briefly discuss their understanding of the material, ultimately agreeing on exactly four words (individual words, a phrase of four words, or some other combination) which they felt represented the material. Each group reported their words, and I wrote them on the white board. After all groups had reported, I asked the groups to reconvene again, and select the one word or phrase from the accumulated list they felt best represented the material. We then briefly discussed their observations about what was, and was not, chosen.

I then asked them to form new four-person groups, where each person would very quickly summarize their selected In the News article. The group then had to decide whose article was the most interesting or most important for others to hear about. Someone (usually the student whose article was selected) from each group then reported details about the article in a one-minute presentation to the full class. (See above for the expected details.) Time permitting, we’d then have another brief discussion about their observations of the selected articles.

This format led to good—and sometimes very lively—discussion each week. The students were aware our time was limited, and thus tended to keep the discussion moving forward, rather than dwelling on one particular point. Overall, my perception of the semester was good. Most students appeared to be engaged, and willing to participate, at least in the small group discussions, if not the full class discussions. Many students were also willing to respectfully voice differing opinions, and to listen to other’s thoughts.

Rather than a final exam, the students had to write reflective responses to a few prompts. One of the prompts included (in part) the following request.

Write an essay describing, specifically, how you learned one of the items in the Top N list we created in class during our final exam time. Be specific about the context of learning: the place, the time, the people, and the process.

The class of 33 students submitted a variety of responses, some of them average. However, many responses stood out to me, and helped validate that the course had met my objective of getting students engaged with the material. I provide examples of these responses here, with the author’s permission.

Student 1:

“I have found that everyone DOES have their own ethical standards; however, it is important to adhere to the ethical standards of the field and company as well. I learned this pretty early on while going through chapter 9 about the ethics and responsibilities of professionals.; however, the ITN articles I went through really solidified the meaning for me.”

Student 2:

“In most of our discussions, if someone offered a dissenting opinion, it was often presented as an alternative way of thinking, rather than as a retort or any sort of rude negation of the presented thought. It was nice to see that a group of random students with different views were able to have respectful discourse about a variety of topics, many of which students had opposing views on.”

“This was a good opportunity to see in a real environment how even those with inherently opposing views could come to a solid and satisfactory conclusion from a “debate”, while maintaining a high level of respect for one another through the entire process. It was fitting that in a class about the professional world, we put into practice the item from the list in real life, rather than just learning about it from the text or through assignments.”

Student 3:

“This situation of disagreeing with someone’s opinion most commonly occurred on the two diversity days of class. Although the situation for me was frustrating because I felt like I couldn’t respond how I usually would outside of a classroom environment, I do think that these days were the more productive days of class because they seemed to generate the most class discussions due to the differing opinions. It was useful to be in this situation in a more professional environment because usually I am in an unprofessional environment.”

“In a professional environment, both parties are held to professional standards, whereas, in an unprofessional environment one person can be respectful, but the other person may not because of the lack of a professional environment. … The combination of these professional experiences in class and unprofessional experiences out of class helped show the differences of the same situation when people are held to professional standards or when they are not. Those differences helped cement the idea that you can have a professional conversation with two differing opinions as long as you adhere to the standards of a professional environment by being respectful.”

Student 4:

“The most prominent thing I learned was that everyone has their own ethical standards. The one moment that comes to mind that taught me this the most was early in the semester in the discussion of privacy. All four of us in the group had different opinions on what constitutes a breach of privacy. As I thought more about it later, I realized that none of us were necessarily wrong, but we just had different standards to one another. I also realized some time later that this is another argument for diversity as well, because it can help make a product that the most users will be comfortable with.”

Student 5:

“I thought everyone knew. That being said, I was proven wrong multiple times by my classmates who didn’t seem to really “get” certain concepts, like the importance of diversity or what is actually ethically sound. I sometimes found myself frustrated and wondering if I should even state my perspective because they weren’t going to “get” my point. It wasn’t until I decided that my perspective deserves to be heard just as much as the other guys that I would participate in class discussion. When I did, I remember commenting on why I didn’t agree with someone, and after I spoke someone else commented that they felt similarly to me. This gave me more confidence in my opinions, not because I knew I shared them with another classmate, but because the conversation kept going. We continued to share ideas. We didn’t stop talking just because we didn’t agree. I am often scared in conversations that if I voice my opinion either I or the person I am speaking to will let their emotions get the better of them and the conversation ends at that. With mutual respect and an open mind, even those who don’t always agree can work productively together.”

I am anxious to teach this course again using the same pedagogy to see if I get the same results. It could simply be that I had an unusual bunch of students this semester that were willing to discuss and listen to each other, and that another group of students may not do as well. I’m hoping that is not the case, as I really liked how the class worked out this time.
What are your thoughts and experiences? Please share them below in the comments.

(Edited on 07/09/2019 to add student 5's quote.)