Some forms and activities of seminar/workshop (a by no means exhaustive list).

form

Some heuristics

Other comments

Role-play, games or simulation

Usually more effective if goal-based. Effective to give students time to rehearse role. Learning
tends to take place in the post-task reflections.

Good for helping students become more familiar with common object. Very useful for rehearsal of
critical engagment.  Limited as often means that students take a position and argue it. More
difficult for teacher to intervene and take advantage of moments.

Debates

Rehearsal time needed. Learning tends to take place in post-debate reflections

Good for getting students familiar with polemics and arguments in their subject area. Encourages
binary oppositions which are unrealistic at a certain academic level. Encourages students to take a
position rather than develop their own. Again more difficult for teacher to intervene and take
advantage of learnable moments.

Workshop:

Sometimes known as the “Socratic Seminar”. Interactions are characterized by dialogue as opposed to
discussion and debate. Teacher can build on interactions but (to varying degrees) students control
the direction of the conversation.

More effective if students are a) given no explicit goal and b) are constrained by common object
e.g. specific question/s or a text.

Teacher can take advantage of learnable and critical moments in the discussion. Students often need
some kind of preparation. Can be daunting for beginners to workshops. Harder to manage sometimes.

Seminar:

Characteristically more teacher-led, and/or led by need for students to grasp certain objects in
the curriculum.

Teacher can be explicit or implicitly lead students towards common object.

Very good for covering key areas and objects in the curriculum and giving students an experience of
learning and appropriating these areas. Teacher sometimes needs to employ a lot of discipline in
keeping students on track.

Wingman circle:

Characterized by an inner and outer circle. The inner circle carries out the discussion. Each inner
circle member has one or two “wingmen” advising, feeding points, arguments and information (usually
through whispers and post-it notes).

Usually the preparation is round a text and inner circle participants have chance to talk with
“wingmen” before the discussion starts. Very good idea to swap roles half-way through discussion

Very good for keeping all people active in discussion without dialogue being over-populated. Gives
students time to critically engage. Students feel very supported.

Very difficult for teacher intervention –i.e. this could go anywhere.

Fishbowl:

Students observe a discussion performed by their peers and take notes for feedback or to join in
later.  Layout of fishbowl often in the form of an outer and inner circle of chairs.

Good to leave a chair free for teacher to sit in sometimes, make some useful interventions and
model reasoning.

Very good opportunity for students to have the linguistic and critical space to actively listen but
not feel they need to contribute. Good learning opportunity to watch, (and even try and imitate)  -
as  students often rehearse and respond to the arguments and points raised in their heads.

Mediated feedback:

Students rehearse and practice a small aspect of a seminar/discussion feature. They can get
feedback from their peers and/or record themselves and review.

This should be done in small groups rather than as a whole class dynamic.

Very good for self-assessment and peer feedback. More to do with form and performance than content
or critical engagement.

Very useful for looking at delivery of presentations.














Jo Eastlake 2013