A couple weeks ago I dawned my best undergraduate garb and wandered into a college course using MobLab. The instructor knew I would be there. But, I didn’t want an introduction. I wanted to be an anthropologist and get first hand observations. It was a useful exercise and one thing became blatantly clear to me: Let the students talk.
Probably that seed was planted several weeks ago when Doug McKee, an instructor at Cornell, noted in his excellent teaching blog Teach Better (you can see his whole post here),
The morning class was good, but very quiet while the students were choosing production levels. In the afternoon I encouraged students to talk to each other about their strategies. They didn’t know who was in their particular market, so it wasn’t an opportunity for collusion. I think they got more out of the exercise and it was definitely more fun.
He’s absolutely right. There are several advantages to letting the students talk:
From where I sat in the classroom the silence was deafening. It’s an anecdote, but, once the students were allowed to talk in the next section of this class the energy changed and I’m hopeful their learning did too. Count me in with Doug McKee, let the students talk.