I was very honored to be invited to participate in the training and exchange
I once served as the discussion-section TA for the course “What Is Science.” This course was jointly offered by many distinguished professors from the science and engineering departments, and the lecture + discussion-section format ran for only one round. At the time, the course consisted of 2 class-hours per week of lectures by teachers from various departments, plus 1 class-hour of small-group discussion; it carried 3 credits, and the grade was based on a final paper worth 40 points plus discussion-section performance worth 60 points.
The first difficulty facing the small-group discussion was students’ enthusiasm for enrolling. At the beginning, more than a hundred people registered for the course, but after we set out the discussion-section requirements in the first week, students rushed to drop it, and in the end fewer than 50 remained enrolled. Many students were interested in the distinguished-professor lectures, and some even insisted on sitting in, but simply did not want to officially take the course for credit. Small-group discussion requires serious reading and thinking every week, active participation every time, and one or two presentations as well. For students used to the general-education-course model of “listening to a storyteller” and getting by with a final paper at the end, these requirements were indeed too burdensome. One way we responded was by promising that the course could break through the usual cap on excellent grades and assign higher marks, but in practice this attraction was not especially strong. In any case, such a course was originally designed for students who were not entirely aiming just to pick up credits, but were more self-motivated, so all we could do was face the difficulty of low enrollment.
This difficulty itself actually had little effect on the small-group discussions, but it was related to the second difficulty: in fact, the teachers were not particularly welcoming of, nor accustomed to, small-group classes either. Judging from the situation at the time, most teachers still treated the course as a simple lecture course; they would rather have more listeners and did not pay much attention to our discussion sections. That was also why, after the second year, the discussion sections for this course were not continued. At the time we hoped that each teacher could provide us with some reading materials and perhaps some questions for reflection, but the results were not very good. The teachers’ enthusiasm was not high, and the materials they gave were sometimes not well suited to guiding discussion. In this regard, I think that before the teachers’ mindset changes, we still need to give fuller play to the TA’s role, allowing TAs to take more direct responsibility for designing the discussion sections.
The second difficulty was in turn related to the third difficulty: that is, if there is no good reading material, discussions often become hard to focus, and frequently spread off in all directions. Students then speak in generalities based on their personal impressions, and it becomes difficult to concentrate solidly and deeply on some shared topics. Our hope in assigning readings was also tied to this consideration: first, everyone had to put in the effort to prepare, rather than simply chatting over tea and calling that a discussion. Second, the discussion had to have a focus; only with a focus could one then talk about dispersion. Whether one is launching targeted attacks or citing materials to support oneself, the existence of the readings guarantees that there is something substantial to say and provides a basic platform.
As for the grading mechanism, my design was this: regular discussion counted for 60 points, with 30 points for presentations and 30 points for speaking in class. Presentation grades were scored jointly by all the students, mainly decided by the other students, which meant that when each student prepared a report, the goal was not to figure out how to follow the teacher’s line of thought or cater to the TA’s preferences, but rather to actively imagine one’s audience as one’s classmates and try one’s best to activate their responses. In addition, each class had 3 points for participation in speaking; recording speaking participation was the TA’s job, and only contributions that truly took part in the discussion process were recorded—simply attending the discussion did not earn any points. A forceful, incisive, or discussion-leading remark earned 3 points. A merely ordinary response that nevertheless participated in the discussion earned 2 points; 2.5 or 1.5 points could also be given as appropriate. In the end, the highest ten scores were totaled—that is, even if you happened to be very unfamiliar with some topic and had nothing to say, it was fine, and you could even miss a few sessions occasionally; in total, you only needed to actively participate in ten discussion classes. Finally, the last class of our large lecture course was designed to consist of student presentations: each discussion section would elect one outstanding student to represent the entire small group in giving a talk, and then the teacher would select the winner; the entire small group to which the winner belonged could receive extra points. Overall, I think this grading system was pretty good and had a certain motivational effect.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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