quiet participants
How do you manage the quiet participants?
John,
Excellent recommendations. Thank you for sharing your insights.
Dr. S. David Vaillancourt
In the traditional class room setting, it is important to reccognize who the quiet students are and to attempt to bring them out of their intellectual shells. You do this by having a sort of one-on-one with them without driving them further inward. Speaking to them directly while getting them to acknowledge what you are saying is correct and recognizing their contribution to the class.
Taking the opportunity to thank them for their input when they make a contribution is another way to get them to feel comfortable talking. Letting the entire class know that there are no wrong answers during facilitation. Introducing some incredibly funny facts into the discussion to lighten the atmosphere is another way to get the quiet student to speak.
Agree Susan nice words.
Besides looking at the quiet students I also look at students that are on probation and to give more feedback to ensure their success in getting off probation at the university. I post a biography to familiarize students with who I am in the course as a facilitator. I look for students daily to ensure they are posting in the course room on time.
First I look to see who the quiet ones are by seeing who is not involved in the forum. Then I approach the student and simply ask why they are not in forum and see what they have to say about that topic. Once they give me some sort of an answer I encourage them telling them if they were able to verbalize it they should be able to post it into a forum and elaborate even more if they want to. Once they post it for the first time they will want to read more of the other students responses and put up more of their own. It takes time and practice but the more they do it the easier it becomes. Encouragement is best in this situation and eventually they find discussion boards challenging.
Hi Shelly, setting expectations is important to engage quiet participants. As I've discussed in other posts, you need to assign a grade to discussions to get them to participate. We set expectations for their initial posts to a discussion and their interactions with other learners. Tina
