A senior faculty member sat in on my class today, and said he was quite impressed and rarely sees such great discussions among undergrads (he even said that he thinks I did better than he could have himself—I think my youth is an advantage in getting students to speak up and be open, and not feel intimidated). My class had the usual Friday seminar discussion, this week it was on intelligence by way of this article by Malcolm Gladwell. They were lively, stayed within the theme, responded to one another, and nearly all of the class showed up in spite of the rainy day and most of them talked. The discussion went to areas that interested them and they talked amongst themselves with minimal intervention from me—I mainly tried to open up topics. I think part of the trick is to choose topics that are interesting or have potential to be interesting, to help students relate their own experiences, to help them articulate and sort out opinions and find where they agree and disagree with one another, and to use the text as a basis for discussion but not the only content of the discussion (i.e., instead of making sure I cover all parts of the text and we analyze it in depth, I use the text to introduce themes and ideas that we can talk about so it’s almost another participant in the conversation stating its own opinions, ideas, and questions).