Thanks for all your replies - I'm really encouraged both by those who are finding teaching difficult and those who seem to have cracked it...
Quote From historybuff?:
Another suggestion is to get students involved in ongoing groupwork which will develop over the duration of the course, giving them a number of chances to present their work, both as works in progress, with the opportunity for constructive criticism, in terms of problems and means of developing the topics and treatments further. This helped to remove the competitiveness and laziness inherent to student/group presentations, and helped to engage the entire cohort in a more detailed research effort. It also helped to get the class to gel together.
I like this suggestion but with my groups, I already feel they have a *lot* of work to do. For this one module, they have 2x 2500 word essays, 2x2 hour "simulations" where they have to role-play a select committee hearing (how much fun does that sound! :p) and a multiple choice exam. When I did an almost identical module at the start of my bachelors degree we had 2x 1500 word essays and a written exam at the end - a much lighter workload at a supposedly "better" university. So far, they've been pretty good at doing the reading (I set them one journal article and three starter questions for each seminar) and I don't want to overload them and risk them not turning up because they haven't done the work.
Quote From olivia:
If you do groups, mind how they get set up. I go back and forth between random groups, where people number off, and letting people work with their friends, in semi self-selected groups. Random group formation does not let people have the comfort of hiding behind their friends in having not prepared. Circulate while groups are working--ask them what they have come up with, remind them everyone needs to contribute, etc.
I'm starting to see this in my groups now, too. In the first week, when nobody knew each other, the discussion in small groups worked really well because the students could talk about a concrete topic and get to know each other a little. This week, now that some friendships have been formed, I noticed a lot of chat about football and facebook creeping in... Might introduce a bit of enforced moving around to stop this happening next time.