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If institutions of higher education are to remain at the forefront of the knowledge-generating enterprise, the nature of graduate-level teaching must be critically examined. Exploring the manner in which discussion is facilitated in a seminar-like context offers one avenue for attaining this understanding. This study aims to shed light on the prevalence, purpose, and form of discussion facilitation practices that were observed in a small group setting within a social science academic program at a large Southern California university. An exploratory, embedded case study was conducted over approximately 24 weeks using ethnographic and conversation analytic methods. Data sources consisted of ethnographic field notes, audio recordings of meetings, transcripts from those recordings, and artifacts, including literature used during each session. Results suggest that facilitating small group discussions requires balancing focus on the selected text and participant engagement, a diverse set of facilitation practices, and use of different strategies (or micro-avenues) to arrive at the same end. Study findings emphasize the importance of intersubjectivity and form versus function of speech in an educational environment. What is said and how it is said both have great implications for shared learning and understanding. Adaptability of mixed qualitative methods in this study demonstrates the potential of ethnography and conversation analysis as complementary approaches for understanding the functional nature of talk and interaction. Thus, the criteria for rigorous qualitative research, the view that ethnography and conversation analysis do not mix, and the under-valuing of critical multiplism in research need to be re-examined.

The purpose was to describe the redesigning of an online course that utilized adult learning principles and a framework to engage students.

The methodology used is a first person account from the instructor point of view.

Findings indicate that the teaching strategies used encouraged student engagement in the course.

The research is limited to one course with less than 20 students.

Other online instructors can utilize teaching strategies used that promote engagement among students.

This course is an example of a highly engaging online course. This shows that online courses can be engaging and satisfying for students.

This paper adds to the body of literature on what teaching strategies encourage students to engage online. It connects theories with real life examples that others teaching online can implement.

Describes a 15‐year learning journey, working with clients to develop skills facilitation. Set against the backdrop of the changing role of facilitation in UK business – from the domain of the training room, via use of designated facilitators working with quality groups, to a central place in leadership and management practice. Case studies and details of competence research illustrate different approaches to skills development. Suggests that the influence of context on the facilitation role is crucial, and needs to inform the type of development process suited to a particular situation. Anticipates that facilitation will be acknowledged increasingly as a central process of organization change rather than limited to designated positions. Facilitating in “unknown territory” will require people to discard pre‐prepared scripts, dispense with the safety of “facilitator neutrality” and be open to profound processes of change.

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to understand how, if at all, backchanneling technology supported an early career English teacher’s facilitation of literary discussions in his 10th grade classroom. Although emerging findings from studies of backchanneling in teaching contexts have illustrated its potential power, little attention has been given to how teachers learn to use the tool or reimagine their pedagogical roles as they use backchanneling for instructional purposes.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Discourse analyses of 16 face-to-face (frontchannel) and online (backchannel) transcripts of discussions exposed how participants used these two venues to interact simultaneously around a literary text. Methods from Nystrand’s (2002) dialogic discourse analysis isolated each teacher interjection in the contexts of each discussion.

Findings – The teacher used the backchannel to probe for elaborated student responses and model dialogic discourse moves. The teacher’s behind-the-scenes support limited his participation during frontchannel discussions, allowing for open discussion among students without the teacher’s consistent interjection, which disrupted the initiation-response-evaluation discourse structure that is pervasive in US schools.

Practical Implications – Although backchanneling technology can be used to archive records of students’ participation that could be useful for assessment purposes, the teacher’s skillful capacity to negotiate two discussions at once reconstituted his role during the discussion from facilitator to a fellow reader with his students as they explored meaningful questions that literature provokes – a less obvious and potentially more powerful affordance of this digital tool for instructional purposes.

To present a cross-case analysis of two pre-service teachers who studied their own teaching using video within a teacher inquiry project (TIP) – a teacher education pedagogy we are calling video-mediated teacher inquiry.

Activity theory is used to examine how inquiry groups collaboratively used video to mediate shifts in goals and tool use for the two pre-service teachers presented in the study. This chapter addresses the question of how video-mediated teacher inquiry supports the appropriation of teaching tools (i.e., classroom discussion) in a teacher education program.

The findings indicate that shifts in goals and tool use made during the TIP suggest greater appropriation of the pedagogical tool of classroom discussion. We also consider how these shifts may be bound by the inquiry project.

The use of video cases of teachers’ own teaching is an emergent pedagogy that combines elements of both case study methods and practitioner inquiry. We argue that this pedagogy supports tool appropriation among pre-service teachers in ways that may help them develop as reflective practitioners.

This paper aims to detect the opportunities and problems when teaching with cases since the COVID-19 pivot to online.

From a qualitative phenomenological approach, both authors reflect on the pivot to online case method teaching in their master’s level courses in Colombia and the Dominican Republic.

The reflection allowed the authors to validate that the questions before and during the debate and the voting are resources equally valuable for discussing cases in the traditional classroom and online. However, the authors observe a pivot to teaching with cases online from the COVID-19 pandemic in aspects such as teamwork requiring more time in online class due to internet problems or students’ slowing down. The instructor’s viewing of teamwork is intermittent and causes feeling out of control. Working with cameras on or off generates different results in the students, in the teaching-learning process and in the results, which require the instructor’s good judgement decisions. The online discussion planning and organisation demand flexibility and empathy by the instructor, to promote a more significant student-student interaction, which, in the experience, is limited in the virtual environment. Finally, working with cases online generates and requires additional skills in the instructors to those of the traditional classroom.

The study’s originality consists of identifying the main divergences between face-to-face and online teaching with the case method, from the COVID-19 pivot to online. The study’s value is to warn instructors of problems that may arise in online teaching with the case method, for which recommendations are made.

The need for developing new entrepreneurial ways of thinking and acting has been in the agenda for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the European Union countries. In line with their agenda, the Nordic Council of Ministers has been preoccupied with the development of entrepreneurial mindsets among the adult population. Seeking to meet the urgent need for developing entrepreneurial thinking, the Nordic Network for Adult Learning, together with the Nordic Council of Ministers, has elaborated and tested a Scandinavian model for stimulating entrepreneurial mindsets through the transformative learning circles. Based on the study of the TLC pilot project, this chapter explores the process of facilitation of entrepreneurial learning. The literature on entrepreneurial learning and education emphasises on the importance of facilitation; however, this issue is yet to be addressed in-depth. This chapter seeks to fill in this gap and contribute to our understanding of the role that facilitators play in the entrepreneurial and transformative learning processes. Drawing on the social constructionist approach to learning, this chapter discusses how facilitators and learners (entrepreneurs) become co-creators of knowledge and learning experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the reflective use of visual techniques in qualitative inter-viewing and suggests using visuals not only as projective techniques to elicit answers, but also as facilitation techniques throughout the interview process.

By reflecting on their own research projects in organization and management studies, the authors develop a practical approach to visual interviewing – making use of both projective and facilitation techniques. The paper concludes by discussing the limitations of visualization techniques, and suggesting directions for future research on visually enhanced interviewing.

The integration of projective and facilitation techniques enables the interviewer to build rapport with the respondent(s), and to elicit deeper answers by providing cognitive stimulation. In the course of the interview, such an integrative approach brings along further advantages, most notably focusing attention, maintaining interaction, and fostering the co-construction of knowledge between the interviewer and the interviewee(s).

This paper is reflective of what is currently occurring in the field of qualitative interviewing, and presents a practical approach for the integration of visual projection and facilitation in qualitative interviews.

The purpose of this paper is to annotate an attribute of a problem, a solution or no annotation on learners’ opinions automatically for supporting the learners’ discussion without a facilitator. The case method aims at discussing problems and solutions in a target case. However, the learners miss discussing some of problems and solutions.

Because opinions about problems and solutions on the same case are similar to each other, the proposed method uses opinions that are correctly annotated in past discussions for annotating an appropriate attribute on each opinion in discussions of the same case. The annotation on each opinion is identified by Support Vector Machine learned with opinions and annotations in the past discussion.

Compared to a simple method that uses decision tree classification, this proposed method improves the recall rate and the precision rate of annotating the attribute by over 10 per cent. The proposed method is effective for automatic annotation.

Because the recall rate and the precision rate of annotating an attribute of a problem are over 80 per cent, it is possible to make learners aware of problems that they should discuss. On the other hand, the recall rate and the precision rate of annotating an attribute of a solution are still low. The authors discuss the research issue to improve the rates for automatic annotation.