To encourage students to develop their skills as active listeners in discussion-based classes, I’ve begun to ask them to complete listening responses multiple times throughout the semester. I adapted the assignment from Jennifer Abbott, who originally conceived the idea of the listening response.
Why “active listening”?
There’s a substantial amount of research discussing techniques for promoting active listening.
Among the most helpful books on this topic is the collection of chapters in Listening to Teach. The book makes a compelling case for why educators themselves should move away from a didactic pedagogical approach, and center their own practice more closely around listening.
Adjustments
Though students had the information about listening responses from the beginning of the semester, for the first response, many forgot they should take notes on what their peers said. This resulted in a scramble to figure out what to say for their first submission. After the first semester this happened, to help ameliorate this problem, I had the first response due in the second week of classes, after which they remembered to do it for the rest of the semester.
Outcomes
I was encouraged in the responses to the listening responses. While some students thought that the responses amounted to busywork (which, having explained the purpose of the assignment extensively, I’m not sure how to combat at the moment), most saw the value in actively reorienting their attention to their peers.
Perhaps the most worthwhile outcome of the responses was that the exercise not only made more talkative students slow down to listen a bit closer to their peers, but it also seemed to encourage their quieter classmates. In their course evaluations, a few students commented that they appreciated the exercise because while they feel hesitant to speak in class, they do listen closely and that they felt like the assignment showed this in a way that otherwise might not have had the opportunity to reveal themselves.
The assignment
In addition to reflecting on your contribution to the class, and evaluating that of your peers, I will also ask you to strengthen your listening skills and consider and learn from your classmates’ perspectives, experiences, and claims.
Listening does not necessarily mean agreeing with what you hear or changing your mind. Nor does it mean attending to what you hear solely to combat and counter it. It means listening with curiosity, with the goal of better understanding, and perhaps, better appreciating an alternative perspective or viewpoint from your own. At times, it may result in reflecting on and questioning your own perspective.
To encourage you to practice this form of listening, at three points in the semester you will submit a response where you identify something that a peer says that surprises or intrigues you or that is different from your own perspective on the topics covered in class. To do this, I encourage you to incorporate things you hear in class that strike you (and who said it) into your normal class notes.
In each listening response, you will:
Identify the date when you heard your classmate’s contribution, who said it, and what we were talking about as a class (topic/reading/moment in class)
Briefly restate or summarize what they said.
Explain what you found surprising, intriguing, or different about what you heard, and why.
Technical details:
Length: 400-600 words
Submissions: Responses will be due at specific times throughout the semester and you are welcome to submit an entry ahead of the deadline (but may not submit your second entry before the first deadline has passed, nor submit the third before the second deadline has passed).
Should you not be able to attend class because you have to quarantine, then in lieu of identifying something a peer said, you will find a website or video online that is relevant to our course content in some way. You will then briefly summarize the website or video and how it relates to the course content; identify what was said or shown in the material that you found interesting; and explain why you found it surprising, intriguing, or different. The length of the assignment will remain the same.
Savitri Maya Kunze 