The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Candice Thomas (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

As a natural scientist, deliberation wasn’t initially on my radar as something to integrate into my courses. I primarily teach Human Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) and Nutrition courses, and I tend to approach those topics as a platform to inform others about how the body works (A&P) and how to nourish it (Nutrition). I didn’t think that there was much room for discussion in these courses because, in my mind, I just present the facts.

It didn’t take long for me to discover that I might need to reconsider. In my Nutrition course, the idea of adding deliberation as a meaningful approach to difficult topics presented itself when we started to move into more controversial topics such as food deserts and sustainability. I initially approached these topics as I had any other, just present the facts, but then one brave student raised their hand and added their own lived experience into the discussion. Soon, others weighed in and a whole spectrum of unique lived experiences and perspectives presented themselves.

It became apparent very quickly that I would need to allow time for more meaningful discussions in my courses that do not fit neatly into the framework of what is presented in a textbook. I really enjoyed these initial discussions, but I wasn’t certain how to navigate them. I didn’t know how to ensure that every voice was heard, and the environment felt safe and productive for each student in the room. So, when I learned about the DeeP Collaborative, I finally saw a path forward in which I could introduce discourse into the classroom setting in a meaningful and productive way.

Equipped with a roadmap for how to incorporate deliberation into the classroom, I headed into a course that was new to me, Senior Seminar for Health Sciences, this past spring semester. This course serves as the capstone course for all our Health Science students and is a last stop summative experience before they graduate. I saw this as an opportunity to really help our students navigate difficult conversations in a productive way before they left the safety of the college to enter into the real world.

By its very nature, careers in healthcare require that providers interact with a diverse population of patients, caretakers, and others each with their own unique perspective based on lived experiences and background. It isn’t a far stretch to imagine that any of those interactions may be challenging to navigate. Sometimes, I feel that when students graduate, we are throwing them into the fire and hopeful that they will just figure things out without any real guardrails or tools in place to help them with these specific challenges around discourse.

I viewed this course as an opportunity to empower students to think creatively and listen empathetically and truly connect with their future cliental. Ultimately, I decided to introduce controversial topics into the Health Sciences Senior Seminar course and to use deliberation to allow students to express, defend, and consider diverse perspectives in a formal way. My goal was that students could take this experience with them into the next step on their journey and appreciate that they don’t have to agree with everything that everyone says or does, but it is important to be respectful of others and consider their stories. I believe this to be a very important piece of the puzzle in healthcare.

The capstone course had several requirements built in that were not possible to alter as these assignments are required for program assessment. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the ways that I could use the course objectives and projects that were already in place to integrate deliberation into the course. For example, students are required to use published literature in their field of study to write a paper. In preparation, students read several primary literature articles and come to class prepared to discuss them with the instructor and their peers. Students are also required to prepare a presentation based on primary literature, journal club style, walking their peers through the article and fielding questions about the paper.

I decided to use these activities and assignments to have students present a perspective and support it with evidence in the form of peer reviewed primary literature. This served as the expertise on the topic. In addition, I asked students to create a deliberation guide on the topic they presented. As a class, the students selected three controversial topics in healthcare that they were most interested in exploring further.  Students then ranked the topics in order of the topic they were most interested in presenting to the topic they were least interested in. 

There were 18 students in the course, and with three general topics, I was able to split the class up into three groups of six. For each topic, one group of six students was assigned to be the presenters and moderators on their deliberation day (“the organizers”); the other 12 students would serve as participants (“the deliberators”) in the deliberation. The six student “organizers” for a topic were randomly assigned a “side” to defend such that three students would present and defend one side, and the other three students would present and defend the other side.  One group presented one day and the next group presented the following day. These six students then created a comprehensive deliberation guide as a group project and distributed them to the 12 student deliberators for that topic.

On the deliberation day, the student organizers who presented and created the deliberation guides served as deliberation moderators in one way or another, either as the facilitator, devil’s advocate, or rule enforcer. By deliberation day, the deliberating students were to have read two papers, one in favor of a “side” and the other in favor of the other “side,” and the organizing students’ deliberation guide. At the deliberation they were randomly assigned to one of two groups as participants (just to limit the size of the deliberation). Each group needed to come up with a policy that they could all agree on by the end of the deliberation. Each student then completed a reflection. Then for the next topic, the next group of six (six different students) served as facilitators and the process repeated twice.

In the deliberations, the deliberating students came into the deliberation with their own lived experiences, beliefs and values; they were not assigned a position or side. The weeks that preceded this portion of the course were spent learning about deliberation, the creation of deliberation guides and deliberation day rules, and participation in a practice deliberation that I facilitated so that student facilitators were prepared to do it themselves. I did not participate in the deliberations myself and was therefore able to observe and take notes on what I heard and saw to provide insight before the next deliberation and adjust as necessary for future sections.

What I learned is that students really enjoyed participating in deliberations. They enjoyed the formal structure and the fact that there was some oversight by the facilitators that created a safe space to share. Students were able to realize the value of this activity and how it could help them approach difficult conversations in the future. I also enjoyed this aspect of my course; it was very different from what I am used to doing and caused me to step outside of my comfort zone and try something very different. As an educator it is important for me to challenge myself, not be afraid to try new things, and model that for my students.

There were a few areas for improvement as well. It is critical that students come to the deliberations prepared. I found that student participants weren’t reading the papers that were presented on each topic by the facilitators, so they weren’t able to expand much upon what the literature stated, making some of the discussion a bit generic. The unprepared students would often just agree with what someone else already contributed but didn’t add to the conversation. I also found that trying to integrate three deliberations into the course was a bit much. The students and I could benefit from taking a bit more time on the background of deliberation and the importance of it. 

I will continue to incorporate deliberation into my courses but with a few changes. The first change that I will make is to slow down and reduce the number of formal deliberations that we do. I will spend more time on the background of deliberations and work through a couple of example case studies. I have also decided to integrate controversial topics into their final capstone paper in a way that the students have a more vested interest in the deliberation process. Finally, to ensure that students read the literature and engage more with the subject matter, I will have all students reflect on each article and contribute to the creation of a collaborative deliberation guide.

 I am now teaching the second section of the Senior Seminar in which I will implement these changes for a more improved experience with deliberation for my students. I have learned from speaking with students in this new class that some of them have even chosen to sign up for this section of the course so that they can participate in the deliberative process. I find this to be a promising step in the right direction, and I am honored to be part of that process.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Sally Bullock (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

Between the opioid epidemic, COVID-19, measles outbreaks, and the current administration’s push to “Make America Healthy Again,” public health has been in the spotlight a lot recently. As an Assistant Professor of Public Health, one of my biggest challenges over the past few years has been teaching my students the public health fundamentals while also keeping up with all these pressing issues and the wide range of opinions on how to tackle them.

There are certainly evidence-based approaches that work for many major public health problems. But every intervention and policy decision involves complex trade-offs and competing values that affect our individual and collective well-being, which is why people see these issues so differently. While I encourage my students to critically analyze the public health topics we cover, I’ve noticed that this diversity of viewpoints doesn’t always come through in our class discussions or assignments. Students often seem reluctant to explore different perspectives, and many struggle to really understand viewpoints that don’t align with their own.

This concerns me because as future health professionals, my students will need to engage with diverse stakeholders and facilitate productive discussions about complex health challenges that uniquely affect different communities. So, when the Faculty Director of the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI) approached me about having students in my classes join Deliberative “D” Team discussions on topics relevant to public health, I was immediately interested. It sounded like a great opportunity for my students and dovetailed nicely with my efforts to integrate deliberation into my courses as a member of the DCI’s Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative.

As part of my Introduction to Public Health and Health Disparities classes, my students participated in “D” Teams where they discussed three challenging public health topics – substance abuse, pandemic preparedness, and healthcare reform – over the course of three sessions. These small group discussions brought together community members, students, staff, and alumni. The format gave students a chance to hear different perspectives on these complex issues, share their own thinking, and work together toward potential solutions.

At the end of the semester, students submitted essays reflecting on their D Team experience. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive; students found the discussions both valuable and surprisingly civil. Many had expected contentious, winner-take-all debates, but instead found themselves in respectful conversations where people listened to each other with genuine empathy.

Despite coming from different backgrounds, students were often surprised by how much common ground they found. While a few wished for more ideological diversity, others saw the ability to reach consensus as encouraging. As one student wrote, “our unity in these conversations gives me hope that real change could be attainable and is best fostered through intentional and thoughtful deliberation.” Another noted, “The best part was seeing people change their views after hearing new perspectives. It showed how effective open discussion can be.”

What excited me most was seeing students bridge course content with their deliberations. They referenced frameworks we’d studied in class, like the social ecological model for understanding the opioid epidemic and used them to help their groups think through complex problems. Students appreciated how the class prepared them to contribute meaningfully, and they could really see the “real world” applications of what we’d been learning.

The impact went both ways. D Team participation enriched our classroom discussions too, as students would bring back perspectives and ideas they’d encountered in their small groups.

I’m thrilled my students had this opportunity. The D Teams didn’t just reinforce course content, they helped students grasp the true complexity of public health issues and develop confidence in contributing to difficult conversations. As one student reflected, “Participating in these deliberations helped me to appreciate the difficulty of public health policymaking, as I came in with opinions, but left with unanswered questions. I think that’s a good thing, as being a ‘deliberative citizen’ means being willing to listen and reconsider views in light of new information and experiences.”

Several students left inspired to keep working on skills like articulating ideas under pressure, improving their listening, and staying open to different viewpoints. Perhaps most importantly, they grasped something fundamental about deliberation. As another student put it, “One of the most important things I learned was that deliberation is not about winning an argument or choosing a side. It’s about understanding the ‘why’ behind different views and finding common ground.”

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By José Manuel Batista (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

Before the first Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) meeting, I wanted to get a better idea of what deliberative pedagogy was all about; so, I read through all the DCI Blogs and found the reports from college professors very instructive. Even though I was not versed in the practice or theory of deliberative pedagogy, the DCI blogs did provide a helpful window into what the DeeP collaborators actually did and what would be expected of participants.

Of all the blogs, I found the work of one professor, the classics historian Dr. Vander Poppen from Rollins College, most intriguing and relatable in terms of how I could use a deliberative approach in my course on “Spanish American Civilization and Culture.” After watching his video, I began to think about adopting role-playing to motivate students to engage with historical events, controversies and documents by drawing up a list of major controversies and historical events to consider for the course.

As I came to fully understand deliberative pedagogy under Dr. Graham Bullock’s direction, and its connection with our democratic ideals as documented by Carcasson, Drury, Hess and McAvoy, and others, I realized that I had to radically transform the course and not just add an extended role-play activity to deepen comprehension of the material. I had to embrace a more humanistic pedagogy that fosters empathy and understanding, and not just critical thinking; a pedagogy that revolves around collaborative learning. The epiphany was important because, for this project, I was able to set aside my fixation on inquiry-based learning and the Socratic method.

The readings, different types of meetings, and the participants were instrumental in the process of developing the course. After reading the “DCI Guide to Different Forms of Discourse,” for example, I decided to include at least one of each type of discourse (conversation, discussion, dialogue, debate, and deliberation) so that students could gain a better understanding of a deliberation by way of contrast.

The initial Deliberation Facilitator Training Program Sessions in which DeeP faculty interacted with Davidson Wildcats was one of the highlights of the entire experience. Dr. Graham Bullock and Willow Paul organized micro-deliberations as well as mini deliberations for us to experience. I personally found these events memorable and meaningful. For example, I decided to use micro-deliberations as a skills development tool from this experience. In this manner, I thought, I could dedicate a particular warm-up session to a basic aspect of deliberation whether its deliberative dispositions, facilitation styles, ground rules, etc.

The DeeP Collaborative Cohort meetings were also helpful. In the second such meeting, I remember the biologist Dr. Kate LeCroy sharing her course plans and I was struck by her emphasis on the debrief and reflective component of the deliberations. Up until then, I had not really considered the value of the debrief or reflection, and, as a result, I made sure to leave ample room for this important step of the deliberation. More importantly, she really seemed to grasp the humanistic element of the deliberation; something that I had not yet fully assimilated.

The Faculty Partner Meetings were also great; I was fortunate to be paired with Dr. Abril Jiménez, a professor of Spanish at Davidison College. As language professors, our discussions helped me better adapt the deliberative approach to my Spanish language content course. Dr. Jiménez also showed me the value of broaching current affairs topics in class. In fact, we now share an ever-growing discipline-specific list of deliberation topics to use in our Spanish-language classroom. As a side note, we may be the first DeeP partners to conduct all of our meetings in a foreign language!

The course I worked on is titled, “Spanish American Civilization and Culture: A Deliberative Approach,” and it’s an advanced undergraduate Spanish level content course. The first two weeks we read a selection from Grant and the first three chapters from Aikens and Talisse. Student wrote brief summaries of the reading assignments. They also thoroughly enjoyed the discussions and found Grant, in particular, incredibly helpful in their own personal lives.

Initially, students were to complete a dozen or more micro-deliberations as a class warm-up. Instead, however, since the aim was to use the micro-deliberation for skills development, the activity ended-up taking nearly the entire 75-minute class session. As a consequence, the number of micro-deliberations were reduced from 15 to five.

Students found these sessions helpful in terms of understanding what deliberations entail, practicing the deliberative rules or dispositions, and, most importantly, managing their emotional response to contrary views. All deliberation topics were contentious current affair topics and given the diversity of the classroom (36% white, 36% latino,18% African American, and 9% Asian) the deliberations were lively and, for some, challenging.

Dr. Graham Bullock’s modeling and the readings from Hess and McAvoy were helpful in handling certain situations. After the micro-deliberations, the course then shifted to two multi-day deliberations. The deliberations were simulated, that is, students adopted a historical persona to deliberate on whether to accept or reject a newly founded republic’s constitution.

Originally, the first deliberation was a role-play and the second would have tackled a current affair. However, after the first simulation, and the wonderful student feedback, I decided to repeat the simulation in order to improve upon it. The students agreed because they felt somewhat unprepared to discuss the first constitution and found it difficult to stay in character.

Given these observations, in the second deliberation on a different constitution, we spent an additional day analyzing the constitution, rehearsed roles with a prop, mask or costume the day prior to the deliberation, and came to class in character for the deliberation. Students stayed in character and saw others as characters. I made an effort to balance political leanings of characters as well as assigning characters opposite to the student’s own political leanings. The students had a blast and the quality of the deliberation was excellent.

I look forward to continuing to improve the course, expanding the use of deliberation in other courses, like an Honors section of a Critical Thinking and Communication course, and perhaps, if time allows, develop yet another course on the Fundamentals of Democracy. I also intend to continue participating in Deliberative Forums hosted by Davidson College. I participated in a couple during the Fall of 2024 to gain more experience with deliberations. At UNC Charlotte, Dr. Andrew Keener and Dr. Mindy Adnot, both DeeP Collaborative alumni, got wind of my involvement with the DeeP Collaborative and kindly invited me to participate in a Faculty Workshop on deliberation that took place on March 17^th, 2025. Even though I was still reading and working on the course, I presented my initial work with micro-deliberations as a skills-development tool. The reception to our workshop was positive and we plan on doing a follow-up next academic year.

Selected Readings

1. Akin, S., and R.B. Talisse. Why We Argue (And How We Should), Routledge, 2018.
2. Bullock, Graham, and Kyle Braxton. “DCI Guide to Different Forms of Discourse”
3. Hess, Diana E., and Paula McAvoy. The Political Classroom, Routledge, 2015.
4. Grant, Adam. “Actions for Impact.” Think Again. The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Viking, 2021, pp. 253-259.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Daina Nathaniel (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

I was thrilled when I first learned that I was selected to be a part of the Collaborative in 2024-2025. After all, I had been doing deliberation of some form or another in my classes over the last 20 years or so. What I could not have anticipated was the variety of factors that would come to bear on this deliberative exercise, beyond whether students were understanding the content of the course or not.

My Intercultural Communication course seemed to be the perfect match. While I constantly challenge my students with seemingly off-the-wall comments and questions in all of my classes, I knew immediately that this course, which focuses on intercultural interaction, would be well tailored to discussing relevant issues of the day and within the context of the class without much effort to make it seem so.

While I felt confident about being able to integrate Deliberative Dialogue (dare I say) more deliberately in my class, there were some fundamental assumptions that I went with into the process that were in themselves challenged as a matter of course.

Assumptions about Students

It can be a challenge at times to ascertain student interest in current affairs, and often, we as educators simply try to gauge how much they might know about a particular subject or issue. I used the content units of the course to determine the types of deliberative questions the students would consider to demonstrate a clear connection with the course outcomes and learning objectives. At the same time, however, I really sought to understand what issues got students fired up.

What I learned through the Deliberative Dialogue process is that sometimes students may not be able to identify at the outset what they think about certain issues. They can be reticent about even discussing issues out in the open for fear of being judged, particularly by their peers. As I continue to grow in this practice of Deliberative Dialogue, there is some pre-work that needs to be done to prepare students for the discomfort that they might feel and to provide assurances that the classroom will remain a safe space for them to explore ideas – especially those that may be different from others.

Assumptions about Issues

In designing the prompts for the Deliberative Dialogues, I focused on issues that linked with the unit being discussed, but in a way that connected to the students’ current experiences on and off campus. I thought that given this was my first time (and theirs), it was important to keep the integrity of the exercise but make the issues as relatable to students in their current circumstances.

Should I do this in the future, I will solicit ideas from students, not necessarily about the Deliberative Dialogue prompts directly, but about campus and society related concerns that they might have. These may be specific to our campus but could also have implications across other institutions of Higher Education and the wider community. It is clear that when people have a stake in an issue, they are more likely to engage in discussing it. Since this is likely the first time that students will be expected to deliberate about issues in this way, and even take a position with which they don’t agree, getting their buy-in from the beginning might be a good starting point.

Assumptions about Myself as the Moderator

From the start and after the first set of Collaborative training and readings, I felt abundantly prepared to lead the Deliberative Dialogue process. What I could not have anticipated was that a complete change in circumstances could thwart my plans and to pivot seamlessly was a significant challenge. To me, introducing this process to students (maybe particularly my students) is best done in person. I could not have known that I would have had to switch to online classes by the third week of the semester. At my institution, students are not used to having online classes and few are even offered in my department. Given that the course I integrated this exercise into is required or suggested by a number of different departments, many students have not even had a course in my content area. Needless to say, there can be a steep learning curve for many students who may not be used to the structure and style of our courses.

Switching to the online modality was in itself tough in terms of keeping students interested and engaged particularly when this was not what they signed up for. So, making the Deliberative Dialogue exercises meaningful became more of a challenge. I believe that people who are more familiar with online discussions are better able to engage in these dialogues virtually, but honestly, it all felt quite contrived for my students, who arguably did the best with the situation.

Moreover, should I use this exercise again, I would like to train students to be moderators as well, as I believe it is important that they don’t see me as always being in charge and that they learn the skills of moderation as well – a skill that may not be stressed in the program as a matter of course.

Overall, despite some of the pitfalls, Deliberative Dialogue is a useful tool to get students (and community members) to interact about issues of import in their communities. Many have expressed concern that the growth of social media and the use of technology have made people more reticent to deliberate issues in fair-minded ways to bring about increased understanding. This process, in my view, takes the critical thinking process into the realm of the practical by providing opportunities for those involved to figure out what they think and perhaps, what they think about.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Gina Amatangelo (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

What we did:

I integrated deliberation techniques into our undergraduate Civic Leadership seminar, a service learning course offered in partnership between the Public Administration program and the Honors College.

As a service project for the course, students wrote deliberation guides on a range of issues that were relevant to the May 2025 municipal election. Given that municipal elections in San Antonio are nonpartisan, and voter turnout is historically very low, ranging between 15-17% in recent elections, this seemed like a good opportunity to educate students on the issues impacting by city and county government and attempt to inspire more participation among college students.

We discussed the role of deliberation in addressing community challenges, and practiced deliberation in class using a deliberation guide created by my graduate class from a prior semester. Students researched the issues in teams and were encouraged to provide a range of perspectives on the issues in the guides. We went through a process of peer review and faculty review and students revised and submitted final guides for use in our campus event. We devoted one class session to facilitation training and a second session to facilitation practice, using the guides created by the students themselves. Students then organized a campus forum in which other UTSA students could come and learn about issues such as infrastructure investment, housing affordability, homeless encampments, city funding for reproductive care, and a proposed sports and entertainment district. Authors of the guides served as table facilitators.

What we gained from it / What worked well:

Students who opened up the session did a wonderful job of articulating the value of deliberation for community engagement and encouraging democratic participation. Here is an excerpt from their presentation:

• “Heart of democracy
• Creates a safe space to discuss ideas
• Allows participants to engage with new perspectives
• Strengthens community ties through problem-solving
• Fosters a nuanced understanding of issues, creating informed individuals”

Additionally, most of the students who attended the forum seemed to genuinely engage in the discussion. Several groups were still immersed in animated conversation when it was time to close the session. Students generally seemed to appreciate the opportunity to serve as a discussion facilitator and reflected on the skills that they gained from the experience.

What could we improve in the future:

Time to review the guides: Our event was a drop-in event in which a range of students participated out of curiosity or a desire for extra credit or Honors event credit. As a result, participants were not provided the deliberation guides in advance of the event. Instead, facilitators gave them an overview and walked them through the background materials prior to the discussion. At some tables, this led to an imbalance in participation as some participants were more knowledgeable about the topics. If we were to host a deliberation event again, we would partner with another class so that students would be provided materials in advance and have more opportunity to prepare and know what to expect prior to the deliberation.

Time to learn about a range of issues: Additionally, we agreed that in the future, we would try to host 2 sessions, one session to simply offer information on issues related to the municipal election, and a second session for an in-depth deliberation. Students talked about the tradeoff of allowing students to move around the room and learn about all of the topics represented in the room versus remaining at one table for a full in-depth deliberation.

How students responded:

Most students enjoyed the role of facilitator. Their feedback on the service project and process of writing the guides was very positive.A few students expressed difficulty with maintaining neutrality with individuals with opposing viewpoints or with questions that stemmed from their intellectual curiosity. In the future, I might more explicitly discourage students from facilitating discussions on topics about which they feel very strongly.

This student perspective captures the spirit of the event well. “By hosting this event, we raised awareness of topics in San Antonio that people should care about but may not know about. By hosting an event where people are welcome, and all ideas are meant to be heard in a respectful manner, an event like this has the ability to bring people together. For change to happen, people need to be aware of the things going on in their city, feel like other people care too, and work together to make a difference. I think that this event accomplished a piece of that process.”

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Fangzhi He (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

Since voice in writing is increasingly diluted by generative AI, identity can be camouflaged by technology, and the self is still under exploration during the first year, it’s not hard to imagine that students enrolled in my Writing 101 course, “Voice, Identity, and Self,” primarily to fulfill a graduation requirement. But I want more for them: I want them to use writing to ask deeper questions, and I aim to engage them in learning that is authentic, courageous, and reflective.

In Spring 2025, I experimented with deliberative pedagogy. In addition to reading and writing on the course theme, I invited students to discuss meaningful ideas, research relevant literature, and listen to diverse perspectives. These deliberative sessions cultivated a richer, more dynamic classroom culture where students didn’t merely state their views but truly engaged with the views of others.

Designing the Space for Dialogue

Our weekly discussions built the foundation. Each week centered on a theme, from voice in academic writing and concepts of self to identity and ableism, even generative. Students came prepared to discuss assigned readings. These smaller discussions were informal and scaffolded by guiding questions. Over time, they became practice grounds for our more structured deliberative dialogues. Students grew their awareness of the norms of deliberation: respectful listening, building on others’ ideas, supporting ideas with evidence, and thinking before speaking.

We held three major deliberation sessions, after soliciting students’ ideas and interests. Each one required students to draw upon the course materials, their personal experiences, and their rhetorical skills:

1. Does writing empower or limit identity formation?
2. Should diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in educational institutions be restricted under federal civil rights law?
3. How can generative AI impact learning in higher education?

Each deliberation was framed differently. The first one was like a debate, where one group of students who shared the same argued against an opposing group. The second one was run in the form of a town hall, where students were assigned different roles to defend their position, such as parents, first-generation students, university or Corporate Diversity Officers, and government officials. The third one was organized like a seminar, where students take turns answering the questions in the deliberation guide. The goal was not to win an argument but to explore the tensions, assumptions, and values behind differing perspectives. Before each session, students worked in small groups, searching for relevant sources and drafting their arguments. After each session, they wrote an essay to write just what they heard, but how their own thinking shifted, citing scholarly sources and connecting the course readings.

What Worked Well

The most rewarding part of this pedagogy was watching students realize that learning happens not just in solitary study, but in community. Many commented that they had never had the chance to engage with peers in such depth about real-world issues. They valued hearing opinions that differed from their own, especially when grounded in lived experience.

In one session, a student noted, “To begin with, I only knew writing to be an emancipating way of letting oneself be found. I now understand how institutional conventions work as a gatekeeping function, limiting whose voices get to be heard and valued.” In another session, a student who initially viewed DEI initiatives as “creating reverse discrimination and undermining the spirit of civil rights” reconsidered after hearing a peer describe how such programs created a sense of belonging on campus. Another student, skeptical of generative AI in education, became more open after a classmate shared how ChatGPT helped him as a multilingual writer to find proper expression and reduce his anxiety over writing in English. These statements evidenced thoughtful expansions of perspective.

The structure also encouraged more reserved students to participate. In the deliberative format, everyone had a role, and the focus shifted from answering correctly to contributing meaningfully. Some of the quiet students became insightful contributors when freed from the pressure of formulating a polished argument on the spot.

Where We Stumbled

Deliberation takes time. Sometimes, we had to rush over the topic within the assigned time. Occasionally, students tended to arrive at a consensus, avoiding deeper conflict or disagreement. I also noticed that students sometimes struggled to use scholarly evidence, solely relying on personal experiences. More scaffolding might improve this, such as pre-deliberation writing prompts.

In topics like DEI, students felt it hard to defend their position enthusiastically, either because of the assigned role or the emotional intensity. I realized the need for explicit guidance on difficult conversations, including how to disagree constructively and how to recognize privilege or positionality in conversation.

What We Gained

Through deliberative pedagogy, students practiced respectful listening, logical reasoning, critical reflection, and rhetorical agency. They discovered that voice in writing is not just individual expression; rather, it is shaped in dialogue with others. Many students described moments of feeling “seen” or “heard” in ways they hadn’t expected. They also noted that the deliberation sessions helped them know better other students as individuals, especially when they used their personal experiences to support their arguments.

The deliberations also helped break down binaries between empowerment and constraint, pro- and anti-AI stances, and support and critique of DEI. Students realized that real thinking happens in moments of disagreement and that writing can be a way of navigating complexity.

Looking Ahead

I plan to incorporate deliberation into my future courses since students shared that they greatly enjoyed it. I’m thinking about building more intentional bridges between deliberations topics, the course themes, and written assignments. I’m also considering assigning more roles like “devil’s advocate” or “evidence checker” to deepen the quality of engagement.

Deliberative pedagogy reminds me that education isn’t just about transmitting knowledge; it’s about fostering democratic habits of mind. It’s about creating space for disagreement, uncertainty, and dialogue. In the increasingly polarized world, the classroom can be a valuable space for nuanced conversation. I’m grateful to my students for showing me just how much they are committed to learning and are ready for any challenge.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Kate LeCroy (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

This spring, I re-designed my Conservation Biology course at Rhodes College with the hope of improving students’ engagement with each other about big, current problems in conservation biology. Over the course of the semester, students became not just consumers of information, but active contributors to our shared process of inquiry. We did this by embedding structured deliberations into our weekly rhythm, and we transformed Wednesday classes into deliberations where students navigated environmental “wicked problems” together.

The Topics

We explored five main topics this way: the re-introduction of wolves in Colorado, the consequences of honey bee conservation in North Amerca, philosophical and practical questions surrounding zoos, management of invasive species, and trophy hunting. Each of these issues carried ethical tension, tradeoffs, and a diversity of stakeholder perspectives. Students examined scientific literature alongside economic reports, Indigenous perspectives, and public policy analyses. In doing so, they developed both ecological literacy and gained fluency in collective reasoning.

The Structure

Deliberation, as we practiced it, went beyond discussion. It was a structured, collaborative inquiry into disagreement. It required that students engage with uncertainty, interrogate assumptions, and stretch their thinking by listening carefully to others. Each deliberation spanned two weeks. On the first Wednesday, we focused on mapping out the dimensions of a given issue and identifying a range of positions. Students prepared by reading three assigned articles, conducting their own “ground research,” and submitting their interpretations through an issue survey to capture their initial thinking. In class, three student presenters introduced the week’s topic and synthesized what they had learned from a given assigned reading. Student moderators then guided the class through a group activity that involved collaboratively identifying causes, consequences, stakeholders, and tradeoffs of the issue, and ultimately mapping three or more distinct positions that a person could take.

On the second Wednesday of a deliberation sequence, the focus shifted from mapping to actively deliberating. Students signed up to for leadership roles in these second Wednesdays, and each of the 16 students tried at least one of the roles: one student acted as the Opener, summarizing the positions mapped the week before in a graphical handout they designed (example below) along with a brief introduction. Two Deliberation Facilitators then posed questions to the rest of the class, guiding the deliberation process, and a Scribe took notes and captured the conversation in detail, using attribution to help document the deliberation. In the final portion of class, students reflected on how the deliberation impacted their overall takeaway about the issue and broader conservation biology contexts.

Outcomes & Feedback

Student evaluations of their experience confirmed that the deliberative approach deepened their engagement with the material. Many cited the structure, especially the issue forms and leadership roles, as key to their preparation and confidence. They reported that the most engaging topics were those with no easy answers. Trophy hunting, for example, was one of the most popular because it forced students to grapple with competing conservation strategies, moral philosophies, and economic realities. The topic of honey bee conservation surprised many students by upending the assumption that saving honey bees in North America is always a good thing, leading to nuanced discussions about native species and ecological balance.

Several students noted that acting as facilitators, openers, or scribes helped them develop leadership skills and a better grasp of classroom dynamics. They reported growing more comfortable with ambiguity, and as facilitators, they became more confident in drawing quieter voices into the conversation. Disagreement, when it occurred, was overwhelmingly described as respectful and generative. Students recognized that it was not only acceptable, but necessary, to encounter views that differed from their own.

By the end of the semester, students had not only built a strong foundation in conservation biology but had also experienced the kind of civic learning in an upper-level biology course necessary for preparing early-career professionals for a society where misinformation and eroding trust of scientific information is all too common [1]. They learned to navigate complex issues collaboratively, communicate across difference, and listen with the intent to understand. The deliberation format gave them practice in collective reasoning, and the role structure ensured accountability and inclusion.

If the goal of teaching is to help students become more thoughtful, informed, and responsible stewards of the world, then I feel deliberative pedagogy proved itself a worthy foundation. This is a model I plan to keep refining and one I believe could enrich classrooms far beyond mine.

Acknowledgements and References: I would like to thank my first students in the Spring 2024 conservation biology course for inspiring me to learn more about boosting student interactions in class, and I thank the sixteen students enrolled in conservation biology for Spring 2025 for being willing to experiment and try out deliberations. Without their curiosity and willingness to try something new, we wouldn’t have accomplished this work. Lastly, I am deeply grateful to Graham Bullock and the Davidson College Deliberative Citizenship Initiative for their generosity of time, training program resources, and funding. Reference: [1] Osborne, J., & Pimentel, D. (2023). Science education in an age of misinformation. Science Education, 107(3), 553–571. PDF link

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Ja’Nya Jenoch (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

The Process

When I first saw the email about applying for a Deliberative Collaborative Initiative (DCI) fellowship, I was intrigued and excited. As an early scholar, I enjoyed another teaching and learning fellowship two summers ago and it helped me to develop my teaching skills and increase confidence. So, I was curious to see what this DCI fellowship could bring.

The goal of the fellowship is for professors to develop and implement a deliberation-based syllabus in one course. I did not even know that deliberative pedagogy was a thing before reading that email; however, during our summer 2024 orientation my cohort and I were immersed in this innovative pedagogy for advancing civil conversations in the classroom. We not only learned what deliberative pedagogy was, we were supplied with ample tools and resources and sent back to our home colleges and universities with a 9-month plan for creating classes where students will be engaged in meaningful dialogue about our nation’s most pressing issues.

The Design

My pilot course for teaching deliberative pedagogy was a course about Black Americans—a topic that had been given a swift controversial/banned label after January 2025 by national leaders. It was being taught to upper-level sociology students at a private liberal arts college with full administrative support. My approach to the course was multi-fold and had the following goals:

1. Provide a course that surveyed the topic using an historical lens.
2. Introduce students to deliberative pedagogy through readings, observations, and practice.
3. Have students present live class deliberations for their final course project.
4. Maintain awareness of the impact of the political climate on course topics.

To give students the historical lens that I wanted them to include in their deliberations, we visited the college’s archives for a curated tour. The librarian shared with the students an

actual indenture document and they learned about the challenges with reading and interpreting writing from that time. They also left with lots of resources and instructions on how to find archival data.

Next students read some of the more popular literature on deliberative pedagogy such as chapters from the book, Why We Argue. Afterwards we discussed the readings and identified key elements of deliberative pedagogy. I also introduced students to other practices that are in the civil discourse arena. These included a Living Room Conversation about the course topic and a Civil Dialogue on the benefits and disadvantages of the Civil Rights Act. According to the hierarchy of types of discourses, I viewed each of these early activities as practice and preparation for deliberation.

Once students were immersed and more knowledgeable about civil discourse in general, in week five of the course they were required to attend one of the DCI online forums. They attended the forum on religion and enjoyed it tremendously. Students were asked to write a reflection about the forum in response to these four questions:

1. Describe the facilitation styles that you observed and will plan to practice during your deliberation.
2. Were there parts of the deliberation that were more helpful than the others (e.g., panel, deliberation, guide, etc.)? Explain why they were more helpful to you.
3. What parts of the deliberation guide were most helpful in preparing you for the deliberation?
4. What three things will you take away from the forum to create your own deliberation?

After the forum I led the class through an in-class deliberation. The topic was integration in Boston Public Schools in 1965, and we used a deliberation guide from the National Issues Forum website. The purpose of this deliberation was to provide a second model of a live deliberation. Students were tasked with identifying facilitator roles such as refereeing and weaving during this class deliberation. The deliberation guide also served as another example of what a guide should look like. The one that we used did an excellent job of outlining the three options for the topic.

The course ended with pairs of students leading the class in deliberations on topics of their choosing. In pairs they wrote deliberation guides that included archival data, standard deliberation guide requirements, and two to three options for their topic. During the deliberation class each partner in the pair led a small group of five students through an identical deliberation. Students were assessed jointly on their deliberation guide and separately on their deliberation practice as a facilitator. Their final assignment for the deliberation project was to write a brief reflection in response to two out of eight questions/prompts.

Results: Improved Engagement

After a year of learning about and implementing deliberative pedagogy, I would say that this is a teaching tool that I definitely plan to use many times in the future. I found that when students were informed about how we were going to engage in the classroom, when they were given a set of guidelines, when they were allowed to observe & experience what they’re being asked to do, they felt more confident engaging in the classroom and exploring new topics in unique ways. Remember that this was a class where almost half of the students were seniors. It was smaller than average and most of the students knew each other personally or from prior courses. I thought this helped the deliberation process to unfold with deeper connection to the material. However, I conducted a mini deliberation in an intro sociology course and the students were as engaged as the upper-level students.

Deliberation enabled quiet students to participate meaningfully and take on leadership roles.

Results: The Importance of Structure & Observation

Given that this was the first deliberation-focused class that I have ever taught, I was curious to see what fostered engagement in both upper and lower-level classes. What I noticed was that students connected well with the structure of deliberation. They liked reading conversation agreements and deliberative dispositions. I placed slides with these structured aspects of the deliberation on the screen and asked for students to volunteer reading a few statements out loud. The deliberation practice of outlining what was going to take place and for how long also helped students to feel anchored in this practice. When students knew what to expect, they were quick to align with the goals of deliberation.

In my upper-level course, I feel that having students attend the DCI’s online forum was a game changer. After attending the forum, students returned to class knowing exactly what deliberation looked and felt like. One student was excited that he got to be in a breakout room with real practitioners and was able to engage in conversation with them. I found the live forum attendance to be greatly beneficial to student learning. Another adaptation that made deliberation work well in this course was pairing students to complete the guide and then have them practice facilitation individually during class. I would use this format again

since during the guide preparation students can work together, bounce ideas of each other, and create a more comprehensive guide. During the class deliberation I could assess each person’s level of participation in creating the guide.

Results: Students’ Response

The responses from students were positive. They enjoyed delving into topics in a meaningful way. They liked the deliberations and reported that the class should be mandatory for all students due to how much they learned and the way that they learned. They also enjoyed choosing topics for their personal deliberations. Having a deliberation- style class also allowed us to include current topics related to our course in a seamless way. We were able to include current topics like the 2025 Superbowl halftime show, the impacts of hot-of-the-press executive orders, and other topics that were not on the syllabus, and still feel like we were on track with the course outline.

I was nervous at the start of the semester. This was because I did not know how comfortable students would feel discussing topics that were banned nationwide in many classrooms. Initially I noticed some hesitation to voice thoughts about topics relevant to Black America, however as the semester progressed students became more comfortable expressing their thoughts, feelings, and concerns about the course topic. We had some animated discussions and some where students stayed 10 to 15 minutes after class to continue discussions. By the time that students had to lead their own deliberations I was happy to observe a classroom of students who were fully in charge of their learning and engagement. That was a beautiful sight to see each time. Deliberation allowed students to focus on the art of engaging in civil interactions about difficult topics even in the middle of controversy.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Overall, the DCI experience was a positive one. I have learned a pedagogy that enlivened my classes and helped students form deeper connections with each other and with the course material. Some things I would change are that I would assign one key reading at the beginning instead of several chapters at once. This would give students an introduction and they could learn more through class discussion and lectures on deliberative pedagogy. I would also have them watch a deliberation from the DCI video archives before attending a live deliberation.

The ability to ask questions is a cornerstone of sociological inquiry. This was also true of deliberative pedagogy. When I was preparing mini-deliberations and giving students feedback on their deliberation guides, I found that asking key questions can make a deliberation spark active discussion or have it fall flat. Next time I will focus more time learning the art of asking questions to foster even better deliberations.

I plan to implement deliberation in a similar way into other upper-level classes. In the semester that I piloted deliberation in the one class, I ended up including mini deliberations in other classes and students mentioned in their course evaluations that they liked these activities and the class discussions that emerged. Deliberative pedagogy is an effective pedagogical practice. If the structure, questions, and setting are right, it can bring classroom discussions to life and make them full of meaning and candor.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Vincent Russell (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

I have been involved in the public deliberation field for more than a decade, but prior to this DeeP Fellowship, I had never robustly incorporated public deliberation into my pedagogy. In the past, I did what I could to make my courses experiential and discussion-focused, and I often incorporate service-learning. I regularly include current events and controversial topics into my course material to encourage students to apply course content. After all, as a Communication scholar, I am interested in helping my students learn how to better talk to one another, and I believe that preparing students to be participatory and justice-oriented citizens is the fundamental purpose of postsecondary education.

When I told a colleague I had received this fellowship, she congratulated me and said it sounded like it would be a perfect fit for my Intercultural Communication course—an upper-level course I teach every year that focuses on communicating across difference, globalization, and social justice. I surprised my colleague by telling her yes, incorporating deliberation into that course would be a logical fit, but instead I had chosen to incorporate public deliberation into the introductory communication course I teach called Foundations of Communication. Allow me to explain why.

The Challenges of the Basic Course

At WCU, Foundations of Communication (what our discipline refers to as “the basic course”) is required for all students to satisfy the “oral communication” requirement of our general education curriculum. No other WCU courses satisfy the oral communication requirement, so nearly every undergraduate student at WCU must take the course to matriculate. Approximately 2,000 students take Foundations of Communication every year.

Teaching this course presents several challenges. First, students, most often, are not willing participants. They are in class because they must be, not because they chose to be there. Additionally, the students come from a range of majors (including undeclared majors), so their base knowledge of Communication varies widely. Third, despite the course being an introductory-level class intended for first- or second-year students, a significant number of juniors and seniors enroll.

This is partly due to our basic course program being underfunded (we don’t have enough instructors to meet demand, so there is a backlog of students needing to take the course to graduate) but also because of the content of the course. Students with high communication apprehension (colloquially known as “public speaking anxiety”) often delay taking the course until necessary. Thus, in any given section of our basic course, an instructor may have students across a range of ages and school experiences, and most of them did not elect to take the course but are simply there to fulfill a requirement.

Beyond adapting instruction to students’ needs, another challenge of the course is the content itself. The basic course tends to be known as “the public speaking class,” and many people are terrified of public speaking. So not only are students only in class because they must be, the general content we cover is usually unpleasant—if not downright panic-inducing—for the students.

However, our course is not just about public speaking. We also cover interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, small group communication, and mediated communication. It is a lot of material to cover in a single semester, and then you must factor in the days dedicated just to having students deliver presentations in class (and I usually require three presentations each semester). Dedicating class time to presentations reduces the number of days that one can cover and practice content.

As a final note about the challenges of the basic course, our instructor team has noticed since the COVID-19 pandemic that students increasingly struggle with the interpersonal communication aspects of the course. Sure, they still struggle with giving a presentation, too, but what has been new since 2020 is that students appear less confident in their abilities to have casual conversations with classmates, make friends, participate in group work, contribute to class discussions, and perform the other quotidian tasks of face-to-face communication. In other words, our students’ communication apprehension used to be, primarily, about public speaking. Since 2020, we’re finding that their communication apprehension has extended to interpersonal contexts, too. Many of our students appear anxious about simply talking to their classmates. National trends appear to corroborate our experiences, as college students are increasingly anxious and lonely.

The Opportunities of the Basic Course

These challenges of Foundations of Communication also make it ripe for the benefits of public deliberation. First, the class includes diverse students from varying backgrounds, which means they are more likely to have varying viewpoints on public issues than students who self-selected to enroll in an elective course. Second, the plurality of students in the basic course usually are first- and second-year students, so I was hopeful that their opinions on public issues were still malleable and that deliberating about these issues could help students better refine their stances. Third, I believe it’s important to expose students early to the skills of deliberation so that they can reap those benefits in later courses. If they learn the basics of reason-giving, source credibility, and how to disagree with classmates in my basic Communication course, then those skills will serve them will in their future coursework, whatever it may be.

Most importantly, though, I saw deliberative pedagogy as a way to help students reduce their interpersonal communication apprehension. I provided explicit instruction about the communicative orientations and skills necessary to perform deliberation well, along with structured opportunities to participate in (and facilitate) deliberation with classmates. In doing so, I intended to provide opportunities to practice the communication skills of questioning, reason-giving, empathy, managing conflict, problem-solving, and decision-making. This, in turn, would help them feel more comfortable relating to their classmates.

Incorporating Deliberation into the Basic Course

To incorporate deliberative pedagogy into my Foundations of Communication course, I revamped the assigned readings to include several pieces of scholarship about deliberative pedagogy and public deliberation, the facilitator’s guide from the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, and several chapters out of Lara Schwartz’s Try to Love the Questions. Schwartz’s book was recommended to me by another DeeP faculty fellow, and it does a good job preparing students for the deliberative dispositions I wanted them to practice.

I scaffolded the course so that students were introduced to deliberative pedagogy and its basic concepts at the beginning of the semester. Later, as the semester progressed, they read about specific deliberation skills, such as listening, questioning, and facilitating. I dedicated class time to several “practice deliberations,” where I facilitated 30-minute conversations with the class about social issues. I also used activities from the Constructive Dialogue Institute and the Collaborative Discussion Project to give students chances to practice specific deliberation skills. For instance, on the day we practiced listening, I used the “Listening to Understand” activity from the Collaborative Discussion Project to give students a chance to practice listening skills they read about prior to class that day. All of these examples were ungraded opportunities to practice deliberation skills.

I also had various graded components to promote deliberative learning. Most significantly, students were put into groups and assigned to facilitate a deliberation about a topic I had chosen. I created four groups with six students in each group. On their assigned deliberation day, the entire class was assigned to read a deliberation guide (from DCI and/or) about the topic for that day. I chose issue guides from DCI and the National Issues Forum Institute about social media regulation, economic mobility, immigration, and police reform. On deliberation day, the facilitators were expected to deliver an 8–10-minute informative presentation summarizing the deliberation guide and the perspectives it offered, explaining how the deliberation time would be structured, and offering a conversation agreement.

Following the presentation, the facilitators had 60 minutes to facilitate deliberation about the topic. The class broke into six small groups, with one facilitator in each group, and the facilitators guided the students through the questions in the deliberation guide. I then floated around the groups grading the facilitators on their facilitation skills. After each deliberation day, every student had to complete a reflection essay identifying what they thought they did well, what they want to improve for the next deliberation, and how course concepts manifested during their conversations. Facilitators had a specific set of questions to answer in those essays, while deliberators had a different set of questions.

These graded deliberation days occurred about halfway through the semester. I structured the course in this way so that students already would have had several weeks to build rapport with one another, develop a baseline understanding of public deliberation, and practice their deliberation skills in class before being graded on a student-led deliberation.

This assignment structure accomplished several goals. First, it was efficient. I typically require an informative speech in the class around the middle of the semester, and this deliberation assignment was a way to merge informative speaking with deliberation, thereby combining two assignments into one. Second, every student facilitated one deliberation and participated in three deliberations as a deliberator, so they gained exposure to both roles and had multiple opportunities to practice deliberation skills. Because students were assigned pre-existing deliberation guides (rather than researching and writing their own), the students could focus more on applying the communication skills of deliberation, which was my goal for this introductory course.

In summary, students had three graded assignments related to deliberation. Each group received a group grade for their informative presentation—after all, this course does have a public speaking component. Each student received an individual grade and feedback about their performance as a facilitator, and then every student received grades for their reflection essays (four total).

Outcomes and Next Steps

Overall, my first foray into robust deliberative pedagogy went well, but there are some things I want to change. In the future, I need to make the facilitator groups smaller. I had 24 students in class this semester, so when they would break into six small groups to deliberate, each group had four students in it (one facilitator and three deliberators). Because students sometimes were absent, some facilitators had a group with only two deliberators in it, which isn’t sufficient for robust deliberation. However, creating more facilitator groups means finding additional days in my already jam-packed course schedule to hold graded deliberations. Another improvement I would like to make is to find a way to give students feedback on their deliberation skills. This semester, I only graded each student’s facilitation skills. I had developed a rubric for the deliberators and had the idea of having students fill them out for their peers (so students were giving each other feedback on their deliberation rather than me), but I scrapped the idea because the logistics were too complicated for my first time incorporating these deliberation assignments.

As for outcomes, I believe students appreciated the opportunity to learn about pressing social issues and talk with one another. In their reflection papers, many students remarked upon their anxiety related to discussing “political” issues. Having grown up on social media, they feared that social media dynamics about politics would play out in the classroom (e.g., being “canceled,” people making fun of them, appearing ignorant, etc.). Students tended to appreciate that the deliberation assignment provided a structured way to discuss wicked problems, helping them develop their opinions on these topics; learn that “political” discussion does not have to be tense, hostile, or frightening; and develop interpersonal connections with their classmates.

Another outcome from my perspective as a professor was that by having students deliberate about controversial issues with one another, it took pressure off me to help students navigate those murky waters. In the past, when I’ve had class discussions about controversial issues, I still served as the focal point and leader of discussion, and so students would sometimes form perceptions about my “biases.” The deliberation assignment removed my “bias” from the equation, enabling students to talk with one another without fear of reprisal from the professor. My rubrics also were content neutral, so students knew they were graded on their facilitation skills instead of the stance they took on the topic.

Lastly, an unexpected outcome from this experiment was that students’ presentations were better than they had been in the past. As I mentioned before, the deliberation assignments occurred about halfway through the semester; it was the second of three units in the course. The final unit is about persuasive speaking, and students must deliver an advocacy speech about a social issue. It’s an individual assignment (instead of a group assignment), and they must take a stance on a topic and present a well-researched argument supporting their stance. The students’ advocacy speeches this semester were better than past semesters. I believe the opportunity to discuss controversial issues with their classmates during the deliberation unit helped reduce their anxiety about taking a public stance on a controversial topic. They also already had a chance to practice a “leadership” role by serving as a facilitator, which potentially increased their confidence when standing in front of class to deliver their presentation as an “authority” on their chosen subject. Finally, the deliberation guides provided examples of well-researched arguments about wicked problems, and some students used those guides as starting points to develop their advocacy speeches. Doing so enabled them to craft higher quality, more nuanced, and better sourced presentations than I had seen in previous semesters.

In conclusion, I believe my attempt to incorporate deliberative pedagogy into a foundational course that’s required for all students at WCU was successful. I plan to share my insights with my fellow instructors, and I’m hopeful that we can infuse deliberative pedagogy into more sections of the Foundations of Communication course. Doing so holds the potential of introducing students early in their academic careers to foundational skills necessary for participatory citizenship, which students can then leverage in their future coursework, careers, and communities.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By May Mei (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

I think every mathematician cringes when approached with the sentiment that “Math is great because there’s one correct answer so you’ll know when you get there and you’re either right or you’re wrong.” Nothing could be further from the truth! Some processes might be imitable, but mathematics is about truth and beauty, creativity and rigor. Especially in the age of generative AI, I wanted to tell students: You have more answers than you know what to do with. This class isn’t about finding answers, it’s about deciding which of the many answers in front of you is better.

My multivariable calculus class met an hour/day for four days/week. Every Monday was dedicated to deliberation. In the first half of class, students started with a quiz. This consisted of two standard questions in multivariable calculus with solutions (either former student solutions or answers from ChatGPT). The prompt was “You have received two problems with solutions. They might be completely accurate or wildly false. Your task is to evaluate these solutions. Are they mathematically correct? Are claims supported by evidence? Is the writing cogent and persuasive? Is notation used appropriately?” Students submitted a written assessment about the strengths and weaknesses of each of the two solutions. In the second half of class, there was a deliberation on their proposed responses.

I will confess, the students had a hard time deliberating. Because the solutions they were engaging with weren’t embodied by someone in the class, it was hard to get them to feel like they were in dialogue with an answer. After trying out a few different models in the first few weeks of class, we settled on a popcorn reading of the solution with each student responding to that part in particular. This is perhaps closer to a discussion than a deliberation, but it is where the class settled.

A learning outcome of the course was to “Engage students in the act of discernment: Deciding which of many answers in front of you is better and mounting a convincing argument as to why that is the case.” I started the class off with the first chapter of Why We Argue (And How We Should). There, the standard philosophical definition of knowledge as a justified, true belief was presented. Students weren’t confused about what it meant to believe something. And when they were asked for justifications, they said things like “it’s in the book” or “you said it.” But when it came to what it meant for something to be true, they once again said “it’s in the book” or “you said it.” They had a hard time with the notion that I, their professor, or even the entire community of mathematicians could be wrong.

Over the course of the semester, I saw my students engage deeply with their relationship with authority and to develop their own voice and confidence in their assessment. Here are two sample student responses on a reflection that asked for self-assessment of progress towards the learning outcome of discernment:

Student 1: “I definitely improved on this aspect. When I first took my first quiz, I never said anything was wrong because I wanted to believe it was right because it was put in front of me. But I have definitely gotten better at understanding why there is a correct answer and not believing everything in front of me.”

Student 2: “This is difficult for me because there are many ways to work through problems so it’s hard not to believe someone else’s work/explanation even if it’s done in a different way than I would do it. I did get better at this and learned how to back up my argument.”