Discussant Guidelines
Each student will be a discussant once during the quarter. Your goal as discussant is to help drive an engaged and stimulating discussion. Being a discussant will occur in two parts: (1) summarizing the commentaries of other students in your section into a metacommentary before lecture, and (2) leading discussion in your weekly section based on that metacommentary and your own reactions.
Complete the metacommentary solo, even if there are other discussants in your section. You will each be assigned to different papers.
Your responsibilities as discussant include:
Create a metacommentary
Metacommentaries are summaries of others’ commentaries: you will create this summary between when commentaries are due, and the start of the next day’s lecture. Your TA will let you know which paper to focus your metacommentary on. After the day’s commentaries are due, read through other students’ responses. Generate a short slide presentation highlighting interesting or common ideas in the commentaries in your own discussion section. You, the professor, and your section TA will use this to help guide discussion. Submit your metacommentary to the Discussant assignment in Canvas by the start of lecture. Bring your metacommentary to section as well, to use to lead the discussion.
To create your metacommentary, first identify key insights from the critiques and cluster them around noteworthy themes. Organize the slides with headers around each of these themes, with excerpted quotes as bullets illustrating each theme. Themes should be clusters of what people said, regardless of whether you agree with the point of view or whether you think that it’s an insightful perspective. That way, in class we can discuss themes and why each is or is not an insightful critique — feedback on the commentaries that is an important part of learning for the class. The themes don’t need to be chosen based on popularity: feel free to create a theme around a single comment if you want, if you think it’s an interesting perspective to discuss. Name the author of each quote, so that the staff can call to the student in class if they want to hear that person expand on the point in their own words.
Second, create a group of star comments — particularly insightful or provocative ideas that you think will produce high-quality discussion amongst the class. Create a Star Comments theme for those star comments up at the top of the slide deck, and quote those comments in that section. The star comments are likely to cover different topics and themes. You may reuse comments from other themes as star comments section.
Here is a template slide deck for you to use - feel free to modify the template as you wish, or make your own slides.
Lead discussion in section using your metacommentary
As discussant, select some of the themes that are most worth discussing and launch discussion in section on each theme with your own summary and response. This does not need to be formal—aim for two minutes for a summary and your own thoughts and response. It should cover:
- A synthesis of the main points being raised in some of the themes, using quotes as relevant.
- Your response to the points being raised. Take a position! Stake out a thesis of your own. Do you agree with one side or the other—and if so, why do you find one of the sides a more compelling argument?—or can you offer an alternative perspective that the class didn’t articulate?
The discussion will work as follows: first, you will share your metacommentary. Then, we (the staff) will use your metacommentary as a launching point for discussion. We expect that you, as the local expert, will contribute actively in this discussion. We may hop around between themes: if one comes up in discussion that you saw in the commentaries, speak up and share what you heard in the commentaries, and invite relevant section members to speak up.
Grading rubric
Typically, “proficiency” indicates that the work is deserving of some flavor of A, and “mastery” a strong A.
| Category | Insufficiency | Adequacy | Proficiency | Mastery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metacommentary 10 points |
Commentary synthesis is incomplete or impossible to follow. | Commentary synthesis demonstrates minimal depth in the themes identified and the quotes chosen. | Commentary synthesis demonstrates moderate depth in the themes identified and the quotes chosen. | Commentary synthesis demonstrates exceptional depth in the themes identified and the quotes chosen. |
| Discussion: clarity 10 points |
Summary, reactions, and contributions in section are incomplete or unclear. | Summary, reactions, and contributions in section are unclear at communicating the class's ideas and the discussant's response. | Summary, reactions, and contributions in section are moderately clear at communicating the class's ideas and the discussant's response. | Summary, reactions, and contributions in section are exceptionally clear at communicating the class's ideas and the discussant's response. |