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Higher Listenings
Don’t All Talk at Once: Creating Better Classroom Discussions
When students go quiet after your best discussion question, it’s tempting to assume the worst. But what if that quiet moment means something else entirely?
In this episode, we’re joined by educator, speaker, and author of Teaching at Its Best, Dr. Todd Zakrajsek, to rethink the role of classroom discussions—not as performance, but as practice. We explore why our go-to methods often favor fast-thinking extroverts, and how small shifts in tone, timing, and structure can make space for more voices to be heard.
Learn why awkward pauses might be your best pedagogical tool, and what it really takes to create psychologically safe environments that encourage—not force—participation.
Guest Bio
Dr. Todd Zakrajsek is an educator, speaker and the author or co-author of seven books on teaching and learning, including the widely used Teaching at Its Best.
Dr. Zakrajsek directs four Lilly Conferences on College and University Teaching and is a frequent keynote speaker at institutions around the world. With decades of experience advising faculty and contributing to educational boards and journals, he brings both deep expertise and infectious energy to every conversation about improving student learning.
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I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is asking questions and assume that the students are going to answer within three seconds, and I've been saying this for a couple years now. I think too often we teach to fast-thinking, risk-taking extroverts and the other students just need a minute.
Speaker 3:That's educator and author of Teaching at Its Best, dr Todd Zekryzyk. When your well-crafted discussion question lands and the room goes quiet, it's easy to panic. But what if that quiet isn't a failure but a feature? Classroom discussions are more than just talk. They're one of the most powerful tools we have for learning. They can also be incredibly energizing. In this episode, we unpack the hidden traps of classroom discussion the shift from content expert to cognitive coach, and why your students aren't necessarily ignoring you. They may just be warming up. Welcome to Higher Listings.
Speaker 1:Discussions, which, as a philosophy professor, I engage in all the time. They're often a struggle, I think, for many faculty, and especially in large courses, and it feels, maybe like something they're supposed to do as a standard teaching practice. So they try, but they want to get it over with and they want to get onto something that they regard as the core thing they're supposed to do, like lecture or some other thing. So I want to start with this basic question why should discussions still be a part of any university course? What pedagogical value do you see in this kind of activity, whether for students or for us as instructors?
Speaker 2:was a very provocative thing as well, as I started teaching well before the internet. I've been teaching a long time and I was a content expert, and the only way students learned about psychology was to come to my class and learn psychology. Now, with all the artificial intelligence that's out there, I can get just about any content very quickly, and so the issue is faculty members, I think, are going to see themselves more and more shifting from content experts to process experts. We're not going to need that content anymore because I can get that. If somebody wants to know about metacognition, they don't have to come to my class. They can type in what is metacognition and give me another example. And oh, I don't understand and carry on a whole conversation with bar chat GPT, whoever they're working with.
Speaker 2:One of the fastest growing jobs right now, by the way, is personal trainer. Individuals go to the gym and we've figured out that physiologically, you can go to the gym and hurt yourself, or you can work like crazy and get no benefit, and then somebody comes along and says no, no, no, tip your arm like this and you get benefits. So people hire these trainers and I think our job's going to turn into cognitive coaches and it's a good job and it's necessary, but I'm not a content deliverer anymore, so for faculty, I think we're going to see a need to move away from this idea that I have to lecture and cover content and more to how do we think about things, which means we're going to have to have good discussions we think about things, which means we're going to have to have good discussions, okay.
Speaker 3:So, todd, I'm going to put you in the hot seat with a scenario. All right, are you up for this challenge? Yes, okay, you're in a class, right? You throw out a question to your students. The response to crickets. So you rephrase the question. The cricket shift to uncomfortable silence. So then you'd crack the classic joke don't all talk at once. Still nothing. So then you decide to call on the one student who's not actually avoiding eye contact with you. So why does this happen and what are we missing here?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think there's a real single answer to this. You have to look at the whole system. It could very well be the community in the classroom. If people are really committed to the class and they like what's going on, they're more likely to participate. If they don't, then they won't. Could be the type of questions when we ask certain questions students care or they don't care, and it also could very well be that it's the students Could be. They're exhausted. So there's so many reasons that students might not talk, and that concept of don't talk all at once, or maybe making some sarcastic comment or something. Number one always be careful of sarcasm. Anyway.
Speaker 2:And I will say this before we move on. It's plan for the fact that the students don't say anything. And then what are you going to do? Because the concept is, if you go into the classroom with plans of the things you know might happen, you're in much better shape. And I can tell you all everybody out there if you are using discussions and Brad uses them a lot you are going to have times where you're going to ask a question. Students will stare at you. They might not have understood it. It might be something they have to think about, it might be something they don't care about, but if you're not ready, then it gets nerve wracking. If you are ready, you ask a follow-up or ask something else.
Speaker 1:I forgot that you and I had Chapel Hill histories in common. I did my graduate work there as well, and that's where I first started learning how to teach for real. Since you mentioned that you've been teaching for quite a long time, I'm curious about how you might have answered that question differently earlier in your career. For instance, I was unprepared right for that kind of silence as an example, but how would you have conceived of silence and responded to it?
Speaker 2:earlier in your career. I'm going to fess up to it. I taught my first class. It was just almost exactly 40 years ago, so it's been a minute, I would say. First of all, there's no doubt I started out I would have been focused on content. My job was to teach, so I would have been really focused on teaching.
Speaker 2:Then, in the mid to late 1990s, there was a big movement in higher education to move from a focus of teaching to a focus on learning. For those of you out there that say, well, kind of the same thing, right, totally different things, we can teach a class that doesn't learn anything. So around the nineties to the two thousands, I started to shift from thinking about me teaching to the students learning. And then I will say, just about just before COVID hit but it really got accentuated with COVID is then I really started shifting to individual struggles. There's a quote out there gosh, I think it's Ian McLaren who is credited with a quote. That's something along the lines of everyone is fighting a battle we know nothing about, so be kind. And so that point now is that when there's things going on in the classroom, they're not talking or something. Now I would start thinking I hope they're okay, I hope everything's going well, and so I've shifted from focusing myself as a teacher to the students, as learners, to individuals within a system of learning. So I'm glad you asked that.
Speaker 2:I guess that's a pretty big shift over the years.
Speaker 3:So I just want to come back to this idea of being okay with silence when you ask a question, even if it feels like a really long time, and the thought being that, hopefully, students become so uncomfortable that they feel the need to respond or someone speaks up. But what's your take on that tactic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the one big thing to keep in mind is just think about what the silent represents. If the silence represents a student's unwillingness to respond, you have to treat it a certain way. But if it's time to think, for instance, just give a few seconds to think. I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is asking questions and assume that the students are going to answer within three seconds. And I've been saying this for a couple of years now. I think too often we teach to fast thinking, risk-taking, extroverts and the other students just need a minute. So now I'm more and more actually that pause in there. I insert it. I'll say okay, I'm curious about what y'all think about when psychology first was founded as a science. I don't want to hear anybody say anything for about 30 seconds and I'll, I'll time it. So just chill for 30 seconds and think about that and then I can say what'd you come up with? And that cuts the silences down a lot too, but it actually leans into the silences.
Speaker 1:I want to carry this just a little bit further, because I think there's a tendency for educators often to make attributions or to try to explain student behavior fairly simplistically. A lot of faculty, I think, tend to think of students not talking as a simple fact of introversion or needing a bit more time to process. You've, in fact, written quite a widely read blog about this issue, so could you say a little bit about how we should think about our students when we confront silence like this?
Speaker 2:Sure, Thank you for mentioning that. So, as a scholarly teacher, just scholarlyteachercom have to give it the quick plug. This blog has got more responses than any of the others. It's like over 50,000 views, and it's this concept of.
Speaker 2:I was asked once to do a workshop how do you get introverts to talk in the classroom? So I said number one why do you want them talking? What's the value? And number two how do you know they're introverts? Maybe there's something else? And so I really started digging into this and it turns out in your classroom there are individuals who will respond very quickly. They'll have a conversation, they'll jump right in there.
Speaker 2:There's other people that take a little bit more time. There's some individuals who maybe didn't hear the question. There might be people with social anxiety. There might be somebody who's fighting with somebody else in the classroom because the day before they had some disagreement, and so all of these things can be going on, from social anxiety to introversion, to dislike, to not knowing what's going on. It's really hard to tell why they're not talking unless you ask them.
Speaker 2:So one thing you can do is, if the students aren't talking in class is just either catch somebody after class probably the best way to go to say hey, I noticed that you haven't been talking lately. I'm just curious y'all is everything Okay. But I would start with more of that tone of is everything okay, is there anything that's like would make it easier for you as opposed to thinking in your head what am I, what do I have to do to get them to talk? And I you know actually I'm going to finish with that is so many times like that inner, that webinar they wanted me to do, or the seminar I wanted to do is how to get introverts to talk in the classroom. It's how do you get somebody to do something? In the end, what I did was make basically a session. That was how do you make a classroom more comfortable for students to participate? Difference between making it so they can participate versus making them participate. So I think it's a mindset.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate that. That's I think it's one of those shifts that experts can make in their, in their practice. Love that.
Speaker 3:So, speaking of shifts cause I'm aware of this and you mentioned sarcasm earlier and I myself am prone to sarcasm, which isn't always a great look or particularly helpful I'm wondering if you see faculty making mistakes that actually discourage participation, even when they think they're being encouraging.
Speaker 2:Great question, Harry. Did you go to interview school or something?
Speaker 3:You see what.
Speaker 2:I did there Sorry.
Speaker 1:Well done, well done. That was just set up. I don't think I like sarcasm.
Speaker 2:I'm kidding. Well done, that was just set up I don't think I like sarcasm.
Speaker 2:No, I'm kidding, so I just. I put it out there because I've done in the past on workshops on humor in the classroom, and sarcasm is just always dangerous. I have gone into classrooms and visited different people across most of my years, I mean the last 25 years at least. It's amazing. There was a person in the engineering school at some institution. He said could you please come to my class? My students aren't participating, that's true. So he lectured a little bit and then he asked a question. A person raised their hand, student raised their hand. As the student started to talk, he turned around, went toward the corner and faced the corner until the student stopped talking and then he turned back around and he says anybody else? And as soon as somebody else started talking, he turned back to the wall again and again, I'm very cautious.
Speaker 2:Instead of saying what's going on here After class. I said that is a very unique strategy. What is it you're after? And he said I don't want to bias the responses with my facial features, my facial, you know, just nonverbals. I said oh, have you told the students that? He said well, no, I assumed they would know that. And I said you might want to talk to them a little bit about it. So when those things happen, the people came to me and said I don't know why my students aren't talking. They wanted them to talk. They wanted them to have really good educational experiences. They're individuals that have picked up something that they don't know doesn't work, by the way, I'm going to pitch that out to everybody. Everybody should periodically have a friend, a colleague, somebody come in the classroom and just watch class and then just say hey, here's some things I noticed.
Speaker 3:That's why I have Brad give me feedback after we do the podcast, so he can tell me if I'm doing something weird or quirky or off-putting for one of our guests.
Speaker 1:Good to have a friend in your pocket that way. I'll never forget my first videotape feedback experience as a teacher, when I got videotaped and sat down with my mentor to watch it together. That was just awful but extremely productive of development. I think it's really good to work on those sorts of things because you're blind to them until you see them or somebody reflects them back to you. Let's go in a slightly different direction here. The fact is that I really was energized by lively classroom discussions I rarely faced. Sometimes I did, but rarely faced a silent room At the same time. I was exhausted at the end of the day from that effort and felt tremendous responsibility to manage that discussion and lead it and guide it and be the person in charge and responsible for that entire hour. There are faculty who really struggle with that and increasingly are looking for ways to conserve and preserve and generate some positive energy for themselves. So do you have any thoughts about how we might share that responsibility in ways that are actually beneficial to our students?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all it is. I mean, yeah, it's, it's a job and at the end of the day it can be exhausting. And I can remember I'm first person my family go to college and all my family were, you know, they were laborers and worked hard and they would say, well, you should be out there shoveling everything else. I said, well, I'm exhausted at the end of the day. And it was funny because my brother would say, oh, it must be so exhausting to be thinking all day. It is Quite, frankly, it is.
Speaker 2:So, just keeping in mind that you're not alone. If you feel drained at the end of the day, people do, and so that's a big one. Just people forget how much work it is. The other part of it is just a social contagion thing. When people are having fun, there's more energy, and so search for the things that the students find exciting, and if you can do that, then you all get jazzed by it. So I would look for fun things that your students like, because they're not the same as you but they like, and then also recognizing that it is tiring, and make sure you take care of yourself.
Speaker 3:So even when we build in structured participation, there's always going to be students who just don't want to contribute because for any number of reasons that we've already talked about. So how do we reach those students in a way that doesn't force them into an uncomfortable situation but still encourage meaningful participation? And maybe more broadly, how do we redefine participation beyond who wants to share, so we're actually including students who might want to engage in different ways?
Speaker 2:I really like what you're saying here, though, is it's more of a what do we do to help the students to participate versus what do you do to get them to talk. And I've had faculty members will say well, I give them a quiz That'll get them to talk, or I do this That'll get them to talk. I, you know I'm not striving for that. I want them to have a conversation. So I liked what you're saying here, and the point part is my daughter has said it's okay for me to talk about this. She has social anxiety. One more teacher tells me how important it is to talk in class. I will scream because I know it's important. I just can't do it. And so what she would do in class is, if you have 20% participation points, she just zeros those out, and so there's 80% left. She has figured out that if she can score a 90% on everything in class and then not talk, she can get a C minus. That's a terrible system to set up for some students, and so I asked her. I said so what would make a difference? And she said number one when she can talk, it takes a little bit longer. She said a lot of times she wants to participate, but already the conversations moved down to the next topic and so it's just too late. So sometimes maybe you circle back to some items or give out the questions ahead of time. These are the major things we're going to be talking about. You're not spilling the beans. Give people a chance to kind of think about it.
Speaker 2:And I heard of one faculty member I love this one he gave students full percentage points if they emailed him after class and he would send the prompt as a reminder. So if there's anything in class, you would have said, had you had the opportunity, what is it? If there's anything in class, you would have said, had you had the opportunity, what is it? Tell me what it is and when you would have said it. And also, if I bring it up in the next class period, can I mention your name, or would you rather it be anonymous? And so he could come in the next class and say you know, todd emailed me something that's really intriguing.
Speaker 2:Now at that point to say Todd, why don't you tell him about it? That's not what we're after here, because I have social anxiety. For chance, then you call on me. It's a problem again, unless in the email I said oh, and you can call on me if you want, but yes, give people a chance to submit notes, to do back channels. That's the biggest one I'll keep. I'll say it multiple times Ask your students what would make it more comfortable for you to talk in this class. Give some examples like these things what else you got, and let them tell you this class.
Speaker 1:Give some examples like these things what else you got and let them tell you. I imagine many people listening to this conversation are eager for us to touch upon which is the opposite of inclusivity. We live in very polarized times and I think there is a lot of anxiety among faculty that opening up their room to discussion is going to lead to conflict that they are not prepared to manage. So what advice do you have for how to navigate discussions in ways that keep us on the right path?
Speaker 2:Before I even answer, I just want to tell you in my view, everybody has a side they believe in. So when I say I don't agree with somebody's side, I still respect the fact that they have a side that they agree with. So a person doesn't respect the fact that they have a side that they agree with. So a person doesn't have to come out of their shoes saying this is all wrong, you're a terrible person. I totally get that. You have another perspective and we could talk about that. What I just set up there and did, that's the kind of stuff that we can mention in class and I think it's helpful. But we are in a time when people come on jumping out of their shoes. There's statements out there of like I heard one a while ago that just totally just floored me. It's students should never feel uncomfortable in the classroom. Oh my word, they should definitely feel uncomfortable in the classroom. If I'm talking about something that's a really, really delicate topic, people should have angst feelings about that. So all I would say is just have a contingency plan. If you have a lot of conversation, it's going to happen. Just be ready for it.
Speaker 2:And I can remember a mentor of mine who told me that he said just be ready for it. And then one day I ask a question, one of my female students responded. And then there was a guy just whispering under his breath, but he wanted to make sure everyone could hear. He said I'd expect a girl to say that, yeah. And now you got the moment.
Speaker 2:If you think to yourself, I'm going to wait until afterwards to talk to that person. You've just basically said to the whole class it's okay that he said it, you have to address it right there. But if you don't address it properly, you either become the aggressor, which is a problem, the student becomes fighting and all these things can happen. So in this particular situation, I turned to the young man. I said I'm not going to ask you to repeat what you just said, because we did all hear it. I think you wanted us to all hear it. And I'm just curious now and we're going to have this conversation is why would you say that? I mean, what leads you to believe that a woman would say that, versus what a man would say? What would a man say in that situation? And I turned that into a conversation. He wasn't comfortable with it, but my mentor told me be ready for it when it comes.
Speaker 3:There's also some value to establishing some ground rules at the outset rather than having to make up the rules as you go along because a student says something inappropriate off center. So I think setting those things up at the beginning is an important part of that process, especially if you know you're going to get into territory that is polarizing, as Brad says.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a general rule in life. Always try to make a policy before there's some reason for the policy, if you know it's coming, because if somebody does something and then you make a policy, everybody knows it's about that person. So I think these types of things have your contingency plans, but also be ready with a policy. If you say something inappropriate or disrespectful, I have the obligation to ask you to leave the room, something. Do that beforehand if you can.
Speaker 3:I'm thinking about flipping the focus here a little bit and thinking about instructors, and I'm thinking about folks like maybe like a Brad who'd been teaching for a while, and they start to feel drained from disengaged students, but more so than that discussions that may have used to be fun because they were new and exciting, they start to feel a bit like chores. You're kind of going through the paces again, and you've written a lot about sustaining joy in teaching. So what are some of your thoughts around how faculty can rethink discussions so that they actually feel energized rather than exhausted?
Speaker 2:I remember a faculty member who was retiring and somebody in the committee said, well, it's about time. And somebody else says what do you mean? They said he's just tired and he needs to get out of the classroom. And somebody else said I'm just going to say Smith, because I'm making this up, it's like, well, cut him a break. You know, dr Smith's been teaching his students for 40 years and they still don't get it. He's been teaching biology for 40 years and they still don't get it.
Speaker 2:It's that concept of I've been teaching all these years. You start seeing the students as the same group over and over, and so the 20th time is like, if I have to explain covalent bonds to you again, this is exhausting. Well, it's their first time. So number one that kind of joined the classroom is keep in mind, first of all, that nobody in that room is going to be as excited about the topic as you are when you walk through the door. Probably the best thing I think we can do is find out what the students enjoy. That also overlaps with what we enjoy.
Speaker 2:I might assign my students Everybody in here is going to get assigned a specific section of the book. Find a YouTube clip that you think is exciting or interesting about that and I'll show one or two every class period and yours may be chosen, may not, and then we'll talk about it. And I was stunned with what the students came up with and I found it exciting. The students found exciting because truth is, they get one year younger every year, which is some weird physical, physiological, whatever concept. But I do not connect quite as well with the students as I might have 40 years ago. So, yeah, that's it. Find what the students find interesting.
Speaker 1:I love your really pursuit of joy in teaching and your advocacy of finding joy in teaching. We have to acknowledge, though, the moment we're in is one in which we are hearing and seeing these reports and these narratives around faculty burnout or faculty disengagement. What advice do you have for faculty who are really struggling to even generate the energy to do what you just said in response to Eric's question? How do we get moving through burnout and toward joy and teaching again and really leveraging that opportunity to really come out of the post-COVID malaise, or whatever people want to call it?
Speaker 2:We are asked to do so many things. Some of us are just exhausted, and it could just be exhaustion Exhaustion. You can recover with a good weekend or a time away Burnout. You don't get over burnout by going to the beach for the weekend. That's a whole different thing.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite things is Rachel Naomi Remen. I'm in family medicine, so I work in a medical school, and I listened to her talk and I was fascinated by her. She said she worked with burned out physicians. Now think about this. She never talked about faculty, but it sure is an easy bridge to cross there when working with burned out faculty. She asked faculty to keep a journal and at the end of the day, think back through the day, to the very beginning of the day and start there, and then, as you go through the day, jot down what was the first thing you learned. Then go back and think from the beginning of the day, going through what was the first thing you learned. Then go back and think from the beginning of the day, going through what was the first thing that surprised you, and then go back to the beginning of the day and, as you come through, what was the first thing that touched you.
Speaker 2:And what she found with these burned out physicians is that some of them and she said if nothing happened during the day, it didn't happen. A lot of them said it didn't happen today. And she said. Something really intriguing though is, as the days went on, they would start to find those things that happened like in the afternoon or the evenings, and then it was midday, and then it was morning, and then, after they'd been in the program for a while, and some of them after a fairly short period of time, they were finding all three before breakfast. And her point, which I think is fascinating and fabulous those things were always there, which I think is fascinating and fabulous. Those things were always there.
Speaker 2:When you start to burn out, when you get exhausted, you miss the things in life that are really fabulous, because your brain is just tipped in that direction. And when you look for those things, I mean there were days that I thought I just felt awful and I would roll on the ground with my three-year-old and all of a sudden it's like I felt great. Nothing out there changed except the way I was looking at it. So I'm telling everybody out there if you're struggling and 100% again, I got to be careful we are being overworked. But if we lose sight of the amazement that's around us, it's just going to get darker and darker. So look for those Students' eyes oh my word. That glimmer in their eye when they get something is just fabulous. So those types of things, watch out for those things.
Speaker 1:I'd say they're there, Just got to make sure you keep seeing them. You know this sounds a lot like a gratitude practice where you journal right, and I think applying those to this moment as educators is a really smart pivot there. So one of the many aha moments I think you've shared with us today. So appreciate it.
Speaker 3:It's really great having this discussion with you.
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