Many teaching and learning scholars recommend that you use ground rules to establish a productive classroom community. Here are a few examples you might consider as you collaborate with your students to craft useful rules for civil discourse:
- Listen activelyto each speaker
- Avoid interrupting
- Connect your comments to the conversation
- Learn your classmates’ names
- Be respectful of other people’s opinions, even if they are different from yours
- Try to keep an open mind
- Put away your cell phones and laptops unless they are part of the class activities
Resources
- Brave Spaces Guidelines. The Women’s Center.
- Establishing discussion rules. In K. Landis (Ed.). Start talking: A handbook for engaging difficult dialogues in higher education. (pp. 12-17). Anchorage: University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University.
- “What Are Ground Rules and How Can We Use Them.” In How Learning Works (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010, Appendix E) Available in the FDC library.
- University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University’s handbook, Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education, offers a chapter on Ground Rules.
- Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching’s Difficult Dialogues
