Creating Bespoke Discussion Groups

Monday 20 April 2020

Creating Bespoke Discussion Groups

This page documents my lesson today using Team Channels to create smaller bespoke discussion groups for a new topic on the Food and Health Option

Lesson Idea

I'm starting a new lesson topic today on the Role of Organisations, Governments and NGOs. I would normally start this in class as discussion, based on different stakeholders engaged in aid work. So I want to try and replicate that idea. I will use the diagram as a stimulus and the discussionm points will be as follows:

Consider:

  1. The relative importance of the stakeholders shown in the diagram, for improving diets and health.
  2. How important are the SDGs in terms of improving diets and health?
  3. The conflicts and/or political challenges some governments may have in providing food aid
  4. How the following proverb applies to aid, If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.

How to set up bespoke discussion groups

Step 1 - Click on the 3 dots next to your Team and then click add new channel

Step 2- Give the channel a title, description and set it to private

Step 3 - Press next and add the students you want to the channel. I added three students to the channel
Step 4 - Repeat the process making a channel for each small group of students
Step 5 -  You are now ready to start the lesson. When you start the discussion, simply direct your students to the channel they have been added to. They will see this in their channels and then start a video call in each of the channels. Open up the conversation tab and paste the discussion questions in so the students can see them to the right of the screen.

Step 6 - During the discussion you can just flip back and forth between the groups. This way you can join in, prompt deeper thinking or just listen.

Follow up

Following the discussions, I returned to the main channel and began a new video call with all students and asked each group to feedback on one of the four ideas