Developed by Alexis Wiggins (The Best Class You Never Taught, ASCD 2017) and rooted in the Harkness method, Spider Web Discussion flips the usual class discussion: students run it, the instructor maps the discussion by drawing lines between each speaker and whoever they respond to. The whole class earns one shared grade, so no one benefits from dominating, and no one can quietly check out.
- Every student is required to participate and students monitor their own participation and engage in one of two ways. Once they are done with their two, they are done participating (even if they have more to say). Students may:
- Ask a question: they may open a new line of discussion or ask a clarifying question
- Make a connection: they may offer a comment on what someone else said, connect to an earlier point, or “yes, and” what someone else has said to build upon a prior discussion.
- The role of the instructor is to stay out of the discussion and make a visual map of the conversation, like a spider web.
- Students do not need to raise their hand to speak, they may begin speaking when they have something to say and the person prior has completed their comment.
- The discussion occurs within a set amount of time (like 30 minutes) students are expected to all participate within that time. The student task is to make sure they do so.
After the discussion, instructors may invite students to complete a short reflective statement including how the student participated in the process, which came easiest and which were they avoiding until the last minute, whether it was hard to self-regulate the discussion or not. What’s one thing they would do differently next time, whether for themselves such as speak up sooner, ask a follow-up instead of a new point; or for how the approach is implemented in the group?
Implementation Tips
This approach works well after the 5th or 6th week of the course. Doing it too early before the class is established can leave students feeling anxious as opposed to involved in the process. Further, this is not an “every time there is a discussion” technique, but one that can be implemented when there is need to see whether students are grasping a concept, where everyone might be in their thinking, or to prep them for a larger upcoming assignment.