Active learning excellence
Regional winner Americas
Podcast and peer discussion on red flag legal issues
How Michael-Benjamin Minotti at Boston University helps students in a programme of more than 500 learners think critically by discussing each other's podcasts.
Michael-Benjamin Minotti
Boston University
The challenge
In a programme with more than 500 students, real discussion is hard to organise. Students rarely get to engage with each other's thinking, and it is difficult for them to connect topics such as legal risk to their own personal and professional experience.
The redesign
Michael-Benjamin Minotti asks each student to record a podcast of two to four minutes on one of several prompts about red flag legal issues. Students analyse a real world issue, link it to their own experience and share their thinking in their own voice.
Students then listen to the podcasts of two classmates and discuss them in FeedbackFruits, exchanging perspectives on the legal risks and their professional implications. Students who want to go further can join an open discussion and reflect on how the conversation shaped their understanding.
Grades are based on completing the discussion, which keeps the stakes low and the focus on the conversation itself. The number of peers, the topic and the grading can all be adapted, so the same design can work in other courses and disciplines.
Students then listen to the podcasts of two classmates and discuss them in FeedbackFruits, exchanging perspectives on the legal risks and their professional implications. Students who want to go further can join an open discussion and reflect on how the conversation shaped their understanding.
Grades are based on completing the discussion, which keeps the stakes low and the focus on the conversation itself. The number of peers, the topic and the grading can all be adapted, so the same design can work in other courses and disciplines.
What changed
Even in a programme of this size, every student explains their thinking out loud and responds to the ideas of their peers, turning a large cohort into a learning community.
Try it yourself
Use this design in your own course
Michael-Benjamin's learning activity is published as a template in the Learning Design Community, so you can explore it, download it and adapt it for your own students.
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