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- In Class Writing: Give students 1–5 min to “Take a stance,” “Defend a position,”
or “Formulate a response to the following patient statement....” Then ask stu-
dents to discuss what they wrote with a dyad partner, small group, or the whole
class. - Data Interpretation: Instruct dyads or small groups to read and interpret graphs,
tables, or charts. For example, they could read a table of data about risk for a
particular genetic condition, interpret the data, and formulate a way to explain
this risk to a patient. - Laundry List: Students raise every question they have about a topic (e.g.,
touching patients, nondirectiveness, self-disclosing with patients), while you
list their questions on the board or overhead. Then proceed to address each
question (using whatever format is appropriate—lecture, in-class writing,
dyads, etc.). - 10–20-Minute Press Conference: Students write down anonymous questions
about topics covered in the course so far. Collect their questions, shuffle them,
and redistribute them (give one question to each student). Then student volun-
teers read any interesting questions, and you attempt to answer them. We have
used this format at the end of a course. By then students are quite comfortable
raising complex issues and sensitive topics. This technique should also work
well earlier in a course. This exercise is particularly effective if your course for-
mat includes co-instructors—students can hear differing opinions to the same
question. One caveat: Tell students the questions should be about course content
and not format (we discourage questions such as “Why is assignment #1 worth
so many points?” That type of question is more appropriate for course/instructor
evaluations). - Student Originated Cases: Assign students the task of finding challenging genetic
counseling situations in the literature and then bringing them to class to work on
in groups (e.g., strategizing how to respond, role-playing the situations, discuss-
ing them). - Dialogue Journals: Students pair off and respond to each other’s journal entries
for 5 min of each class session. These dyads remain intact for the whole course.
You can assign them journal topics to discuss or leave it fairly open-ended.
Require the journal entries to be focused on the course content. You should peri-
odically collect the journals and informally look at them. We also suggest pro-
viding some examples of journal entries to give students a sense of the expected
length, scope, and topics. - Matching and Milling: Give each student a paper with a piece of information
written on it (different information for each student), and then have them
move around the room comparing their information with the other students’
information. Their task is to figure out how the pieces fit together. For
instance, you could give each student pieces of a patient’s family history,
including some relevant and nonrelevant information. The students’ task
would be to figure out the patient’s risk. Next, groups of four to five students
could brainstorm and then role-play how to convey this risk information to
the patient.
1 Guidelines forfiBook Users: Instructors, Supervisors, andfiStudents