Illustration by Denis Edlich (retrieved on 26.12.2009)
Short description
In a carousel discussion many different topics can be started in several discussion pairs. Or what was learned can be examined by exploring open questions, problems and points for discussion.
Process description
- The team of facilitators sets up two chair circles, an inner and an outer circle, where pairs of chairs are facing each other.
- The group is divided in half and assigned to the two circles
- The participants of the inner circle receive prepared topics. There they may find sentence beginnings, discussion points or general questions regarding the topics. They select a topic and discuss it with their partner for a certain time (3 to 5 minutes) and write down important answers
- Then the participants in the outer circle move over one seat to face another person and receive the list of topics.
- Now the game starts over: The participants in the outer circle now suggest a topic for the partner in the inner circle. This can be repeated a number of times.
When discussing this with the entire group, the following questions might be helpful:
- Which topics did I chose?
- Which topics did I avoid?
- How surprised me most?
- Which topic came up repeatedly?
Required resources
A list of prepared questions
Examples
Do you have some examples, small changes or interesting contexts?
Comments
Since the discussions may turn out to become more intensive as time goes by, the intervals can be increased from 3 to 5 to 7 minutes.
Reflection
CategoryMethopediaActivity PSI: http://psi.methopedia.eu/learning-activity/carousel-discussion
