Identifying and Building Strengths: An Experiential Exercise in Developing Classroom Contributions

This experiential exercise uses feedback from peers to develop students’ classroom contributions and build a classroom climate that encourages active engaging and learning. It is best suited for courses that require active classroom participation, but works well in any format, traditional and online, and with any level of students. The activity takes a strengths-based approach, anchored in positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, and positive organizational scholarship, to guide peer feedback about classroom contributions. It asks students to provide appreciative and evaluative feedback to their teammates and discuss ways they can be more effective contributors in the classroom. This activity has several important learning objectives for students: (1) describe specific behaviors associated with effective contributions in the classroom, (2) gain awareness of how others view their classroom contributions, and (3) use appreciative and evaluative feedback to improve their contributions in the future.