A Gallery Walk in Action

        During a spring WI workshop, professors participated in a “gallery walk” focused around ideas in writing instruction from Bean’s Engaging Ideas. Dr. Julita Haber, an assistant professor in the Business Department, decided to try this activity in her Business Management class and shared her experience with us. For a lesson on business ethics, her students were asked to think of unethical business practices within each of these categories: Operations, Marketing, Human Resources, Strategy, Information Technology, and Finance. With each category posted on a page around the room, students moved from each station to add their own ideas.

The pages created by the students in Dr. Haber’s BU 201 class

What about the gallery walk from the training workshop made you think it would be useful for your course?

Dr. Haber liked the idea of an activity that makes participants walk around the classroom, creating active involvement. She also noticed that individual conversations were taking place at each station, allowing for more informal sharing of ideas.

What were your students’ reactions?

Without encouragement, her students were reluctant to engage in conversations during the activity. The students seemed uncomfortable at first, but they remember the exercise well and still talk about it. More practice with these types of activities should show an increase in participation.

What was your reaction?

She thought the exercise did a good job of letting students share their ideas without the fear of expressing in front of a class. The silence in the first run was disappointing but during the second time, she encouraged students to revisit pages and has students share what was written.

Would you do it again? And would you change anything?

Dr. Haber found this exercise to be a great tool and will try it again. In the future, she says she would like to try a group gallery walk, where groups of students must move from station to station together. She hopes each group will discuss the station’s topic before contributing to a page.

Interview with Dr. Haber Click here to listen to the full interview with Dr. Haber.