The student and tutor guide to getting the most from philosophy seminars

This guide has been put together as a resource for both students and tutors to help everyone get the most out of seminars. Some material relates to the tutor running the seminar and some to helping the student, but all of it could be useful to both. Much of the advice available in 'how to …' books is geared to tutors, which makes it seem that the success or otherwise of a seminar is down to the capabilities of the tutor. However, what emerged from focus group work with students at Lancaster is that students are well aware that when seminars are not productive it is not necessarily due to the tutor, but rather the students not having the skills, or knowing how, to take up the opportunities offered.

What are seminars for?

Learning and Having a go at philosophising	Helping each other to learn	Discussion, Debate and Developing a group response to a philosophical position
Checking that we all understood the lecture/reading	Running my essay idea past the group	Do I really have to speak? and Giving presentations

Typical Problems with Seminars