• "I personally have a greater influence on what is being discussed. I can actually remember and feel I understand what we are discussing. By being in a smaller group, one feels part of the class rather than just another face in a sea of faces. I actually feel more part of the university".

• "If you read about it (small group teaching), it sounds very good. Some people every week go into a room and talk about the previous week's lectures. It sounds great, but when you actually come to do it you sit around without saying anything, and the seminar leader isn't quite sure how to get them started anyway; and this carries on for about thirty weeks; and you begin to think it's not such a good idea".

• "Getting to know the lecturer better, rather than being part of a crowd in a lecture room, taking copious notes from a lecture that has obviously been given many times before. It (small group teaching) can actually be enjoyable. Lectures rarely are".

• "The seminars are a waste of time. Nobody seems to know what we are supposed to be doing, including the tutor who teaches a different course normally. We don't know what the seminar topic means or what preparation we are supposed to have done so no-one does anything".

• "You don't know many people. OK there's the people in the seminar group but there's no way you can get to know everybody. I mean (turns to a student in the group) I've never seen you before".

• "It would be nice to ask questions occasionally but the size of the group makes this embarrassing".

• "There's too much variance in one module between tutors. With one they might say: 'Right, you've got to have this essay in on this day' and the next one 'OK you're supposed to have it in by this day, but if you don't, you can give it to me tomorrow' or 'That's not relevant to the course, you don't have to do it if you don't want to'".

• "Staff hardly get to know most students and vice versa. Construction of any sort of relationship is therefore impossible".

• "The shyer students, who might have the confidence to contribute in small groups, tend to keep quiet in large ones".

• "Room allocation for seminars is not always appropriate. A seminar in a large lecture room does not produce a good learning environment".

• "In some classes it's just like another lecture really. Someone asks a question and off he goes again. I haven't asked a question yet".

• "It's really intimidating in the seminars. You've got to stand up in front of all these people you don't really know. There are a couple who seem to revel in it and we just let them get on with it and keep our heads down".

From these one can see what students see as important and rewarding. Note, however, that the students said that seminars can be enjoyable and rewarding, for, as we all know, seminars can also be excruciating and the tutor ends up doing all the talking. In a doctoral dissertation on seminar work across six faculties in a UK university in the 1980s, Patricia Partington discovered some interesting information about seminars in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
 

Percentages of Tutor and Student Talk in Humanities and Social Science Seminars
 

Clearly, seminars are not always about students discussing a topic.