The art of asking questions

James Meek, currently at Macquarie University, has passed on one of his useful resources - a piece by Maryellen Weimer, PhD.

She writes:

"At one time or another, most of us have been disappointed by the caliber of the questions students ask in class, online, or in the office. Many of them are such mundane questions:  Will material from the book be on the exam? How long should the paper be? Can we use Google to find references? Would you repeat what you just said? I didn’t get it all down in my notes. Rarely do they ask thoughtful questions that probe the content and stir the interest of the teacher and other students. 

So, how do we get them to ask better questions? What if we start by asking them the kinds of questions we hope they will ask us? Here are some suggestions that might help us model what good questions are and demonstrate how instrumental they can be in promoting thinking, understanding, and learning. 

Prepare questions 

Too often we ask questions as they come to us. Allen and Tanner write in an excellent article on questioning, “Although many teachers carefully plan test questions used as final assessments, ... much less time is invested in oral questions that are interwoven in our teaching.” (p. 63) How many questions of the kind that generate discussion and lead to other questions come to us as we are teaching? Would more of those thought-provoking questions come to us if we thought about questions as we prepare and contemplate the content for class? 

Play with the questions 

Questions promote thinking before they are answered. It is in the interstices between the question and the answer that minds turn. In that time before answers, questions can be emphasized by having them on a PowerPoint or on the board and by encouraging students to write the question in their notes. Maybe it’s a question that opens class and doesn’t get answered until the end of class. Maybe it’s a question that gets asked repeatedly across several class sessions with any number of possible answers entertained before a good or right answer is designated.  

Preserve good questions 

If a question does generate interest, thoughtful responses, and good discussion, that’s a question to keep in some more permanent way than simply trying to remember it. Good questions can be preserved along with the course materials for that day. Finding them there next semester enables us a revisit and possibly improve them. Do we need to be reminded that probing questions about the content, not only encourage students to think, they are good grist for the mill of our own thinking? 

Ask questions that you don’t know the answer to 

Students tend to think that teachers have all the answers. Could that be because we answer all their questions? Marshall makes a point worth remembering. Typically we ask students questions that we already know the answer to and if any of you are like me, while the student is answering, I’m quietly thinking how much better my answer is and how I will quickly deal with the students answer so I can then give my answer. Asking a question you don’t know the answer to lets students know that you still have things to learn. Asking students those questions and then thoughtfully attending to their answers also indicates that you just might be able to learn something from a student. Could this be a way to motivate them to ask better questions? 

Ask questions you can’t answer 

These questions are different from those you don’t know the answer to. It’s possible to find answers to those questions. These are the questions currently being confronted within the field or area of study that haven’t yet been answered. As of this moment, the answers are unknown. A question that can’t be answered is inherently more interesting than one that can be answered. Are there theories or research findings that suggest answers? Are some of those more likely than others? Could the answer be something totally unexpected? What if a student thinks she might have an idea about a possible answer? 

Don’t ask open-ended questions when you know the answer you’re looking for 

Sometimes students offer answers but they aren’t the ones the teacher wanted to hear. If you aren’t getting the answer you want, don’t play the “try to guess the answer I have in mind” game. It reinforces the idea that the question has one answer that the teacher thinks is the right or best answer. If the teacher has the answer, students are quick to conclude it’s the definitive right answer, and that makes it an answer that they won’t spend any time thinking about.  

We ask questions to get students interested, to help them understand, and to see if they do. We’d like for our questions to promote lively discussions during which thoughtful perspectives are exchanged, different views presented and new ideas are born. To accomplish that goal we need to plan and use question in more purposeful ways. If questions start playing a more prominent role in our teaching, the reward may be students asking questions we’d find interesting to answer and they’d find more interesting to discuss.

Shouldn’t an article on questioning end with one? It should, and Allen and Tanner have a great one: “What would you predict would happen in your classroom if you changed the kinds of questions that you ask? (p. 63)

References


Allen, D. and Tanner, K. (2002). Approaches to cell biology teaching: Questions about questions. Cell Biology Education, 1, 63-67. 



Marshall, G. (2006). From Shakespeare on the page to Shakespeare on the stage: What I learned about teaching in acting class. Pedagogy, 6 (2), 309-325.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 27.3 (2013): 5. © Magna Publications. All Rights Reserved."

5 content archetypes

Here’s something that appeals to me, mainly because it seems like a very useful taxonomy. It comes to me via Stephen Downes’ website, OLDAILY, and he has re-posted it from David Armano’s page. Armano is a marketer, but his categories are useful for those focussed on education, I think.

He writes about five content archetypes:

• Curated
• Co-created
• Original
• Consumer-generated (Downes recasts this as “student-generated”)
• Sponsored (recast by Downes as “board or department”)

From the perspective of the disciplines, these are important ways to think about content and how it is presented, e.g. via an LMS, for students.

Curated

One of the most difficult decisions a university teacher makes is the selection of materials that are listed in the reading list for a particular course. The question here is this: Which previously-published material (scholarly writing, web-based material, mass media) does my class need to consume to achieve the learning outcomes I have set for the course? Student time is precious. The selection of readings set for the course must be precise and on topic. If tangential material is included, make sure that students know it isn’t essential reading for the course.

Co-created

Learning is a constructivist activity, even in the positivist disciplines. The co-creation of content – through projects, online discussions, group work, or even peer mentoring – engages students in the act of learning.

Original

Sometimes, a teacher just has to write new material to get the point across.

Student-generated

In completing formative and summative tasks, students learn. No argument there.

Sponsored

University learning happens under the umbrella of the institution, and at times, the institution has announcements. Class management requires announcements. This too is content.

These categories of information can, I think, help in thinking through how an LMS site might be organized.

3-minute thesis

This week, my university is running the 3-Minute Thesis Competition. This requires participants to provide a 3-minute summary of their research thesis. The presenters have no guarantee that members of their audience know anything about their discipline or their topic. It’s tricky – and many of them can’t do it.

My advice to them is to imagine that they have only a few minutes to describe their project to a friend of their grandmother’s at the Christmas Party.

This is a technique that could work as a classroom activity for large assignments or projects. It will force students to be very clear about what they are writing about.

For more information about the 3-minute thesis competition, go here: http://cbe.anu.edu.au/news-events/cbe/news/2013/3mt/. 

Group work in unsuitable spaces

Quite often, I hear my academic colleagues say that it is too difficult to run learning activities in a tiered lecture theatre or some other horrible teaching space foisted upon them. This strategy requires only that each person is within earshot of three other people.

Try this one: Think, Pair, Square, Share.

1. Pose a question.
2. Give students 2-3 minutes to think about their answers (think).
3. Get students to turn to the person next to them to talk about their conclusions (pair) for 5 minutes.
4. Get each pair to join another pair to continue the discussion (square).
5. Have each square report on their discussions (share).

 Don’t let each square report everything they said. Start with one group of four: “Report on one thing you discussed”. Ask each subsequent group to report on something from their conversation which has not already been mentioned. Once there are no groups with any new points to mention (or you have run out of interesting points to report), end the sharing part of the activity.

Korpi’s Rules

Today, in a discussion about engaging learning activities in the university classroom, an academic colleague introduced me to Korpi’s Rules. Walter Korpi is a Norwegian academic and past president of the Research Committee for the International Sociological Association. He developed a workshop-style meeting format for his peers which forces the presenter of new research to be very clear about the work.

It works like this:

1. A paper for discussion at the conference is selected and circulated.
2. A member of the group other than the author of paper (the discussant) presents the paper, based only on written material supplied by the author. No oral briefing or interaction between presenter/discussant and author precedes the presentation to the group.
3. Following the presentation, the author takes questions about the paper.
4. Finally, the group engages in a general discussion about the paper.

“… accepting a place on the [conference] program entails a commitment to complete the paper in time for others to read it and to come prepared to discuss papers. Equally, participants may expect to serve as discussant for another paper, and to open the floor with an incisive and fair assessment of its strengths and weaknesses.”

I can see this technique working as a classroom learning event. Not only does it force good, clear writing, it introduces social science students to a practice used by their more senior discipline-based colleagues.