These questions aren’t essential, but it can give you a better understanding of how learners interact with your course and with other users. This can help you make their overall experience better or assess how effective your efforts were to make it more enjoyable.
Before you ask a question, think it over and make sure it’s something you can’t find out on your own. Review your textbook and notes and look for the answer there. Learning to search for answers independently can improve your study habits and make you more resourceful.
Questions About The Course In General These questions help you find out what are the overall impressions of a learner, from start to finish. Although they seem more general, think of it as a warm-up. For example, ask them to name the top three adjectives that come to mind when they think of the course.
Asking Good Questions See if you can come up with the answer yourself. Calm your nerves. Speak in a clear, audible voice. Keep your question brief. Ask for specific information. Listen attentively to the answer.
Assess student understanding. Guide discussion and shape a positive learning environment. While mastering the art of asking good questions is a lifelong pursuit , the following are four steps you can take to begin improving your question-asking practices.
While question-asking may be used to check who has completed the reading or to compel student attention, overreliance on questions as an enforcement mechanism can sour classroom ecology and communicate the wrong message about the value and purpose of questions.
Question-asking style encompasses such elements as the phrasing and word choice of questions, non-verbal communication, and reaction time to student responses. These can have an enormous impact on engagement and student learning, and the skillful teacher will use them mindfully to regulate classroom dynamics.
A question-asking tool kit is a list of the kinds of questions you might ask your students in any situation, categorized in a useful form. Taxonomies of question-types abound, but developing your own inventory will furnish you with a useful repertoire from which to draw. Below is a sample inventory based on Bloom’s taxonomy; you can find others among the resources at the end of this guide.
While the interval may feel like an eternity to the teacher, studies have documented that the average teacher’s wait-time is-remarkably-less than one second.
If you make your typology simple and easy to remember, it can remain in the back of your mind as class progresses, allowing you to mentally match possible questions to the needs of the moment. Use a lot of different tools . Aim to vary the types and levels of the questions you ask.
1. See if you can come up with the answer yourself. You may already have the information you need to find out what it is you want to know. Before you ask a question, think it over and make sure it’s something you can’t find out on your own. Review your textbook and notes and look for the answer there.
Most teachers give their students a chance to bring up questions and concerns at the end of a lesson. Hold onto your question until you’re prompted for it. That way, your teacher will be able to reach a good stopping point and give you a detailed answer.
Speak in a clear, audible voice. Articulate your words and make sure the teacher and the rest of the class can hear you. That way, you won’t be forced to repeat yourself. You should talk loud enough to be heard clearly, but try not to shout. Muttering or talking under your breath may make you hard to hear.
Alicia Oglesby is a Professional School Counselor and the Director of School and College Counseling at Bishop McNamara High School outside of Washington DC. With over ten years of experience in counseling, Alicia specializes in academic advising, social-emotional skills, and career counseling.
Save multiple questions for after class. There may not be enough time to answer all of your questions, especially if it’s near the end of the period and other students have questions of their own. In these cases, you can approach your teacher after class and have them clear up anything you’re still uncertain about.
It’s not always easy to speak up when you have a question in class. You might be too nervous to talk in front of others, or forget what you were going to say when you become flustered. You’re not alone—many students have an aversion to public speaking, especially when they think it might make them look foolish.
The first step in becoming a better questioner is simply to ask more questions. Of course, the sheer number of questions is not the only factor that influences the quality of a conversation: The type, tone, sequence, and framing also matter.
Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
Course materials are crucial because they can remarkably improve a student’s achievement and understanding by supporting student learning.
Professors must give timely, constructive feedback so that students can understand where they stand and what steps they must take to improve. Feedback must always be goal-oriented, prioritized, actionable, student-friendly, ongoing, consistent, and timely.
Feedback helps students understand the areas they lack in and in what areas they need to pull up their socks. Timely feedback helps students improve their learning experience. A learning process is always messy. Mistakes are made, and there is still room for improvement.
Ask them a follow up question such as, “What makes you say that?” or “Why do you think that?”
As we’ve seen before, it’s important to always ask yourself why something is important and how it connects to things to you already know. As you do that, you train your brain to make connections between ideas and think critically about more information you come across.
To Berger, a great question is something that should feel important, meaningful, profound—but also potentially answerable and achievable. “Once you’ve set your sights on a question like that, the idea is to really tackle it. These are usually very difficult questions to answer.
Think about who benefits from a statement: When you read about news or an opinion, it’s good to think about who, if anyone, benefits from the statement being made. If someone’s making an argument, there’s a good chance they benefit from it for some reason. As Business Insider points out, that’s not always a bad thing—sometimes a person’s motivations can make their opinion more valid—but it’s good to think about who might gain from an idea.
Thinking critically is all about confronting those biases as often as possible. It’s tough, but if you take the time to think about opposing views throughout the day, you’ll train your brain to do that more often.
One of the most important parts of thinking critically is learning what details matter.
Berger cites Polaroid instant photography as one such invention. It began when Edwin Land was taking a photograph of his four-year-old daughter with a standard camera. “She wanted to see the results right away, and he explained, no, it takes a few days,” he says.
These questions help you find out what are the overall impressions of a learner, from start to finish. Although they seem more general, think of it as a warm-up. For example, ask them to name the top three adjectives that come to mind when they think of the course.
The biggest area of improvement is your course content. Your learners offer a unique insight so this should be your main focus, especially if you have limited time or want to build a shorter survey.
Learning outcomes are how we measure the success of a course. And while you might be able to assess them through online quizzes or other types of assessments, it’s great to know what learners think about the final result.
These questions aren’t essential, but it can give you a better understanding of how learners interact with your course and with other users. This can help you make their overall experience better or assess how effective your efforts were to make it more enjoyable.
The Chalkboard Splash gives teachers a peek into the minds of students when they respond in writing to a particular prompt. The effectiveness of this technique relies on the creation of a deep and meaningful prompt that captures the big ideas behind the content being presented.
If teachers are really seeking to engage their students, there should be plenty of opportunities for student talk. The Appointment Agendas technique allows teachers to quickly pair students to discuss a question by simply calling out a time of day.
The Pause, Star, Rank technique guides students to process their thinking by reviewing and analyzing content they’ve been taught.
Asking questions is a simple activity you can undertake to engage your audience in most ordinary teaching situations (e.g., traditional lecturing and presenting) as well as in exceptional settings (e.g., asynchronous, and/or online learning). Because questions address every one of your learners, they can make your students feel involved no matter how big the class size is. Thus, mastering the power of questions is a significant achievement for any teacher. Using questions effectively allows teachers to switch their presentations from a teacher-centered to a student-centered perspective in both synchronous and asynchronous teaching contexts.
Rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are only questions because they end with a question mark. Despite their form, their answer is known and presupposed by the speaker, thus they are actually equivalent to mere statements (with some dramatic tension added).
Semi-open questions do not presuppose a single answer—and they are similar to open questions. On closer examination, one realizes that they have usual or expected answers, which makes them look more similar to closed or even rethorical questions in some contexts. As an example, consider “How are you?” When driven by genuine motivation to know the state of the addressee, it is an open question as it supports several possible answers. Sometimes, however, it only plays the role of courtesy before introducing the main topic of a conversation (E.g.: “Hi Bill, how are you?” “Hi Joana, I’m fine, and you?” “Fine! I just wanted to tell you…”) In this case, “How are you?” is not an open question as it expects one predetermined answer. (In fact, in American English, “How are you?” often admits to no answers at all (or a very short one)! “How are you, Bill?””How are you, Joana?” “I just wanted to tell you…”)
Factual questions are based on verifiable facts on the existing state of affairs. Their distinctive trait is that any provided answer will be valid or wrong depending on whether it is based on the relevant evidence (that your students should be able to find in the textbook, or in other provided learning materials). Factual questions thus presuppose an inter-subjective procedure to assess the validity of the answer. Sharing and discussing during this procedure should lead different people to discover how to ground a factual statement, and to agree on the most correct answer.
Thus, by manipulating questions according to the second criterion, teachers can take control over how much effort they want their students to experience in cognitive load.
Interpretative or speculative questions are based on an individual’s interpretation of a fact, which can vary. Some answers may be more appropriate than others depending on the support they have, or how plausible the proposed interpretation is according to the group.
Closed questions can be answered with a simple dichotomous answer—i.e., ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or ‘true’ or false’. Examples of closed questions are easy to find: “Are you ready to start the lesson?”, “Did you find the test difficult?”, or “Did the French revolution take place in 1789?”