ANY QUESTIONS?

ANY QUESTIONS? A Practical Approach to Increasing Students’ In-Class Questions

A brief exercise…  On an index card on your table, write one question about your discipline or the content you teach that would love to hear from your students, but seldom do.  Share with others the question you would love to hear. Is there any kind of pattern or consensus about the kinds of questions we wish our students would ask?

 On the back, write a hypothesis for why students don’t ask more questions in class.

How I grew interested in the question what makes a good question….

Assignment for a First-Year Honors Assignment

 Every Tuesday you will be one of three or four discussion leaders. To prepare, you will need to go over the assigned readings carefully. Pose 3 or 4 intelligent and perceptive questions about what you've read.

Expectation Failure  What I expected…

 What happened…?

The Kinds of Questions They asked…  What do you think about X?  What are the three parts of the Platonic soul?  What year was Aristotle born?  Who do you like better: Adam or Eve?  What did Woolf say on page 112?

 Why were the questions like badly

written quizzes?

 Indeed, why aren’t they asking more and

richer questions?

Why don’t students ask more questions? Theories?  Shyness.  Haven’t done the reading/prep.  Resistance to new approach  Deference to teacher-centered classroom.  Acclimated to passive learning.

Mark Edmundson: The “Tyranny of Cool”

A default attitude of emotional distance from confrontation or any sign of excessive passion in a college classroom.

Role of Technology?  Attentional Disarray and Multi-Tasking.

 Grazing vs. Building Narrative Frameworks.

 The Seduction of Transcription.

 An “on-demand” expectation for information/answers.

Expert vs. Non-Expert Cognition (Nous)  Non-expert cognition is not just a lesser version of expert cognition. Evidence suggests it’s not even the same kind of cognition.

 Daniel Willingham, Why

Students Don’t Like School

Two questions about questions

 What is a question and what does it do?  What exactly makes a question

good?

Okay, so what is a question?  A starting place for critical thinking.  Hypotheses, research questions, skeptical

inquiry.

 A prerequisite to moral discernment.  Should we do X? Is X morally right? Why is it

right? (Horizontal vs. Vertical Critical Thinking).

 A spur to the imagination  What would I do if…?

 An invitation to trouble.  Hey, what gives you the right? Who made you

boss?

 A tool for acquiring information or understanding?  What does this mean?

Questions as learning tools  Questions as tools for acquiring information and/or understanding.         

What’s this? How do I do X? How do you define X? Where did this come from? When? Whose idea is it? How is this organized? Why? How does X relate Y? How does it differ? Which of these elements is necessary, sufficient, insufficient?

 How do I get my students thinking about the work their questions can do?

Sorting questions by the work they do  Level One: questions asked in the early stages of learning a new idea.  Level Two: questions asked when attempting to graft new knowledge to other ideas or existing knowledge.  Level Three: questions asked when creating, speculating or assessing new information.

Level One Work

Definitions Examples Context Analysis of Structure

Level Two Work

Comparisons (Distinction) Causation Application

Level Three Work

Synthesis Counterfactuals Evaluations

Questions and Critical Thinking: Reverse Engineering Bloom Level One: Forming a Basic Understanding

 Contextuals: Where did this come

from? Who came up with this? When? Why? How was it a product of its time or author?

 Definitions: What does this term

(idea, passage, etc.) mean? What’s a concrete example? Main ideas?

 Analyzers: What’s the structure of

this? Why this structure? How do the parts contribute to (or fail to contribute) the whole?

Practical Teaching Strategies for Level One Questions  Collaborative Learning     

Creating lexicons Teamed research tasks Group annotation projects Poster presentations Student-created quizzes

 Flipped Activities    

On-line lectures & quizzes. On-line annotation/Google.docs Wikis Lacuna Stories

Questions and Critical Thinking: Reverse Engineering Bloom Level Two Questions: Making Connections • Comparatives: How is this the same as that? How is this different than that? How are these more or less similar? What is the opposite of this? • Causals: What factors caused this to happen? Which of these factors is sufficient? Which contributing or probable? On what grounds can we eliminate possible causes or explanations? • Applicators: How can we apply this to a set of circumstances? What can we predict because of this? What are the implications if this is true?

Conceptual Differentiation: making the abstract concrete

Student-Generated Level Two Questions Applications of theory: • How does the theory of learning in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave reflect Frederick Douglass’ experience learning to read? Conceptual Differentiation: • Which authors define the self in isolation? Which in relationship? Intertextual connections (Fluid Thinking): • What advice would Machiavelli offer to Hamlet? • Idea Bingo

Mapping: What is the relationship between…? The Great Chain of Being

Edmund’s speech making the law of nature the only source of legitimate power.

Pico Della Mirandola’s Oration

Inferno

King James I and his argument that King’s derive their authority from God.

and the Dignity of Man

Luther’s idea that you are saved by faith, not the church or any physical thing in this world.

Humanism

Dante’s

Autonomy

Edmund’s view that the heaven’s play no role in the events on earth.

Vasari’s biographies of Renaissance artists and their achievements.

Legitimacy: the acceptance that an authority, law or a régime is on a rightful or moral foundation.

Only Connect: Draw lines between the items in the thought bubbles to show either a connection or a strong distinction. Then write a short explanation of the connection/distinction you see between the ideas. You are allowed to create more thought bubbles!

Questions and Critical Thinking: Reverse Engineering Bloom Level Three: So What? •

Counterfactuals: How would this change if X

•

Evaluatives: Why do you agree or disagree with this?

•

Extenders (Synthesizers) What can we predict

happened? How would things be different if X had not happened? How would things be different if X happened to a greater (or lesser) degree?

How strong is the case that this is correct? What criteria are best for judging this? What is the best order or priority for these things and why? What is the strongest argument against this? What are the implications if true?

because of this? What ideas can be added to this? What might happen if you added this to that?

Getting Students to think about the work questions perform 1. The Questionable Quiz  Assign a group to write a true/false quiz over the material.

Have another create a multiple

choice quiz and another a fill-in-the blank (or matching) quiz.

Lastly have a group to write

three meaty take-home essay prompts.  Post quizzes around the room and have students stand near the most difficult or challenging

quiz (the majority select will likely stand by the quiz requiring the most higher-order critical thinking skills—usually the essay prompts) .  Ask them why the questions are so hard.

Then introduce Bloom’s taxonomy, hand out some

Post-It notes, and they will be able to label their own quiz questions with the thinking skills required to answer them.

Getting Students to think about the work questions perform

The Anatomy of a Question Summarize, Connect, Evaluate

This part of the question asks you to make an informed and evaluative generalization about what you have read. What’s the big picture? What’s the take-away?

The eighth circle of the Inferno is called the Malebolgia (the Evil Pockets). It is a series of deep trenches filled with those who have committed various kinds of fraud. Dante and Virgil cross over these trenches on a narrow, rocky bridge and look down of the damned. Look at the organization of the Malebolgia from top to bottom. What kinds of sinners are here? Summarize a few of the types of people who end up in the Eighth Circle of Hell? How does the ordering in this circle follow the logic of the entirety of Hell? In other words, why does it begin with panderers and seducers and culminate in sowers of discord and falsifiers? See any pattern? What do you make of this, and how might it tie back to the Great Chain of Being? Is our society any less filled with people destined for the Eighth circle? What think you?

Here you are asked to apply something in the text to contemporary society and make a judgment of how these ideas apply or don’t apply to your world.

This question asks for some cited summary of key events or passages of the reading. Three pieces of textual summary would be a good sampling of the text.

This question asks for you to connect this section of the text to other ideas. Think about the view o expressed here. How does it contrast with other authors in this unit who have written about the unit’s big idea? How does it echo earlier people we’ve read. Remember both ends of a connection need to be cited.

The Anatomy of a Question Create a Question focused on something in Cantos 13-17. Be sure it asks for summary, connection, evaluation and application. Use arrows to identify these parts of your self-generated question prompt.

Summarize

Evaluate

Connect Apply

Two Exercises that Generate Questions 1. Question Triage  Ask students to write three-five questions (from the different levels on Bloom’s Taxonomy) about the material or the subject and then decide which is the strongest or most interesting and why. These “strong questions” can become our agenda for class discussion.  A variant form of this exercise is to form groups to evaluate an array of independently generated questions. After having students individually compose questions, they can form into groups to assess all the questions, choosing the top three or four they most want answered. Sometimes, too, there’s a happy convergence of curiosity with a consensus of the group all asking questions along similar lines.

 Question triage gets students focused on the thinking work they want from answers. It’s also a handy and organic way for them to discover future research topics or papers ideas.

Two Exercises that Generate Questions 2. Question Exchange  Groups of three or four can triage their three best questions and exchange them with another group. Then students discuss the other group’s questions for 10-15 minutes. After this, the paired groups merge to share responses.  The aim is to make the students accountable to each other for the clarity and relevance of their questions, and to surface important points of consensus and disagreement.  Question exchange gives students the freedom to discuss material on their own, but it also provides them with a reassuring structure for how to proceed and some accountability to each other.

Okay, but does this work? Hmmm, yes and no…

Is it worth doing?

 Students can distinguish between strong  The teacher’s role in framing subjects, and weak questions if presented with finding illuminating analogies, and them. They have a bit more difficulty drawing out student thinking is still designing them on their own. paramount in the classroom.  They can get better with practice, but you do have to suffer through some non-starters.

 Even so, asking students to begin thinking meta-cognitively about the design, intent and strength of their questions is worthwhile.

Does it work?  Nothing in education is a panacea.  Difficult for students to think like disciplinary experts.  Can we justify letting them muddle along without expert supervision when there's so much to cover?

Questions as features of Natural Critical Learning Environments Learners try to answer questions or solve problems they find interesting, intriguing, important, or beautiful. Learners can try to answer the question or solve the problems then receive feedback and try again before anyone "grades" them on their efforts. Learners have lots of opportunities to speculate about possible answers or solutions even before they know much about the subject, and to receive feedback on those speculations.

Qualitative Evaluation

 Which questions provoked the most thinking for your this semester?

 What question that you asked in the seminar are you proudest of or gives you the most satisfaction?

 How have and answers in the seminar connected to things outside of the seminar (in your thoughts, discussions, other classes, life, etc.)?

 To what degree has the focus on creating good questions been useful beyond this class?

In-class questions as an indices of engagement?

Any Questions? Suggestions? Advice?