Hi Leslie, Thanks for your post to the forum. Demonstrating the relevance of what students are learning is an ideal way to keep them engaged! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career.
Susan Polick
Hi Jeff, Your approach to questioning definitely encourages critical thinking - well done! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career.
Susan Polick
Hi Rick, Thanks for your post to the forum. Creative questioning can indeed improve student participation. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career.
Susan Polick
I teach basic college math, and I use questioning all the time to keep from doing all the work for my students, which they will let me do if I don't watch myself! I pose questions about where they use math in their everyday lives and specifically in their chosen career paths as welding inspectors. I also like to use questions as a prelude to real-life workplace problems. I also teach GED classes, and I try to incorporate as much real-life experience as I can in that class (and in all others for that matter.) I like to pose a question and allow my students to get into groups and brainstorm answers. Any answers are acceptable. As a class, we narrow them down to where we want them to be. I just like for them to all participate and feel completely comfortable "throwing" their ideas out there. I never strike one down even though it might make me laugh at first. My students and I have a good enough rapport that my laughing out loud sometimes is never insulting. I allow them to laugh at me also, so we're on even ground there. No one in my class is allowed to make fun of any answer given, even if at first it cracks us up!
Questions (whether posed by the instructor or students) are one of the fundamental learning tools - they help students to probe and reflect (to use their "thinking caps"). I generally keep a list of questions for any given topic area for guiding the discussion, but many times I also break students into groups to formulate questions to ask the class. One has to have a pretty good understanding of the material to develop a quality question, and I find that this approach helps students learn the material. Additionally, many times as instructors we have to help students to take a deeper dive into answering questions; by this I mean asking follow up questions such as "tell me more about that," "can you explain a little bit more what you are saying," "how does this apply in your life (work/family, etc.), etc. Helping students to connect material to the real world helps them to better understand and learn the material.
Depending on the customizing of the questions, it can be a great way to get ALL students involved and growing -- more thought provoking, challenging questions for the more gifted students; simple opinion questions for those who tend to be a bit less interactive, etc.
In our simulation lab, I find the debriefing session an excellent opportunity to ask questions that relate to the students experience. This is the time when the "light bulb clicks." Not when they are engaged in the actual simulation, but when they reflect on their actions during the debriefing stage. As a facilitator, this is the best time for me because I learn so much from the students.
Raul,
This site has some good suggestions. In addition, as an instructor I would include "check-in" dates with me for each member of the team. Also make sure that students know in advance that they will give a grade to each of their team members in regards to their performance and this will be part of their grade.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/build-trust-teamwork-dysfunctional-teams-25214.html
Susan Polick
How do you do to have a team who is not working together come to a solution to their differences?
Questioning Sessions help the critical thinking scenarios, they also help troubleshoot some of the things that will be seen in the workplace.
Depending on the learning you can incorporate a few transparent answers for detailed experience.
Hi Thomas, That's a great way to encourage critical thinking!
Susan Polick
In a particular class I teach, I always start the class out by asking about 15 questions about the subject matter in question. Most of my students have had years of experience dealing with all the terms I ask about and believe they know what they are talking about. Afterwards, I ask if anyone had any problems with some of the answers that were given. A few students will normally always raise a few questions about some of the answers given which result in a friendly but healthy debate. At some time, I pause the discussion and bring to their attention that they don’t seem to be in agreement with what the real answers are. This opens their eyes and they realize they don’t know as much as they thought they did. I have never had this method fail and I believe it contributed to a student body with eyes wide open hungry for the information and knowledge. It serves much like a pretest, but does it in an unwitting interactive way.
try to bring in critical thinking scenarios and even break up into groups to develop answers, this a proven way to find the answer to problems in the workplace, what better way to prepare the student for the workplace.
I like question sessions because it gives students a chance to see what others are wondering about or struggling with. It also gives a chance for students and instructors to learn a bit more about one another. It is rare that in a course that someone will not have a personal experience to share thus creating a nice camaraderie.
Questioning sessions allow you to start a discussion in a group that may not be willing to participate. You can bounce questions off multiple students and direct the discussion by adding your lesson material and highlighting important points.
The questioning sessions are a great way to review information presented in class. It also allows opportunities to clarify concepts students may not have fully understood. Moreover, by thinking it through, they will be better able to recall the information in the future.
Hi Daniel, Thanks for your post to the forum. I think that the best lesson we can take from your post is the necessity to "plan" questioning and how to effectively integrate it into our lessons. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career.
Susan Polick
I think that questioning sessions are probably one of the best learning tools in a classroom as long as they're managed effectively. If you can get the peers within a group to pose the questions through your guided discussions and others to answer them, they will be more apt to respond to each other. As long as you can highlight the correct responses properly while re-directing the partially correct or incorrect, you are going to have a successful classroom. You can also plan questions out at key parts of the lesson that will promote thought about the objectives of the course. This will reinforce those key pieces of information.
every student is given the opportunity to answer questions and ask questions of other students to fortify the learning process.
During hands on demos, I randomly go from one student to the next in regards to the step that had occurred to the what the next step will be and why. We weigh options at each step and students give variables that could change the step and what changes the welder would have to make.
