A response that is totally off base... what to do?
I encounter some situations where a student answers a question and it has no connection to the topic or the response is totally wrong. There are times in my Myology class that is tough to help them recover from that as the rest of the class knows its incorrect. So is probing question the best..such as
mike I like you review page 34 in text and see if that review provides the information to support that answer.
or
Mike I think you are confusing that with..... check on page 34 before i ask you to revisit this question?
Or
Redirect by
Mike has given us the answer for _________ but I am still looking for _______________
Agree with the probing technique. Find something right and re-frame the question. Give the student a chance to recover before re-directing. I enjoyed Tom's response in the thread - masterful. Experience makes a difference.
Tom,
I have had to deal with some of your exact issues. I plan time for discussions into my lectures. I am constantly aware of how easy it is to go off on tangents and, on rare occasions, I judge it may be wiser to complete the discussion. Then I have to make up the information I needed to present. Your comments and questions are great.
Judy Mohammed
These responses are good for a reasonably closed question, but I find I have more trouble with off-base answers to open questions. From my (limited) experience the risk in open questions is that the answer can pull you off on a tangent and you can lose some of your control over the class and the lesson. (I suspect that the fear of losing control is one of the main reasons people don’t use more open questions, but I have no research to back that up.)
Sometimes the answer to an open question is so far off base that I can squelch it with a “that is a very interesting point but we don’t have time to do it justice today†and then rephrase the question, or simply tell them the direction I wanted to go. But other times I get lured into following the tangent.
Sometimes I follow the tangent because it is more interesting than the direction I had in mind, or it has been so hard to get the discussion going that I can’t afford to reject any responses, or the comment is close enough to the direction I want to go that I think (erroneously) that I can gradually nudge the discussion back on track. Some of these problems will improve with time and experience: I will ask better questions, I will become more efficient at nudging discussions back on track, and I will get a better feel for how much time we can spend on an intriguing tangent and still achieve our learning objectives. But I’m afraid that there will always be some bad days when I let the discussion run too far in the wrong direction and have to snatch it back abruptly, or resort to lecturing, in order to get back on track.
Tony,
Probing is a n important part of the questioning technique. It allows us to guide the students to the correct information.
Judy Mohammed
In the situation you're describing, I've addressed it by examining the answer as it relates to a sub-topic or ,if possible, a related topic. It may not work all the time that's why I carefully word the question before I ask it. This way I get the intended response.
Thomas,
Any one of those would work well along with breaking up the question into smaller parts.
Judy Mohammed
