Questioning Stratgies for Focused Results (FT Press Delivers Elements)

This Element is an excerpt from The Art of Asking: Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers . Negotiating to Win Strategies and Skills for Every Situation ( Collection) (ebook) FT Press Delivers Elements -: The Role of Listening in Asking the Right Questions Tout Questioning Stratgies for Focused Results ( ebook).
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In addition to the evolution in information access and delivery, in recent years numerous studies have demonstrated that traditional lectures that rely on passive learning are not as effective as active, student-centered learning strategies Tanner, With pedagogical evidence discouraging traditional lectures, a rapidly evolving technological landscape, and the trendiness of lecture bashing, then why do lectures persist at nearly all colleges and universities?

One obvious explanation is that most faculty members teach the way they were taught. Most of us learned science through lectures, and consequently we teach that way. An alternative explanation is that lectures are not all bad.

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They can be particularly effective for setting contexts, disseminating common material, synthesizing information from multiple sources, clarifying complex concepts, and modeling professional practices Bligh, , Charlton, ; Woodring and Woodring, ; Adsit, A third explanation is that lectures remain economically effective delivery mechanisms. In a tight economic climate where tuition increases rapidly outpace inflation, colleges and universities simply cannot afford to reduce class sizes, even in the face of compelling evidence.

Fourth, most colleges and universities are literally constructed on the foundation of the lecture. Because lectures have such a long tradition in the academy, campus buildings and weekly class schedules presume lectures as the primary educational activity. Reconfiguring classrooms or calendars to accommodate active, student-centered courses requires cultural and facility changes that are difficult, slow, and expensive.

Thus, faculty members who chose to avoid or minimize traditional lectures for other pedagogies are often still limited to teaching in spaces designed for monologues rather than conversation. As well, most college faculty must teach in prescribed time blocks of two minute or three minute periods each week. These time periods are longer than most effective listening attention spans, yet too short for many alternative teaching methods where students take the helm of their learning.

Some professors use their experience and intuition of what works in the classroom to guide their choices and others have designed educational research strategies to test the efficacy of active learning methods. Thus, there is a very large literature describing how faculty members can effectively deploy student-centered and active learning approaches within lecture courses Bonwell, ; Mazur, ; McKeachie, ; Uno, ; Knight and Wood, , Handelsman et al. Active learning advocates contend that when students do something they learn it better than if they hear about it.

Thus, the best way to learn about active teaching is by spending time in a classroom experiencing those techniques.

ACTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES IN LECTURES

This article is by no means an exhaustive or original description of active learning in undergraduate lectures. The thoughtful incorporation of a few simple active learning strategies can go a remarkably long way to making the traditional lecture more engaging for students, more rewarding for instructors, and more effective to all. It is also important to note that none of the active learning techniques described here are in any way specific to neuroscience. These strategies can be applied to lecture courses in all disciplines. In fact, one of the best ways to examine new teaching strategies is to visit the classrooms of colleagues outside your discipline or look for situations where you are not an expert.

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To this point I offer a personal example of how an experience far outside my discipline became a powerfully simple catalyst for transforming my own teaching and helping me think more about my lectures from student perspectives. Several years ago I attended a reading by the famous writer Joyce Carol Oates, who is also a professor of literature. Not equipped with literary analysis skills, I was uncertain how to learn from her guest lecture.

She quickly put me at ease by briefly describing each poem before she read it. I knew almost nothing about poetry, but I did know that in a poem that short, every word was essential. She told us that the next poem was longer, so I knew to listen with a more sustainable pace, akin to a 5K. Finally, one poem she told us was on the page in the shape of a kite, and while I could not see the words on the page, recreating shape in my mind was an exciting challenge that augmented my listening to the poem.

On the surface, Ms. Oates gave a traditional monologue lecture in a large performance hall, yet these small strategic cues helped me engage powerfully with material in which I had limited experience or interest. The next day in my Developmental Biology course I showed videos of various embryos. I recall a teaching advice column that suggested all faculty members should make an effort to learn something new or attempt something well out of our comfort zones every year or two because we ask our students to learn very new things in which they might not be naturally good.

When I take a painting class or sign up for a triathlon, it is not because I imagine a career in art or a podium finish. Similarly, many of my students will never become developmental neuroscientists, but they have other reasons for taking my course. I may never be able to use a paintbrush effectively, I might not perform up to my abilities on a given day, and I will never set an athletic record, but I will want to be as good as I can be and I will get frustrated somewhere in the process.

Again, most of my students will not be naturals and will experience frustrations in learning neuroscience that I may not have experienced. Being a learner means struggling with new knowledge when guided by an expert who likely found the topic more accessible and interesting. Such empathy for the challenges of learning combined with strategic classroom activities that focus on the learner can transform a traditional lecture into a more effective learning experience for students without sacrificing time or content.

The text may be a short story, a passage, or a collection of statements. Depending on the length of the selected text and the size of the class all students may be assigned reading responsibilities or only a small fraction of the students may read out loud. If appropriate, the student readers may be encouraged to add drama, flair, or humor to their readings.

This technique is particularly helpful for starting discussions, introducing new topics, or shifting gears during a long class period. This flexible teaching technique is also used in high schools to develop performance skills and enhance literary studies Coger and White, The statements selected might model suitable contributions as questions, evidence-based statements, etc. The instructor might also choose to shift responsibility for selecting the material read toward the students. The students who find the quotes might even ask their classmates to do the reading out loud at the next class.

The instructor poses a question or prompt to the whole class with the explicit instruction that all students are expected to think independently about their answer s in silence and possibly jot notes for themselves. After a minute or so the duration will depend on the complexity of the prompt , the instructor directs the students to pair up with a nearby or assigned student.

In pairs or trios the students compare their thoughts. Depending on the prompt, the instructor may guide the pairs to reach a consensus, pick the most convincing response, generate many responses, etc. The instructor may select pairs by cold calling, asking for volunteers, requesting diverse responses, going around the room, etc.


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The instructor may also assign students to record the responses. It is a tried and true strategy for group learning that has been used very effectively and very widely in postsecondary education Nilson, Think-Pair-Share offers multiple benefits. First, the moment set aside to think quietly communicates that all students are expected to think about the issue posed. It thereby reduces the chances that when an instructor poses a question to the class that most students will skip thinking an answer, counting on an eager or attention-seeking classmate to save the day.

Similarly, dedicating time to think quietly also allows students who need just an extra moment to organize their thoughts or gather their courage a chance of contributing to the discussion. Not only does Think-Pair-Share encourage all students to think, it allows all students to talk. Thus, students experience the advantages of explaining their responses to a peer, vetting their thoughts, and revising. This one-on-one conversation is often much more comfortable for students than if the same question had been posed to the class and a single volunteer response elicited.

Students who might never talk in front of the full class are actively articulating their thoughts to a peer. All pairs have vetted their points before they are raised to the full group, etc. There are numerous variations of Think-Pair-Share. Similarly, students may be asked to share with more than one peer say first on one side and then on the other , expanding the activity to Think-Pair-Pair-Share. This activity can be readily combined with voting mechanisms clickers, show of hands, etc. A small variation, Think-Vote-Pair, is particularly effective when the majority of a class has trouble identifying the correct answer to a question in a quiz.

Asking the students to discuss their response with a neighbor and then re-enter their response to the question is a remarkably effective way to help the students refine their thinking. Finally, in the undergraduate science classroom, Think-Pair-Share can work particularly well with analyzing data, understanding experiments, and considering interpretations and conclusions. The instructor asks students to collaborate in small groups on a specific prompt that can generate multiple responses.

Students share a single piece of paper that gets passed around their circle rapidly. The goal is to generate as many responses as possible from all members of the group in a defined period of time. A small prize candy, extra credit point, etc. Roundtables are often followed by a reporting mechanism in which the professor calls on groups to share their responses. The report-out instructions might ask for no repeated answers, the most predictable answer, the most creative answer, etc.

Finally, the instructor may choose to collect the Roundtable papers after the exercise to get a full record of all the small group conversations. Like many other active learning strategies Roundtable ensures that every student in the classroom is generating knowledge and contributing to a discussion simultaneously. Roundtables are particularly well suited to brainstorming exercises, but can easily be adapted to other situations where there are multiple responses. Roundtables can quickly transform the energy within a lecture hall because multiple groups are simultaneously engaged in animated conversations or contests.

The Roundtable technique is best suited to brainstorming applications or problems that have multiple reasonable responses, such as experimental results that can have multiple interpretations. This technique can also be used as a way to help students rapidly generate a variety of diverse ideas as potential starting places for assignments or term paper topics. The Roundtable can also be an effective tool for test preparation by prompting the students to list as many key words or concepts that think they should understand to do well on an upcoming exam, etc.

A class is divided into multiple teams of students. The instructor gives each team a slightly different but well-defined task with clear instructions that each member of the team will do to represent the group at the end of the work. Each team then collaborates on the task, developing expertise in the designated area. The instructor is available for questions and guidance as the groups work to learn their material. Then the instructor rearranges the groups to create new groups that are composed of one member from each of the original groups. Within the new groups each student has designated expertise and is responsible for teaching the information learned in the original group as well as learning the information from the other groups.

Jigsaw classrooms have long been used as a cooperative and collaborative learning strategy in all levels of education. Originally developed by Aronson for reducing racial conflict and promoting positive relationships across ethnic boundaries Aronson and Patnoe, , jigsaws have also been adapted as short exercises within undergraduate science lectures and labs Smith et al.

In a Jigsaw exercise the teacher is responsible for structuring the activity with thoughtful prompts and perhaps providing appropriate resources, but students take responsibility for obtaining and conveying new knowledge.

The Jigsaw format necessarily requires each student to be both a teacher and a careful listener during the exercise, yet no one student is required to do the front lines digging on all the topics. This exercise also naturally gets every student in the classroom talking and interacting with peers. The rearrangement inherent in the Jigsaw method also promotes interactions with classmates a student might not otherwise encounter as well as provides a burst of physical activity that can help maintain attention.

For example, instead of a professor giving a lecture describing various neurodegenerative diseases, a class could do a jigsaw exercise to accomplish the same goal. The instructor splits the class into initial groups by disease where the students learn, clarify, or review the causes and symptoms of one particular clinical condition.


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After an appropriate amount of time the instructor reconfigures the groups so that each new group had a student representing each disease. Individuals in the new groups then use their expertise to teach each other about the important characteristics of their assigned disease and learn about the other diseases.

The instructor might then assign the reconfigured groups the more complicated cognitive task of collaborating to create a visual highlighting the common themes and important distinctions between all the diseases considered. If class time does not permit this synthesis, then this final activity could be assigned as collaborative or individual homework. Jigsaws are also commonly used in science courses as ways to make primary research articles more approachable. Initial groups may first focus on specific sections or figures in a paper, then reconfigure so that each group has at least one member with expertise on each portion of the article.

Jigsaws also work well for helping students write scientific manuscripts for the laboratory portion of a course. Initial groups focus on key components of each paper section introduction, methods, results, discussion, etc. Jigsaw exercises may also fit well with learning activities outside of class. For example, in advance of a Jigsaw activity, an instructor might assign different readings to subsets of students. In this way the first phase of the Jigsaw is independent acquisition of expertise, which allows class time to focus on the collaborative teaching phase of the exercise.

The instructor puts a question with a single correct answer out to the whole class and expects all students to respond. Quizzes are typically exercises completed by students working independently, but can readily be adapted into team activities such as Think-Pair-Share. Quizzing during class can accomplish several goals.

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First, quiz questions can stimulate thought during a lecture, cueing the students to think actively about the material at hand by pulling students out of passive, receptive modes into more engaged and contemplative modes. Finally, quizzes also test comprehension during a lecture, providing real-time feedback to both the student and instructor. The instructor can use the quiz results to spend more time on a topic not well understood or to move on to new material.


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    • Similarly, students can use the quiz results to gauge their own understanding in comparison to instructor expectations and peer performance. Typically when an instructor tosses a question out in a lecture hall, it is answered verbally by a single student who shoots a hand into the air. Most other students quickly figure out that these eager classmates will reliably relieve them of thinking or responding responsibilities in future such situations.

    Questioning Strategies

    Moreover, when an instructor hears only a single volunteer response, this feedback reflects how one confident student is thinking. The bulk of the class might have a very different understanding that is not obvious to the instructor. In contrast, when a question is reconfigured as a quiz, two important benefits emerge. Quizzes can be implemented in a wide variety of ways from high-tech classroom response systems a.

    Clicker systems offer the benefit of rapidly collecting, recording, and displaying responses without individual attribution. Clicker software can sometimes be clunky and the hardware expensive, but they have been used to good effect in many courses Wood, ; Keller et al. A lecturer does not need a classroom response system to reap the benefits of quizzing in class. Keep abreast of significant corporate, financial and political developments around the world.

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