The best teaching harnesses curiosity...and curiosity is all about finding the answers to our questions. In this episode, Amalie and Camie talk about the importance of being intentional in how we ask questions as educators and how we teach and encourage students to ask them as learners. We also talk about how to put those questions at the center of your curriculum and how to make the best use of the technology available for your online courses.

Want to reach out? Email us at gccreate@uark.edu and we'll be happy to chat!

Extra Resources:

"Why Questioning is the Ultimate Learning Skill," Forbes Magazine

The Right Question Institute

Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at University of Illinois 

Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at Northern Illinois University

Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy, The American Institute for Research

Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington University St. Louis

Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell University 

Audio file

Questioning Mixdown 2.mp3

Transcript

Can't hurt to ask right today on the pedagogy toolkit. We will be discussing The Who, what, when, where, why, and how of asking good questions in the classroom.

OK, you have nieces and nephews, I.

Have nieces and nephews. I have many of them, but I have one is 10. He'll be 11 in October.

And the other is 8 turning 9 in May.

OK, so remember when they were a little younger betting and they asked lots of questions and not just questions, but like continued why?

They actually still do, especially the 8 year old, and that's always been kind of her personality.

If she and I and anyone else are in a car together, she's it's just a constant stream of questions to me and me explaining things to her because I'm the aunt, not the mom. So I don't say stop asking any questions. You know, I just answer them because that's what I asked to do and the other person just shaking their head.

Sitting in silence because that's all.

They can do.

It's such a stereotype of little kids and it's such a face that every kid goes through, at least if not become part of their personality. It's this phase of, but why? Yeah, but why? But what about that? But if it's that, then what about that?

Then what about that?

Well, how come?

This right and so I know we.

We, like we joke about it and we.

Get frustrated with it.

And I've started to wonder if that frustration is actually what makes.

When when kids see the adults in their life get super frustrated with them asking questions, it makes them stop wanting to ask questions as they get older.

And I have recently I asked some students to talk about a time recently where they saw courage and they almost universally discussed someone who asked a question in a large class. That was, they were impressed. They were. They felt like that was the most courageous thing they had.

Ever seen?

Well, asking questions is.

Hard. Yeah, and I.

Think that's kind of the other reason we stopped asking questions because, you know, we go into those developmental stages when it really matters what the people nearest to us think. And we're so afraid of making fools of ourselves. And, you know, especially when you have undergrads and junior high.

How? Say junior high through your bachelor's degree?

It's kind of that thing.

Thank you.

You're right where those social interactions really matter, and it's hard to put yourself out there sometimes and actually.

So I mostly work with humanities courses and.

So do you.

I feel like most of our courses that we work on rely on good discussion, yes.

You definitely have to in the humanities.

You rely on good discussion boards and that comes down to good.

Discussion questions that comes down to really knowing the right questions to ask and.

I feel like that's one of those things that become.

Such an afterthought for us.

Because we just go. Yeah, of course we ask questions. We're teachers. That's what we do. We ask questions and students answer them. Tada, that's that's.

That's how school.

How that works? That's how school works.

Right. But there's such ultimately the basis of learning, right? Because how else would we?

No any you.

Need curiosity, right? And that's part of questioning.

It's learning is absolutely at its root. It's about asking and answering questions.

And we go back to the Socratic method. Experimentation is all rooted in asking questions. Your hypothesis is all based on how you think a question might be answered.

Businesses, every every business, every innovation, every advancement in humanity has come about because of a.

Question. Yeah, what if this happens? How can I do this? How do I make this?

Better. Yeah. From the wheel of how do I get this thing?

Across a room or across.

The the plains to what? If I could carry my entire music collection in my pocket, and now we do, and now we do the why does an apple fall? Why do these?

Finches all have different beaks. Why? Do you know? How can I?

Talk to people across the the globe. Everything comes down to a.

A. A question that needs an answer and as we were putting this together, I started thinking I still need to get my head around all the the organization of all these thoughts and so then I remembered.

That what I was actually doing was talking about questions, and I went back to what is the question I'm trying to answer with this podcast. Yes. And that question is, how do we encourage rich discussion in an online classroom?

Yeah. We don't think very deeply about.

How we're asking questions, you know, that's not something that people sit around and ponder. How can I ask a better question? I'm just pondering this on my Saturday afternoon.

You know like.

It's it's not.

Something that people think about a lot, but also when you're learning new material, sometimes it can be difficult.

To know what questions you need to ask and to sit there and analyze. Because you're you're asking like basic questions like what is this not?

How does this relate to this other thing, and how can I connect it with my own life? You know you're thinking about what answer do I need to give so that I can get the right answer in this discussion?

Board and move on with my life.

Yes. And so I think that comes down to their being kind of two types of two primary types of questions.

There's open and closed questions and closed questions are the ones that have an answer.

That is what time is it? That is, where am I right now? There is a correct answer. We tend to use that in education as a way to assess prior knowledge, to assess if a student has learned a thing.

Yeah, these are your multiple choice questions, right?

This. Yes, these are.

So your low stakes testing?

These are your low stakes testing pieces these.

Are is it right? Is it wrong?

End of story. Carry on and it's easy for us to ask those questions because again, as teachers, we sort of go, we want to make sure they know it and we want to make sure that.

That we know more than them.

I don't know if that it's sort of. It's not even that we want to know more than them. It's just we feel like we have.

To be the expert.

Yeah, well, as a teacher, you feel like it is your responsibility to.

Provide answers.

Right. And so you want to ask questions that?

There is an answer for it.

But there is an answer for because if there's not any parent knows the first time their kid looks at them and asks a question that they don't know the answer to, it's like.

I don't know and I don't know, is one of the hardest things for adults to say.

On the other hand, there's open questions, and those open questions.

Don't necessarily have right and wrong answers. Those are the ones that have multiple factors that play into that. There are things that maybe you, even as the instructor, don't know the answer to and.

Those are the ones that drive learning.

That really push a student to find an answer to find further questions, to get deeper into what they are learning and not just finding a right answer.

There's a lot more in our world that doesn't have right.

Answers yeah, I think.

Those open-ended questions.

They are kind of a way to just grapple with the unknown and.

That's a skill set.

It's not just a type of question that is a skill set to be able to grapple with things that you don't know to be able.

To say you know.

I don't have an absolute correct answer here, but this is what I believe and this is maybe why you know this is where I've formulated my opinion based on these other facts that I know.

And so that's where we can get into. There's different types of open questions too. So we get into are we asking clarifying questions, which may still have kind of an answer but or is it, do we just need to clear up some things before we understand what's happening further?

Probing questions. We're we're trying to get deeper into whatever the topic is. We're trying to go further and ask the especially if we're asking a student. We're trying to ask that student to think deeper. We're trying to ask them to get to go past what they see on the surface. And then those hypotheticals that we've talked about, the sort of the what?

If what if we could do this? What if the world was flat? What would the horizon look like and and just?

You know, we don't believe the world was flat.

We don't believe.

No, no.

But also those are ways to think through beliefs that you don't believe.

Right, yes, that is when you're asking questions like that, you are you are guiding the students to ask questions of themselves.

Which is where they get to.

Question their own rationale on things.

I conducted a discussion with some some students a while back that.

They brought up one student, brought up a particularly hot topic issue.

And then it became quickly clear that that he was a lone voice of dissent in that group of 20 young people. So.

That was where I felt like it was my job as the instructor to step in and start asking questions.

Yeah. So that it didn't become a pile on so that it didn't become just a defending everybody defending their position because that's great if you can defend your position, but be prepared to relinquish your position as well.

To celebrate the being wrong, to celebrate the not knowing, to to celebrate all those piece.

Yeah. And to respect for the people have differing opinions from.

You. Yes. So I started asking the student to explain.

Why? He believed that what he thinks, and I mean in in very tight, clear questions. Nothing, nothing leading.

And nothing.

I don't want leading and I don't.

Want loaded, right?

And that can be a hard thing too, for instructors to be able to ask questions without.

Knowing what they want the student to say.

Yes, or yeah, without leading the student to get to where you want them and letting them kind of take their own journey to that answer.

Well, what was beautiful?

About asking the student those questions, was it?

Modeled for the rest of the students that.

How you can ask questions to get further information, clarifying questions and probing questions.

And then.

They were able.

To jump in.

And ask their own questions or rethink their own opinions, which was really awesome. I got to see them do that and go. Oh, actually, I see what he's saying. I still don't necessarily agree, but I see what he's saying and maybe it's a more complex issue than what.

I thought it was.

Right. And that's that's the power of asking questions.

In those moments.

So how do we?

Generate and develop these questions that we're asking of students.

Especially in an online model.

It's a little bit different and online than it is in person because you don't have the live action going on well in our asynchronous courses we.

Don't, right. You don't have the ability to sort of read the room in the same ways that you might. And so that is why it can be that much more important to be very.

Deliberate in how you ask your questions in the wording of your questions.

Yes, in that asynchronous online environment, wording is very important because.

Whatever is on the page, you have to kind of think about how people are going to perceive that question or how they're going to interpret it. Are they going to understand your meaning in that question or, you know, are they creating their own? And there's always.

A little bit.

Of both right and I mean and and with an open question, you want a tiny bit of.

Both, but you.

Want to be Prepared to consider all possible outcomes when.

You when you ask a Question you want to say what are the various answers I could Get from this. That comes down to knowing your students as well. Yes, I think that comes down to knowing who your students are and and what they're. That's why I don't suggest starting with hard questions.

No, we need to start with. I would say those more open questions to see where students go with it, right?

Yeah, but questions that are not controversial, questions that are not going to going to, you know, pluck the heartstrings like let's just... Let's just ask.

Broad questions.

Low stakes, broad questions. But then you start to get a feel for.

Who your students are, and you can kind of anticipate where you think some of those answers are going to go.

Yeah, and it's.

A lot of times.

That's kind of like your pre test for their knowledge.

Of on that sometimes.

And and you can't do this like even in a little quiz that you, you know, shoot out to them.

You can do it on a discussion board as well, but sometimes it's more fun to kind of get that pre knowledge somewhere else and then pull that into the discussion board and say hey.

You know, I noticed XY and Z, so when you're discussion board this week, I want you to think about this before you.

Answer the question.

Yes. And those those pieces can also guide what you decide to do with your class after that. That's part of that pre testing, but it can even be in those more.

Soft skill kind of ways too.

Yeah, definitely.

The other thing that that I think we can do as instructors is to really build our curriculum around.

Question around questions.

Yeah, I know you and I have talked about the Socratic seminar method before and how.

And we don't think of using that in an online environment, but it is possible and we've seen people set up their discussion boards using a Socratic seminar kind of method when they usually you have to require like two different due dates for your posting. So your students first response and that must include a question you know.

As we do a little earlier in the week and then the later response that responds to those questions, you know it kind of gets your discussion going, but it's.

It's all about kind of keeping that knowledge moving forward, that exploration of knowledge moving forward.

Yes, I also.

Like when I've seen instructors ask the students to answer, including questions so that their answer they they respond to a question, but then they also include a question.

In their response, again having them practice those questions that are a little more open, where they genuinely don't have a a set answer in mind.

Yes. So that you can't, like you said drive that learning forward drive the discussion forward that's ultimately what a discussion.

Is is, it's.

That bouncing back and forth to move towards.

Not even resolution, but just to move forward in a a topic and so that.

Yeah. So we.

Think of academia as a lot of times, you know, that's what our that's why do literature reviews and academia right. It's moving the conversation forward. It doesn't mean that we have the solid right answer right here in this moment.

I mean, we can, but sometimes it's just. Here's another piece of information.

On this topic that we needed to, you know, understand a little.

Better I have seen instructors.

Write their instructions for the discussion group where the response so they put in their first their initial post, and then their response to.

Someone else has to.

It has to do something to alter what the original statement was. It can't just be. Oh yeah, I totally agree.

I agree. Thank you so much for your response. I'm so glad you brought this up.

I have experienced that as well.

Great job.

Thank you like that. That doesn't move anything forward and that's when you see the students say something and then?

There's a response, and then there's no.

More. Well, that's.

When you know.

Online environments for some reason it is super easy to just get into that auto mode where you're just like. I just need to meet these requirements and get this done so I can move on to the next thing.

Instead of really sitting down to ask yourself what am I learning about this topic? What are these people saying?

About this topic.

You know, could we engage

With it.

I’ve absolutely been that person in the online space. It's totally me, I.

Describe it so well because it's me, but I.

But I also recently in.

An online course that in right now a topic came up that I that someone had an opinion about and it has become a space where people are willing to express different opinions where it's respectful dialogue. Where I felt very comfortable jumping in and saying.

I disagree with this because of these reasons and.

And and actually engaged in the discussion.

Yeah. And I do say I think it's not just the students for a little scared by online discussion board sometimes, but also the teachers because they've seen students get into those controversial topics and it's hard to say, OK, guys, let's.

You know it. It's a lot harder in online environment to step in and redirect the conversation sometimes because you're not online at the same time, not because you know you can't jump in and say, hey, let's think about this in a different way, but.

But just those those cars of.

Of dealing with all the controversy that can come with engaging in difficult conversations.

Well, and that's I think again it comes back to that creating a culture in your.

And which is something we should probably do a whole podcast episode on some more in addition to just instructor presence.

Right. But it this comes back, I think to those things.

It is the culture like we were talking.

About but also it's.

Finding the questions and part of part of this part of having those questions where students feel OK, like you were just talking about.

You know you.

Felt really good about saying I disagree with this and This is why.

It's making that safe environment, so that's setting the culture, but also celebrating when students do ask hard questions saying, you know, I'm so glad you brought that up. Let's.

Talk about that.

In this way and making it not a threat to anyone's belief system, right? We're not trying to be.

You know, we've already had the culture here. We've made it a.

Safe space.

But making it.

Also, that culture of of questioning, of knowledge gathering.

And I think that's the the teacher modeling the.

When a student says something, be willing even even if it's not true, be willing to say oh I.

Hadn't thought of it that way.

Be be willing to say that's a new that's a totally new way of looking at it. It's great when it really happens. Yeah, it's really fun. Not when I have, you know, when I've been teaching something and a student comes up with an interpretation for something that.

I go oh.

But you didn't think.

About before.

Oh, I never like. I would never have looked at it that way. Talk to me some more about and then that's when you can start.

Asking those questions of talk to me, more about that. So where did you see that? Where did you find that? What made you think that what you know what outside of the text makes you think that? What is it really?

Because those are questions I genuinely want the answer to right, and that that matters a lot that goes a long way if you can ask questions that you genuinely.

Want an answer to and you don't want them to just check a box?

One of the other things that we can do is to really teach students to ask better questions, because sometimes again, like we talked about, you know, if you're a new learner to that topic then.

And you don't always know what questions to ask, and so giving them the skill of asking really good questions about any topic at all, it can be really helpful to them beyond your classroom, right. And so. And so really thinking through, hey, this is how we ask questions.

In our discussion board in this class, you know those are kind of classroom procedures, right? But it's skills they carry beyond their.

Sure. Well, and really focusing on teaching those upfront.

Yeah, yeah. From the very get go. These are part of your discussion board directions. They're in every one. Students can always reference them. They're in the introduction to your class. Hey, by the way, our discussions look a little different.

Focus in the first couple of.

In this class.

Something I've I've started doing is asking students to before they even submit a thesis statement for a paper or a research project. What is the question you are trying to answer?

Yeah, with this paper.

What? What is the question you're answering? What so So what?

Yeah. What? What is the purpose of you writing this at this point? Why do we care?

To read it.

Right. Is it something that I am going to already know all the things about then why do I want to read it? Is it something that you already know all the things about? Then why?

Do you want to research it? What's the?

Yeah. What is the?

Impetus here? Why? Why even bother? And I think that's also where I love the idea of building curriculum around questions completely.

I've long wanted to do an American history course that focuses on 2 questions. How did we end up with the social media environment that we are in now?

And how did we end up with the judicial system that we have?

Now also interesting, I think, how do we end up with?

Fill in the blank here. Yeah, it's a really great question about America in general, cause it's a lot of.

It's the question that a lot of people.

Are asking right now, yes, and instead we end up teaching it. I mean, this is kind of going off on a little bit of a tangent, but that's instead we end.

Up teaching it as here's where we started.

And here's the thing that happened next. And here's the thing that happened next.

So that you.

Have started so far removed from where these students are now you start so far removed from where we are now, but if you can treat it as a question.

But you're not.

Of so, how did we end up?

And start backtracking it.

And then you can actually basically fill in all the blanks going back, but you've you've.

You've bridged all those gaps. Yeah, instead of starting.

Hundreds of years in the past and trying to come up. So and I I've seen people do that in the sciences as well. I've seen chemistry classes I love starting with very much questions of the origins of.

Our everyday items and then being able to chemically trace back.

All the way back to The Big Bang.

Which is I I just. I love that. I love the idea of putting it all as questions.

And the student doesn't. When you when you start from the beginning, the student knows.

Knows where it started. It's like when you watch a movie where they start with the end and you go, oh, how did that happen? How did we end up?

You ever watch movies like that where they?

Start in the like.

Actually, there's one that.

Is the biggest surprise in the.

Oh wait. Remember Me? Maybe.

Oh, I think we've talked.

About this because I did not, I have not seen it.

I'm going to stop right here. This is your spoiler alert. We are going to talk about the endings of a couple of movies, so you might want to skip forward a minute or so.

Yes, the yes, yeah, right. The first thought I thought we had talked about it and you knew the ending. And yeah, I was not about to spoil.

No, no, no.

It for you. But but yeah, when it starts.

It it just starts talking about this guys life and you know his relationship problems.

And then at the very end, you know he's visiting his dad and his dad's office, and they're about to go do something as a family. His dad isn't in the office with him. He's waiting on him.

He had gone somewhere else.

And then you see the plane heading for the tower and you realize it was about 911 the 9/11 attacks.

And so it like, how did you know? And none of.

That was happening in my life right then, I.

You know, it wasn't in your focus and so you're not making the connections of.

Here we are.

This could end up being a movie review. I don't know if you. I don't know if you've ever seen.

The movie The.

Prestige. No. I used to teach it along with Jekyll and Hyde. It's it's about these magicians who are sort of.

Their friends and then at different points, they are their enemies, kind of. It's one of those movies where you.

You do start a little bit.

In the middle of the action.

You you start trying to figure out how you got there. So the movie starts going back to. OK, so this is how we ended up with this. But there are so many twists and turns in it that at the end you go and there are 1,000,000 Reddit threads.

Posing theories on what actually happens in the movie.

And that's I love that when it can spark those questions, think.

About that. That's.

Been some of my most successful teaching moments too, are when the students go, they come in the next day and they go. What was that? I think. And they were the ones that clued me into all these Reddit threads. I had no idea they had been. They started asking the questions and looking and trying to find.

The answers.

And that's what you really ultimate like, that's the ultimate goal with questioning strategies is to get students to that.

Point where they are the ones asking questions because it's an engagement strategy. Absolutely right. You're in getting them to engage and be interested in your material.

Because ultimately, we're all kind of like problem solvers. If there's something that's just nagging in our brains, we have to answer.

It. Yeah, we got to figure out what, how do I fix this?

How do I make this work so I mean, so we've talked about the ways that we can model that, that we.

Can do that in these sort of.

Sort of more low key kind of ways. There are some really.

Questioning strategies that people can use. I don't know if you've looked at the right question Institute.

But I I love that as a name for for something.

I also love that as a name I haven't looked at it a lot, but.

They developed the question formulation technique, the QFT.

And I've used this.

Quite a bit when you're just needing.

When you need to figure out what the right question even is to ask, because that is hard when you don't know when either you don't know enough about what you're looking at or reading about or whatever, it's hard to know what questions to ask when you're so overwhelmed with information. It's hard to know what questions to.

Right.

When there's so much in front of you, it's the where do I even begin?

Yes, yes.

Kind of kind of thing. And so the the QFT is a protocol where you spend 2 minutes writing down every single question you can possibly think. There are no bad questions, there are no good questions, there are no dumb questions, there are.

No. Like literally.

Every question you can possibly think to ask about the subject.

The brain dump of questions.

The brain dump of questions. So if I was asking questions about the room we are sitting in right now, it might be why are the covers on these microphones black?

Why is there petting?

Why is there padding on the walls?

What does that clamp do?

Right. No, I mean it it.

It makes no difference, just just throw all the questions out there for several minutes.

Round two is determining which ones are open questions and which ones are close questions.

Close questions these work really great working with groups too, and they can be done. We'll get into how they can be done asynchronously in just a second, but that's so the next round is what's closed, what's open, closed.

You can just answer those you.

Can look those up. You can find the.

Answers to those.

There's a reason we can go ask Sharon why that clamp is there. Yeah, there is a reason for that. Clamp being there. That's right. There's a reason for the padding on the walls. Those things.

There's reasons.

There's probably even a reason why the microphone covers are black there. Yeah, I'm sure there probably is, but then you start asking questions like why do Cammy and I tend to sit in the same chairs when we come in.

Every time.

Why is that?

That's a kind of an open question. I'm not sure why.

Creatures of habits.

It's creatures of habit and and so, but what put me in this?

Journey. So what is it so?

You start, you have all these questions and those are your.

Open. So then now you've got this list of open questions. Now you can start looking at which ones.

You think?

You feel more urgency to answer, so you start prioritizing which ones you work through. This is great when you've got groups of students because.

Then you get some consensus for who which questions they want to see being.

And then you start going through and answering and building plans to answer the questions and start figuring out how you're going to tackle these open questions.

I've done it both synchronously. I've done it asynchronously and I've done it in.

Person face to face.

We do have synchronous online classes and asynchronous online classes. The majority of our online classes are asynchronous, but if you are doing this in asynchronous space.

It's even easier.

Yeah, it is even easier. But you also have a lot you you know, you can do it right there on the whiteboard in your zoom session you can or team session, the virtual meeting space, whatever you're using.

But asynchronously, that looks a little bit different and a lot of times you're kind of front loading the question asking and you use a specific tool. Will you tell us a little bit about Padlet?

Padlet is a free third party tool.

That you can link out to from your blackboard course.

And it basically.

You can set it up a lot of different ways, but it's almost like a bulletin board like a virtual bulletin board, so you can set up all these, post it notes.

Sort of on it, they can ask a question per post it note.

And then you can go in and move those post it notes around, sort them through as closed questions, open questions.

Then the students come back in and you can answer those close questions. Those open questions are left there. The students come back in and they start. You can set it up where they rate each question so they can rate on a 5 star A5, you know, five stars is the most important question for me.

4/3 and and identify that's where you can start prioritizing which ones matter the most and.

And then call those back down and do and keep doing those in rounds until you figure out what your most important questions are. The students can respond to each other's questions. They can start answering those close questions.

That's an even better strategy is you can go in and answer those close questions, but that can be.

Add the closed questions to a discussion board that.

Specifically, exactly and and let them go in and fill in those answers. Bonus points for getting them, you know.

Those kinds of.

Just give them the opportunity to go.

Seek answers.

Those are some of the ways that.

You can handle the QFT.

Yeah. And any of these questions that you get on padlet can be used in a discussion board. They can be used in an announcement, they can be used in your introduction video for the upcoming week. But it's just a way to engage with your students.

Man, now I'm wishing that I had.

Done this.

And I'm wishing that I had done this in my in my.

My first year experience class that I've been teaching that I had started with just dump all your questions about college. Yeah, and then we can sort them in, open and close, and then I can use those open questions as the discussion topics for the remainder of the.

Course, yeah. And the closed questions.

And being resource building right, because usually that's what it's. How do I find this resource or how do?

Right.

and and and here's a resource for that. And we have a whole slew of resources to offer. And so hey, here's your scavenger hunt. Yes.

Where do I? Yeah, yeah.

Ohh man do this next time

and this this.

Is what you do.

As a teacher reflect and grow, right? Yeah.

This is this is monitor and adjust monitor and adjust.

Yeah, there's a there's a million other things, so Socratic seminars can be more structured.

There's one called motivational interviewing. It's used more in like therapy stuff. I think it's it comes out.

Of like cognitive behavioral stuff. But it it's becoming used more and more in business and education as ways to help students identify motivation for learning something or for tackling a project, force field analysis or when you have a a problem that's you ask lots of questions about that.

Problem and you start identifying where your.

Where the barriers are and where the positives are.

Well, and this one is actually a really good one to use in online asynchronous courses because you know you can put an announcement and say, hey, you know here is the lecture for this week. You can find it in this place in the course.

After you watch the leg.

Sure. e-mail me what points we need to discuss further. What more do you need clarification on? And don't you know, don't pose it. What questions do you have? Right. You're asking them specific things. So so that they are focused on something to ask you and don't feel like.

The big blank is entering your mind. I don't have any questions. They actually might.

And leveraging them to answer and ask questions of each other the further you get into a course, right, I've seen some courses that have sort of a water cooler discussions board section where anybody can ask question. I know I think they're great, but I think they have to be monitored, monitored and set up, yeah.

Discussion board.

I actually love those.

Appropriately cause I've also seen where they just don't get used because the students just go. I don't and.

You have to build the culture in.

That you have to make it a classroom practice from the very beginning. I've even had a course where there were two of these discussion boards. One was monitored by the instructor and the instructor would answer questions. One was just for students to ask questions of each other, and that one was used, I think.

More than the instructor, what's interesting? And now we'll say this was a course that in the homeworks it was fine to talk about your homework with other students. And so that's why that was OK. Your, you know, exams were Proctor.

OK.

Live, proctored, and so and so. There. You.

Know that was the.

Where you kind of showcased you had done the practice and done your knowledge.

Well, and that actually reminds me that that's one of the ways that it can. Questions can be one of the strategies you use to sort of thwart ChatGPT and all the AI, all the generative AI, the more.

All the AI bots.

Both open and specific, your questions are the harder it will be for them for them to have to follow up on each other's questions. It starts to become more work for them to use an AI than to just actually answer the questions the the better you can structure your questions.

Just actually answer both.

To suit the moment to suit the chorus to suit the students themselves, the harder it is.

And and the.

Less point it becomes.

And I will say, and this is really like those questions that thwart.

Robots. Those are just the questions that we want to be asking anyway, because they're the ones that make students critically think about your topic, and that's our goal, right? To get students to critically think about it and think it through for themselves.

What are some other benefits?

So we've talked about thwarting jet ChatGPT.

OK, go ahead.

Another thing is when you have students coming in and you're just giving, here's all your material right? They don't have a lot of buying into it. They don't have investment. And so when you get them to start creating and generating those questions, then they suddenly.

Have more buy in. They've spent time creating something for the course and that's how you get engagement. It's when you are, you know.

If, whether it's the workplace.

Or the students, they have a purpose in the course now and.

That is relevant to them.

That is relevant to them that they are giving in to.

Yes. And that also can create sort of a teamwork.

Aspect as well.

If the if the class is working towards.

If you have those questions that the class is working towards answering together, you can build that.

That class culture similarly that's that's why I also like often teaching things that I don't necessarily know the precise.

Bit 2 because it means that I'm discovering with them.

And that I think creates some buy in from them as well when they know that.

They are that.

We are working together on it. I am not dictating to them.

Right. Because then it becomes a collaboration and.

You know like.

We've talked about this before, but that's another skill that you will need again in life, in the workplace or.

Anywhere else outside the workplace as well?

And you know, we've we've kind of talked about this in a few places now. So that's got to be another benefit is that this is establishing skills.

That will benefit students outside the classroom that is really readying them to take their place in the workforce.

I will say when I've had to when I've been hiring.

I've had people working.

I have to say under me, that's it. I hate that phrase when I when I've been.

The manager of.

Of people I have always, I will always take the person who's willing to search for an answer and ask the questions.

Over the person who just sits there and waits to be told what to do, and I think that's a similar. Once you can build that.

That foundation of questioning.

You're building that foundation of of perseverance, of taking ownership over things and having them.

Be able to carry that learning outside the classroom.

Right.

So yeah, I mean, we could, honestly, we could go on and on and on and on about questions for forever and ever, but we won't subject our listeners to that. We will put a whole lot of things in the notes though for this episode.

Well, because now we have answered the question that we came here to answer.

We did, and the question we came here to answer was how do we encourage rich discussion in an online classroom and I.

I think we've given some strategies for that. We will give some links in the show notes. Thanks for joining us today on the Pedagogy toolkit.

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