By Karl Kapp, Professor of Instructional Technology at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania
Follow him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlkapp/
Why silence isn't understanding
"Does anyone have any questions?" is, perhaps, the most often heard questions in any classroom virtual or live. It's also one of the least useful. It's a closed question, and the easiest answer to a closed question is “No”. And, once a student takes the easy path and responds no, in their head or out loud, they're done thinking.
Early in my career, I read the silence that followed that question as a good sign. It wasn't. I wasn't getting quiet, understanding and enlightened students. I was getting a bunch of people who decided to take the easy path.
Then I switched tactics, I asked a more open version, "what questions do you have?" Better. But it still hands the learner a huge, undefined task. I was asking them to scan everything I’d just covered. Then weight it against what they already knew and then decide if any of it causes a question or confusion. The level of silence was about the same as the closed question.
A new strategy was need. Eventually, I found that what actually gets a response is a thinking question. One that makes the learner predict, decide, or apply knowledge. That kind of question doesn't leave room for a shrug or an easy “no”.
Thinking questions change the dynamic. My goal stopped being "did they hear it." It became "can I get them to think about what I just covered." Most of the techniques I now use are geared toward using questions to spur thinking.
Why students stay quiet
Of course, the phrasing of questions isn't the only reason students stay quiet. There are other reasons, and knowing them means you can address them to make it more comfortable for students to do thinking in the classroom setting.
First, we have to stop overloading them. We know the material so well we forget it's their first time hearing it. An overloaded brain has no spare capacity to think. It can only absorb. We rush past the space and thinking time they need to connect the new information to what they already know.
Then there's the social cost to asking a question. The fear a classmate will think "the instructor already covered that" or the fear that the the instructor will think they were not listening. It shuts a student down before they've tried to reason anything out.
I like to say that none of that gets fixed by asking “are there any questions” louder or more frequently. So, here's what I tell my students. If you already knew material, you wouldn't be in this class. That's why we're here. No question is out of bounds. I try to create a place where there is psychological safety where students feel comfortable asking questions. It is also important to let students know that even if they were listening, they are also processing information so things can get missed. Asking a question about something you missed does not mean you were not listening. It means you were processing information.
Putting learners inside a decision
One technique I lean on to force that thinking is interactive storytelling. Instead of lecturing on a concept, I drop learners inside a scenario. I walk them through the scenario and then stop at decision points. Four or five of them. At each one I ask students what they'd do. Usually, I use an audience response system and then I reveal the response the majority of students choose. For the voting process, they can't opt out and they can't just listen. They have to all land on an answer before I'll continue.
In my game design course, I'll set one up like this. You work for a studio building a game called Dragonmon GO. Your manager gives you two choices. Tell players three things they need to know about capturing dragons, or let them start capturing dragons right away. Pick an answer.
The right answer is to let them start right away. Adult learners learn best once they've discovered they don't know something. Then I ask why that's the right answer. Getting learners to explain their reasoning does as much work as the original question. It's usually where I find out whether they reasoned it through or just are really good guessers.
Four kinds of polls
Another technique I use is polling. But not just yes or no polling questions. Questions that make students think. I use four types.
- Prediction: what do you think happens next?
- Decision: which option would you pick, and why?
- Confidence: how sure are you, 10%, 40%, 100%?
- Application: where does this show up in your own work? Or how would you apply this idea given a certain situation.
Each one makes a learner work something out before they see the answer, instead of confirming they already knew it. It makes them think.
Confidence is the type people underestimate. Low confidence with a wrong answer is fine. That's just someone still learning. High confidence with a wrong answer is a problem. It usually means I explained something in a way that felt clear but skipped the thinking entirely. That’s something I’ll go back and cover again.
What AI is doing to brainstorming
This is also where I've started watching what AI is quietly doing to the brainstorming step of writing and thinking. It's a bad shortcut, just taken by something other than a bad question. I ask students for risk mitigation strategies on an e-learning project. They hand me good ones. Then I ask why they picked that strategy, and more and more I hear "I don't know." An AI tool picked it, not them. The idea showed up without the thinking behind the decision to support it.
So, my rule now is think first, AI second. Brainstorm yourself. Work through the problem. Then use AI to add angles you hadn't considered, not to skip the thinking. I tell students not to outsource their thinking to a machine.
Questions worth asking instead
In addition to the above techniques, a quick and easy replacement to the “does anyone have any questions” are the three questions below:
- What's one idea you could apply tomorrow (or at work or in your next class)?
- What part of this seems most useful to you?
- Explain this back in your own words.
That last one I picked up years ago. An instructor had us draw a model he'd just taught us, then made us teach it to the person next to us. Why, I thought to myself, you just taught this, everyone already knows it.
However, the moment I had to teach it, I found out everything I didn't actually know. Teaching forces you to think a concept through in a way listening never does. Then my partner taught it back to me, and the model got richer both times.
My tips for you is to find the one place you'd normally ask "any questions?" and replace it with something that makes a learner think instead of just answer. You won't cover as much content. But you'll find out, in real time, what the students actually learned. And so will they, because they'll have worked themselves. Over time your students will become more confident and comfortable in asking questions and thinking which is what we want.
