In our latest webinar, Dr Karl Kapp tackled one of the most familiar habits in teaching and training: asking “any questions?” and getting nothing back. Here’s what we learned.
If you’ve ever asked a room “any questions?” and heard nothing back, you know the feeling. That’s exactly why we hosted this session.
Dr Karl Kapp, Professor of Instructional Technology at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, hosted the session with participants joining from around the world. He covered why students and trainees stay quiet, and three practical ways to replace “any questions?” with something that gets people thinking.
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Karl brings more than two decades of experience in instructional design and gamification. He’s the author of several books, including The Gamification of Learning and Instruction, a Guild Master with The Learning Guild, and a recipient of ATD’s Distinguished Contribution to Talent Development Award.
The session practised what it preached: Karl ran live polls, a quiz, a pin activity, and an open brainstorm throughout.
Il suono del silenzio
Karl opened with a live poll on how often colleagues ask students “any questions?”, then broke question types into three categories:
- Closed-ended – an easy yes or no
- Open-ended – “what questions do you have?”
- Thinking questions – require analysis, evaluation, or prediction
From there, Karl worked through why students actually stay quiet: the phrasing of the question itself, cognitive overload from too much information at once, needing time to process, the fear of appearing uninformed in front of peers, a simple lack of confidence, and, often, not knowing enough yet to know what to ask.
Attendees pin their answers on the slide showing reasons students don’t ask questions
He was blunt about one piece of common advice: “there’s a saying, don’t ask any question that you don’t know the answer to... I think that’s a horrible saying.” From his point of view, it is curiosity, not certainty, that drives learning.
Strategy 1: interactive storytelling
Instead of presenting a concept directly, Karl builds a scenario and drops the learner into it. He demonstrated this live with “Dragonmon Go,” a game design scenario where attendees had to choose between two onboarding approaches for players. The structure is:
- Present a scenario
- Pause at a decision point
- Ask learners to choose
- Reveal the outcome
- Discuss why
The technique forces a commitment. As Karl explained, once someone has picked an answer, “if you get it wrong, there’s going to be some cognitive dissonance. If you get it right, there’s reinforcement.” Either way, the learner is invested in finding out why.
Strategy 2: polling for thinking
Karl’s second strategy reframed what a poll is for. Early in his career, he said, the main pitch for polling software was attendance tracking, “that was kind of the least attractive element” to him. What mattered instead was getting people interacting and thinking immediately.
Four poll types he recommends:
- Prediction – what happens next
- Decision – which option would you choose
- Confidence – how sure are you in your answer
- Application – where does this fit in your own work
The common thread, as he put it, is that “not all polls are equal,” a poll that only checks comprehension does far less than one that asks someone to commit to a position and defend it.
Live ranking poll results on the most important reasons for asking prediction, decision, and confidence-based questions
The debrief matters as much as the poll itself. Karl’s go-to follow-up questions:
- Why did you choose that answer?
- What evidence supports your choice?
Strategy 3: brainstorming and idea generation
For generating ideas, Karl pointed to three techniques:
- Pensa alla condivisione
- Digital or physical sticky notes
- One-minute idea bursts, no self-editing
All three get learners contributing rather than just consuming a lecture.
He also raised a caution about AI, referencing his own article on the topic: AI is removing the “friction” of thinking things through. His advice wasn’t to avoid AI, but to sequence it deliberately, brainstorm first, then use AI for a different perspective, rather than letting it skip the thinking step entirely.
Key strategies, in practice
If you want to try replacing “any questions?” in your next session, Karl’s three ready-to-use prompts are a good place to start:
- What’s one idea you could apply tomorrow?
- What part of this concept seems most useful to you?
- Explain this in your own words to the person next to you.
Each one asks for something specific and low-stakes, rather than an open invitation nobody knows what to do with.
L'asporto
Karl closed with a challenge, and it’s a fitting note to end this recap on too: “start small... take one or two elements where you find yourself always asking, are there any questions, and just input one of these techniques.”
Not a full overhaul of how you teach or train, just one habit, swapped for something that actually gets a response.
Word cloud of attendees’ responses
Watch the full recording for Karl’s live demonstrations, audience Q&A, and more examples from his own classroom.
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