E-Learning and Online Teaching

A Simple Strategy for Teaching Students How to Think
We believe that knowing how to ask questions is a foundational skill that is essential for all learning. When teachers use our Question Formulation Technique™ (QFT™), students learn to ask their own questions.

How often do we teach students how to formulate good, in-depth questions? Use these 6 steps to help boost your students’ ability to ask better questions and drive their own learning.

As trainers we often use Socratic direction to prove a point, using audience participation. The method of Socratic discussion is actually quite simple and bases itself on the prior knowledge of the learners. The trainer will usually ask a series of pointed questions to finally get to an "Aha!" moment. The mnemonic I use to describe the process of Socratic direction is KOPSA.

This video resonated with me due to discussions I watched unfold in my online course this past week. This term, my class is composed of a great mix of preservice and practicing teachers ranging from those doing student teaching to those who have been in the field for many years.

Why is it so important to doubt, question everything and not know?! Check out Socrates’ article on SingularityWeblog.com to find out.

Not knowing, just like other cases of being uncomfortable, is a great incentive for personal growth. Progress always comes at the point of resistance. Getting uncomfortable and willing to be uncertain, to not know, to ask questions, to err and to fail, is the best and only way to learn, grow, progress and move forward.

The ORID (Objective, Reflective, Interpretive, Decisional) method is a form of a structured conversation led by a facilitator.

The method was developed by the Institute for Cultural Affairs as a means to analyse facts and feelings, to ask about implications and to make decisions intelligently. It is a means of escaping the morass of maniacal meetings.

Published on May 19, 2012 by TEDxTalks

Where did you learn to ask questions? Did you know the skill of asking questions is not used, shared and definitely not taught very well? Even worse, educators are given little training and often indirectly discouraged from spending time on teaching the skill. There's good news with a deceptively simple solution to the problem. Its called the Question Formulation Technique™ and you have a chance to learn and experience it!

Speaker Dan Rothstein is co-director of the Right Question Institute which had its first offices in Somerville. Dan and co-author, Luz Santana, wrote the book Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions published by Harvard Education Press.
Category:
Education
License:
Standard YouTube License

Using the fundamentals of set theory, explore the mind-bending concept of the "infinity of infinities" -- and how it led mathematicians to conclude that math itself contains unanswerable questions.

Lesson by Dennis Wildfogel, animation by Augenblick Studios.

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-big-is-infinity

Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational games and exercises via smartphones and tablets. Our apps are super simple and take seconds to load and run.

JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

Lynn Akin
Associate Professor
School of Library and Information Studies
Texas Woman’s University
Denton, TX 76204 USA
lakin@mail.twu.edu

Diane Neal
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Studies
Texas Woman’s University
Denton, TX 76204 USA
dneal@mail.twu.edu

Abstract

Research on online classes strongly identifies participation as a positive variable. Research on online teaching also reveals the time intensive practices involved with providing individualized attention and feedback. An online instructor must negotiate the balance between being responsive and managing time effectively. To that end, writing sound discussion questions, based on a model, is one way to invite and increase participation and maximize the time element. The CREST+ model, a model for writing effective online discussion questions, covers the cognitive nature of the question, the reading basis, any experiential possibility, style and type of question, and finally ways to structure a good question. This model encourages students to participate in online forum discussions, provides a template for new online faculty to use in creating effective discussion questions, and promotes a higher level processing of the material.

Keywords: Asynchronous discussions, constructivist learning, discussion forums, facilitated discourse, models, online community, online education, student engagement, instructor immediacy

Dr. Richard Paul defines the universal standards with which thinking may be "taken apart" evaluated and assessed. Excerpted from the Socratic Questioning Video Series from the Foundation for Critical Thinking.