Will you ask a question today?

The Problem

People do not ask enough questions of their educators. 

Why is the problem important?

Encouraging students to formulate questions in lectures has been linked to an improvement in course grades. Firstly because in order to think of an appropriate question on a matter they require clarification for, students must examine their own knowledge structures and understand the nature of their struggle to grasp the new information that has been presented to them (Bauer and Snizek, 1989; Rosenshine, Meister and Chapman, 1996). This situational metacognition has been linked to better encoding of information into memory and better academic performance (Bauer and Snizek, 1989; Lockhart and Craig, 1990). Further to this, Bauer and Snizek (1989) also found that students whose lecturers encouraged questions felt that they were more engaged with the module irrespective of whether they asked any questions throughout the course or not.

Active learning is broadly any form of pedagogical style that involves direct and motivated engagement from the student with the information being taught. Student questions can be a  form of active learning (depending on their content), as is use of salient stimuli and various other techniques. Active learning has been linked to ‘higher student motivation’ as well as more high-level cognitive processing (including evaluation, analysis and synthesis of new knowledge) and longer retention (Cherney, 2011).

There are a range of reasons why people do not ask many questions in lectures. Firstly, Miyake and Norman (1979) found that in order to pose a question one must first have a framework of knowledge from which to pose that question and into which they can integrate the answer. Therefore, at any given level of information complexity a certain amount of knowledge about its fundamental principles is necessary to be able to ask an appropriate question.

A second factor likely to be implicated in question-asking modulation is social influence, specifically adherence to social norms. There are several different types of social norm, chiefly, subjective (changing one’s behaviour in response to perceived social pressure, whether real or imagined) and descriptive (changing or directing one’s behaviour to be in accordance with others’ perceived attitudes or opinions) (Rivis and Sheeran, 2003). Subjective and descriptive norms are not mutually exclusive in terms of their influence on the norm perceiver’s behaviour. Norms play a significant role in moderating behaviour, with the contingency that they are perceived from salient or important reference groups (Smith and Louis, 2009). Yoon, Kensignton-Miller, Sneddon and Bartholomew (2011) conducted qualitative interviews with undergraduate Mathematics students, investigating the social norm of passivity within lectures; a common theme was that the students avoided asking questions in lectures in part because they were motivated to avoid embarrassment, and because they perceived that adhering to the passivity norm was necessary to allow lecturers to teach all content necessary in the time period. This aspect may signpost a potential avenue for increasing question asking from students in lectures.

Lecturer facilitation of question-asking first demonstrates to students in the audience that if they have a question to pose, they will not disrupt the lecture’s progress in doing so. Further to this, a clear sign from the lecturer that they are open to receiving questions may help mitigate some worry that people may otherwise experience when considering whether to ask their question, as it is a salient indication that the asker will not be embarrassed by the lecturer for poor question timing or otherwise.

Target Audience

Due to the nature of our project we had two target audiences. The first were lecturers from several different departments. Out of the many lecturers we contacted via email, 3 agreed to take part in our experiment. Our second target audience were university students in a lecture theatre. We were unable to record how many were at a given lecture at a time but the lectures we attended were as small as 10/15 people and large groups of about 100/150 students.

Intervention

Step 1: Contact lecturers via email or in person and explain to purpose of the study and to ask whether they would participate in our project. The emails were all drafted similarly:

Step 2: Get the lecturers approval (we made sure to let them know that the department was aware of the project and that no ethics were required).

Rejections from lecturers were usually due to one of the following issues: strikes, they didn’t want to change their lectures this far into the term or they simply didn’t think the size of their lectures would facilitate question asking.

Step 3: Attend their first lecture. We only recorded the number of questions asked. No intervention was implemented.

Step 4: Contact them to give them the slide and instructions/a basic script. Some of the lecturers chose to put up a slide, others verbally informed students about the question asking. 

Slide:

Step 5: Attend their second lecture (experimental week). Here the lecturers either presented the slide or addressed our points from the slide verbally.

Number of questions asked during control week and during experimental week. We have included the number of times the questions were asked and the overall count of them.

Control week	Experimental week	Change
Times asked: 7 Total: 12 Estimated turnup: 100	Times asked: 3 Total: 4 Estimated turnup: 15-20	-8 (Master's Business) Just the slide
Times asked: 5 Total: 9 Estimated turnup: 10-15	Times asked: 8 Total: 10 Estimated turnup: 10-15	+1 (Undergrad Business) Just verbal encouragement
Times asked: 0 Total: 0 Estimated turnup: 50	Times asked: 1 Total: 2 Estimated turnup: 10-15	+2 (Undergrad Economics) Just verbal encouragement

Things we have not anticipated:

(Master's Business) Due to the health risk, the turnup at lectures was significantly different. Especially in the experimental week, where the lecturer was introducing a virtual class and discouraging attendance. Furthermore, the experimental lecture was shorter than the control one. We were not made aware of the above points. As a final point, we could not have anticipated that the control lecture was very heavily focused on the assessment of the module. This type of lecture usually encourages more questions.

(Undergrad Business) Here the experimental lecture was heavily based on the assessment of the module, encouraging more questions regarding the assessment rather than the module. The lecturer themselves suggested that the turnup rate in this class is not high at the end of the term, as such this may have altered asking behaviours.

(Undergrad Economics) There was an exam scheduled for the afternoon so the majority of people did not show up or they might not have been fully concentrating on the lecture.

Step 6: Thank them and ask for feedback.

Feedback from lecturers suggests that lectures rarely facilitate question asking. This is due to a) the students seem to be ashamed of asking with a larger audience and b) thinking of questions seems to to take too much time. Students prefer to ask questions in their own time after class.

Techniques

COMPLIANCE TO REQUESTS (or JUST ASKING)

As a famous study showed, your chances of going on a date with a stranger are as high as 50%, if only you ask them (Clark & Hatfield, 1989). Besides the gender differences the authors were looking at, the study outlined the importance and the impact of asking. If you take a step and ask for anything, the chances might be pretty high for you to get it.

Bearing that in mind, we approached different department offices by just asking whether they can help us with the project. We asked for the information on the lectures and the names of the people, mostly receiving positive responses along the way. The staff members were mostly approachable, and it seemed to be hard for them to reject our favour. However, the lecturers had more on their stake than the office workers, thus a lot more of them declined the offer. In any way, the lecturers are used to receiving offers, so simply asking by email was success for some of the cases.

M in MINDSPACE

A body of research shows that the source of information, the messengers, can influence the way we digest the information (Dolan et al., 2012). In particular, if the information source is a figure of authority, the impact might be greater. Regarding the encouragement to ask the questions, we did not go around providing the information to students directly. Rather, we chose to spread the awareness via the lecturers, who are a higher authority figure.

Although it might not always be the case, but students listen and take it the material presented by the lecturers with respect. Therefore, if a lecturer reminds and encourages students to ask more questions, there might be a higher chance of them genuinely considering it.

NUDGING

One of the main techniques to encourage the question asking was giving students a nudge at the beginning of the lecture. By reminding them about the benefits of asking questions, lecturers were, hopefully, repeating what students knew already – asking questions can enhance your learning. However, as we have seen from the control week, students are not reminded of that every single week. Thus, this nudge to consider raising the hand might be all someone needs (Bicchieri & Dimant, 2019).

It can be hard to ask questions when the lecture hall is full and there is a lot of material to go through (Bauer & Snizek, 1989). Additionally, students might not want to dwell on answering too many questions during the time dedicated for the course material. Therefore, a brief note at the beginning of the lecture does not take up too much time yet could serve as a buffer to participate in the lecture with a different mindset.

Having a nudge is helpful because it asks students to be proactive but doesn’t hold them accountable if they choose not to be. In this sense, their freedom to choose whether they want to ask the question is maintained (Sunstein, 2015). Another reason why nudging is a helpful technique for students relates to counteracting behavioural biases. If students are used to the environment where very few questions are asked, they might not be as willing to go against the norm. It is suggested that giving a nudge to go against the default might increase that likelihood.

Future Expansion

The most obvious future expansion would be to record the type of question asked, as different types of questions have different objectives and therefore affect the learning process differently (Chin & Osborne, 2008). Strictly elaborative questions serve to consolidate learned material, whereas more open-ended questions serve to expand on existing knowledge – this greatly affects their potential utility depending on the subject matter, therefore understanding which type of question is encouraged by our study manipulation is an important extension.

This project tackled just one facet of a rather complicated domain.

While question-asking behaviour does [not] appear to be affected by the prompt given, there are a myriad of other factors that could play a role.

The lecturer themselves likely holds the key to how interactive their lectures are, whether it be through behaviour, or how they choose to teach (Chin, 2008). It is not unreasonable to suggest that a more extraverted, sociable lecturer would have more questions proposed to them. Similarly, it is not impossible that a lecturer proposing a more open-ended attitude to their material would find more questions being asked.

To examine the effect of these factors on question proposal, the most effective method would likely be a combination of correlational and observational designs, where lecturers are assessed on Big Five traits, and general observations made about their attitude towards students and teaching style. While experimental designs can be used with some benefits (e.g. within-groups vs between-groups comparisons, selection bias), asking lecturers to teach in a manner they and students are not familiar with could potentially confound data.

Social psychology suggests that peers can also influence behaviour; by extension, question-asking frequency could be influenced by peers asking questions too. Experimental design would likely consist of an initial observational phase where question-asking frequency is tied to students who ask them, then a second phase akin to Asch (1951) where confederates are placed in the lecture to ask questions throughout. This would allow us to see the general effect of peers on question-asking behaviour, and whether it simply incentivises frequent question proposers to ask more questions, or encourages normally silent students to speak up.

Question-asking behaviour could be tied to other environmental factors too such as room temperature, time of day, or even time of year; however, these factors can only be influenced to a certain extent and therefore provide less utility.

In literature, question-asking behaviour in academia is often looked at in terms of how concepts are formulated (Chin, Brown, & Bruce, 2002; Osborne & Wittrock, 1983; 1985) , but often not with regards to if a concept has actually been formulated correctly. Thus, a simple test of content understanding could be administered following lectures and compared with question-asking frequency to see if it produces any tangible benefits.

References

Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. Organizational influence processes, 295-303. 
Bauer, H. H., & Snizek, W. E. (1989). Encouraging students in large classes to ask questions: Some promising results from classes in chemistry and sociology. Teaching Sociology, 17(3), 337-340.
Bicchieri, C., & Dimant, E. (2019). Nudging with care: the risks and benefits of social information. Public choice, 1-22.
Cherney, I. D. (2011). Active learning.
Chin, C., & Osborne, J. (2008). Students' questions: a potential resource for teaching and learning science. Studies in science education, 44(1), 1-39.
Chin, C., Brown, D.E. and Bruce, B.C. (2002). Student‐generated questions: A meaningful aspect of learning in science. International Journal of Science Education, 24(5): 521–549.
Clark, R. D., & Hatfield, E. (1989). Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 2(1), 39-55.
Dolan, P., Hallsworth, M., Halpern, D., King, D., Metcalfe, R., & Vlaev, I. (2012). Influencing behaviour: The mindspace way. Journal of Economic Psychology, 33(1), 264-277.
Lockhart, R. S., & Craik, F. I. (1990). Levels of processing: A retrospective commentary on a framework for memory research. Canadian Journal of Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie, 44(1), 87.
Miyake, N., & Norman, D. A. (1979). To ask a question, one must know enough to know what is not known. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 18(3), 357-364.
Osborne, R. J., and Wittrock, M. C. (1983). Learning science: A generative process. Science education, 67(4), 489-508.
Osborne, R.J. and Wittrock, M.C. (1985). The generative learning model and its implications for science education. Studies in Science Education, 12: 59–87.
Rivis, A., & Sheeran, P. (2003). Descriptive norms as an additional predictor in the theory of planned behaviour: A meta-analysis. Current Psychology, 22(3), 218-233.
Rosenshine, B., Meister, C., & Chapman, S. (1996). Teaching students to generate questions: A review of the intervention studies. Review of educational research, 66(2), 181-221.
Sunstein, C. R. (2015). Nudges do not undermine human agency. Journal of Consumer Policy, 38(3), 207-210.
Yoon, C., Kensington-Miller, B., Sneddon, J., & Bartholomew, H. (2011). It's not the done thing: social norms governing students’ passive behaviour in undergraduate mathematics lectures. International journal of mathematical education in science and technology, 42(8), 1107-1122.

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