Student-Defined Questions

• To have students practice identifying important features of course content,
• To formulate questions and answers, review responses given by others, or
• To give students a chance to rehearse responses to questions and examine sample responses outside of a formal testing environment.

• No special requirements for this approach.

The following workflow is meant as guidance for how you can facilitate Student-Defined Questions learning activity within a classroom.

Pre-Class

• Formulating a good question is a difficult task and one with which students are often unfamiliar. This activity will work best when you have spent some time teaching students how to formulate valid questions and answers.
• Prepare a handout with guidelines, sample questions, and responses that model the level of complexity and depth you expect.
• Create an online assignment that asks students to reflect on a learning activity (e.g., reading an article, listening to a lecture, watching a film), formulate an essay question and model a response to the question, and submit it to the instructor.
• Have students prepare a model response to their question.

In-Class

• Students bring a copy of their questions and model answers to the next class session.
• Students form pairs, exchange questions, and write responses.
• Students trade model answers and compare and contrast their in-class responses and their partner’s model answer.
• Partners discuss their responses first for one question and then for the other, paying particular attention to similar and dissimilar ideas.
• Optional: if you want to assess the quality of questions and sample questions, students share their documents with the instructor.

Post-Class

• Review the outcomes of the activity.

• None

• None

Example 1

An African American Literature professor used the Student-Defined Questions technique after each major assignment. For example, after watching Maya Angelou reading her work, "Why the Caged Bird Sings," each student formulates an essay question about the work and writes a model response that evening for homework. In the next class period, students exchange questions and develop answers. Students then compare their responses, and each student submits a question, model answer, and response to the question to the professor (Barkley 303).

Example 2

In General Biology, the professor wants students to participate in her institution's Writing Across the Curriculum program. She believes that if students were to write information in the form of essay questions and answers, it would help them to integrate better, synthesize, and remember key concepts. She decides to create a Student-Defined Questions assignment. For each major topic area in the unit, she asks students to formulate and answer an appropriate essay question. She gives them the following example of a good question: "Describe the structure of the two basic cell categories (prokaryotic or eukaryotic), and explain how the categories are similar and different." Students have a thirty-minutes class each week to exchange questions, use their notes and text to answer the questions, and then compare responses. Students submit their work to the professor for participation points. She tells students she will select some of these questions to be included in the midterm (Barkley 304).

Barkley, Elizabeth F. et al. Collaborative Learning Techniques A Handbook For College Faculty. Wiley, 2014. pp. 302-306.