Judith Heady, University of Michigan-Dearborn
Judith's goals are to use good questions to get discussions moving, and help students engage in reflection on their learning. Here are her suggestions.
I have questions on the syllabus that introduce a section of the Intro Bio course such as: "Is human population growth our biggest problem?" We had been in the Environmental section for some time and had talked in general about populations and what effects growth. This is not an easy topic and is controversial! It is, however, a topic that does not have a set answer and provided an introduction for moving on to food webs and energy sources.
The beauty of this question and ones like it is that there is NOT a right and a wrong answer, but rather complex, important components that require thinking and invite some passion. Another example is: "What does mutation do to DNA and then to proteins? Can we correct the mistakes? Should we?" This series of questions was the bridge between genetics and evolution. You can have a lively discussion about some current research and help students to understand just what mutation is. Since evolution depends on mutation, should we correct "problems"? I know that some students reflected on this, because I had many follow-up questions and comments.
For each class day I ask questions to guide students' thinking. They turn in their answers for comments and for part of their discussion grade. Here are a few examples:
Several questions linked past discussions with new topics like: "Relate the discussion of amino acids and proteins to the earlier discussion of genes, proteins, and mutations;" "What safeguards are there for cells so that they can survive at least small changes in their environment?" (Students had projects whereby they changed the environment of cells and watched the consequences). These questions are examples of questions I posed that hopefully guided their study and linked various parts of the course. They were not questions to which you could find the answer in paragraph 8 on page 325... they allowed for interpretation and individual initiative. Many were based on the laboratory projects that were open-ended and involved variations of basic experiments. Students ALWAYS had questions of their own that came out of my questions whether I asked for them or not.