There is an oriental proverb which says "the true Master is the one who is able to make discover by the the Student the Master he has in himself".

Regards

Didier

What about 'critically apply....' or if its a case study 'synthesise the case above and....'

How do we motivate or COMPEL students to engage in higher order thinking? Many students do not want to think. Or many students cannot think. Many students in some country have been trained to response to one line of questions or one line of answers. My friend refers them as "ONE LINER."

Before I touch on your question, I want to connect to the implication of not being creative to inspire or to compel students to think critically. One implication is the "one liner." Recently, I applied to register a branch office for a client. In the application form, since there was a long line provided, I typed in "Two (2) Million Singapore Dollars" as the capital of the head office. The government reviewer asked for a revision to "S$ 2,000,000.00." To me, a good practice is always to use words rather than numbers in application form. The long blank line in the form presumably expects applicants to fill in the information in words. But probably, the examiner has been trained to become a ONE LINER. Therefore, he found it difficult to read the words or he believed that other people too cannot read long sentence.

To compel students to think, the thinking should be part of the assessment. For example, in a curriculum design course, you can ask students to argue: “Designing curriculum for the 21st Century is a well-documented field aiming to motivate students to conduct independent and collaborative active and evidence-based learning engagements to develop skill(s) and then to construct knowledge, using proven techniques and producing curriculum or curricula that can be applied to benefit individual, institution, and society.” Another argument for a Unit Standard in Business Administration course can read like this: “The (name of the college) Unit Standard (specify the number and the level) made my learning a highly individualized process. It maximized my interactions with people and gave me valuable social experience. It developed in me the imperative of owning responsibilities. It enhanced my solution-generating and decision-making skills.” The argument can be a threshold and the keywords can act like questions for them to validate or falsify the argument.

The attachment shows an argumentation model which will compel students to really think. (I still want to use COMPEL). Some questions to ask them to reflect on are: How can I do better? How can I avoid or minimize the conflict in the field or to resolve it (this triggers generating solution)? How does the unit standard facilitate me to construct positive perspective of competition and competitiveness? What talent, thought, feeling, or imagination have I developed?

Thanks Francisco and Susan. Lots of food for thought. But we will see what our friends say :)

Vasile, Anam et al.:

It's not just our students that need HOT skills, but we also need to sharpen them as well. Agree?

How about "What are your interpretations on....?" or "Give your judgement/inference on...."

In only three words: Abstraction and patterns.

Dear Miranda

For my students (medicine) normally i use cases discussion, ARS and lectures given by the students with the participation of all. The written exam (only one) with objective test with multiple-choice questions. II believe this way the interactivity is very good and more productive

Dear Miranda,

Thanks for this topic.

To my mind, different ways to respond to your "question about questions" :-)

Perhaps also linked to our brain functionning in general and interactions between our emotion, the sensitive part of our personnality, and our reasoning, the "cartesian" part, ("passoin versus reasonsonning"); this one pehrpas we are more used to use as scientists (if we are) compared to the artists using more their emotion.

I dnn't know the updated knowledges in neurophysiology, but in the past neurologists say us that right brain hemispher is more specialized in a sensitive perception of our world and left hemisphere for analysis. I think it's more complicated as demonstrated now.

So, to go back to your quesion, formulation of the question (by words, a langage, so depending on the culture ) could stimulate our brain differently, and leading to different answer.

I agree with Francisco that children and young student are less and less used to "think" , to use their brain really like the "computer" it is , with its high capabilities. But probably it's the problem of our actual culture: culture of a "zapping", not to waste time, to have immediate answers to a question, or a problem or situation, with few reasonning.

So the rules of langage are in this case not important (SMS langage e, no more knowledges of each langage structure and rules; we see it very strongly in french). And often, people don't listen very well the question asked, don't analyse it , have already a prepared answer for each situation; so leading to a problem of communication between people.

Creativity, used more in artistic domains, is also important in the scientific field , to my mind (most of great re searchers had first "imagine" a structure for universe before elaborate their theory, then confim it by experiment).

It depends also on cultures: occidental versus oriental. In that way, I agree with Vasile, and that the level of our responses and communication depend also on our level of brain fucntionning. And for me , creativity in one of the upper one among the levels of consciousness.

Also can be applied to the comprehension of a question, because upper levels of consciousness allow to activate high capacity of synthesis, and perhaps what we call "intuition" can be a state where all the data received by our brain are very fast analysed, integrated, to have an immediat "answer" (in all sense of the meaning) to a question of a situation (like a reflex).

About the purpose of Vasile sentences r, that is the principle of "Koans" in japanese culture, where the master asks a question to a student which could seem absurd, but whose principle is to activate special states of their brain at a higher level of consciousnes; the question has no logic answer, but the role is what it provokes in the student brain, and personality.

Best regards.

Didier

I think Vasile and Anam are in the same 'ball park' on this as myself. Teachers in the work I did created scenarios that were relevant to the children in question. So for young children (age about 5 and 6), one used a scenario of protecting nursery school children from cars running down a neighbouring hill. They had wooden slopes, various materials and model cars and came up themselves with investigations and discussed their results ( in doing so, they were forming and testing hypotheses, thinking about cause and effect, developing explanations using metaphors, and so on). In this case, they formed their own sub-questions within the parameter set by the scenario. Obviously, the language they used is different from what one might expect from older students (they did not have the word friction, for example) but the thinking was similar. One can also assume that they did not have the range of skills of older children but they did surprise in which skills they showed that the previous teaching method for the topic had actively concealed. Something I found very sobering when looking back on my own time as a teacher - how often do we actually inhibit, rather than support our students, albeit with the best intentions? At the other end of the school scale. a teacher with students preparing for a university entry level exam played in a scenario of being research consultants commissioned to explain some unexpected data in genetics (the data was unexpected in terms of their current knowledge). The topic was one that the teacher found students had difficulty with in more traditional teaching, but this technique seemed to resolve it. So yes, capturing their imagination is the key. One trick I tried when I could was to ask my younger school students what they wanted to know about, or what puzzled them about, the topic we were about to start (typically, at school level, this might be topics such as water or digestion) and discuss with them how we could arrange them into a work flow that also covered the prescribed outcomes. Often, many of the questions and the prescribed outcomes overlapped but it made the topic their own. So part of the answer is create contexts which are meaningful to them and trigger them to ask questions that require them to use the critical thinking skills they already have and does not inhibit them. In retrospect, I probably should have tried to do this more often and with a wider age range of students.

I do not think that the amount of text is an indicator for 'high-order thinking'. I personally like if students precisely and shortly answer questions or exercises - and I think that is a benefit. (On the other hand, you can talk for hours or write whole books and do not say anything...)

Due to this, I would be careful to condemn 'one-liners' :)

I think that the most abstract questions that can really evaluate the understanding of a student is the multiple choice questions and state the statement true or false and give reasons for your choices. I know that some student may answer randomly, but if you ask them to state a reason the students answer will show whether the student is in the right or wrong direction.

I don't like the essay questions, because they give some room for a lot of bla bla bla that in most cases are very far from the correct answer! and then the student will get a mark for being talkative!

Thanks for sharing this question Miranda :)

(1)Choose what do you want all your students to understand clearly and 100%

(2)Find some exceptions to the mechanized rules that are used in your discipline

(3)Make a set of problems that can be solved only under absolute knowledge of the chosen task (1), because they belong at the (2) subset of problems.

Perhaps laying out the contexts before the questions would be helpful. Those contexts or conditions given in the first place should be able to provide opportunity for producing unique combination of elements, via “OCD-like” crisscross thinking, and forming new structures of ideas. I think some important words like to reconstruct, combine, modify, design, reorganize, generate etc etc should be helpful as well. On the other hand, to be “creative” in conceiving ideas or setting “creative” (not sure if this is the right word as it is subjective to many people . perhaps “new way” is a better choice .. but iwill just use it for now) questions, I think this can be trained through some simple practices. What I usually do (or, I should say “play”) is simply blank the mind and “float” myself in the air, “see” different ideas representing by colors or symbols etc on the ground, pick up abstract relations here and there for what I can view and normally some “crazy” thoughts will be created. Or maybe, try looking things from different angles, view and perspectives, and imagine/experience it physically/personally in mind, should be helpful to stimulate “creativities”......

Perhaps a complement that I think is important : we have to differentiate knowledges (its accumulation as encyclopedia) which use our memory and mechanisms usefull for the memory, and the reasonning which uses other capacities of our brain (analyse, synthesis, re-built ) , allowing an "appropriation" of external data memorized , and where our "imagination" (to define) can then inetrefere and transform then.

What are we testing in our current evaluations of scientific students ?

Regards

Didier

Dear Miranda,

'Explain the physical significance of ...... .' This may look better than the usual ones perhaps!

I am very familiar with @Juan-Esteban ' s concise response. It says a lot! @Sven gave the similar answer. Yes, our questions must be precise , clear and short!

Intriguing points of view which contain lots of thinking and creative ways to express them. I usually try to ask and accompany the questions with a picture or a graphic model and then allow students to answer briefly to-the-point or drawing another picture to explain what they want to say.

In our part of the world, my students have difficulty to be concise and come to a possible answer with ease, rather they try to bring in much information and many times they miss the point. Therefore, I spend good chunk of time training them to answer briefly and smartly to reach to the required scenario of the answer.

Usually students whose background is liberal arts are more vocal and able to describe what they want to say versus the science background students who are good at using flow charts and less words.

It is a challenge to bring both parties to consolidate and use the mix of techniques irrespective of how one asks the questions.

I found that the following types of questions stimualte higher level of thinking by students and distinguish students who are more skillful or more creative than others: " justify or give the reason(s) for" , questions where I give a graph and ask students to draw conclusions, and questions which ask students to suggest ideas or solutions for specific cases.

I think the key is to understand that, the answering of the question should come from INSIDE-->OUT (i.e., the student being the source of the idea), not the other way around (i.e., the teacher being the source of the idea). In other words, we have to engage the students' consciousness, i.e., their subjectivity. If we do not do this, we are only engaging objective thinking, or the subjectivity of the teacher. This will not create diversity in ideas ... The only way to get diversity in ideas is to engage the subjectivity of the students ... My preference is questions like :

"in YOUR opinion, ..."

"what would YOU do if you were ..."

"if YOU were in a position to do this and that, what course of action would YOU take"

....... a lot of YOU's in the questions ...

@Steve re amount of text. In general, I agree that less text in the question can lead to more creative response because it is often more open ended. Eg I use a statement like 'the Y chromosome and hence males are slowly disappearing because of evolution' as a context. Students can respond to that in a myriad of ways, SO I also spend time teaching what constitutes a good answer. As Francisco says one liners are possible, but they aren't good responses. Students have to decide for themselves what to say, what not to say, how much to research, hiw much to question their research, how much opinion to include, how to be clear in their communication, how to demonstrate their understanding of the topic etc. NB I am engaged all along the way advising, responding to their queries etc guiding them to a better response.

Thanks for your responses, all of you. I have gleaned many useful ideas. Today is one of my working Saturdays; and I got 6 of my students to come and study here so that I can keep an eye on them. Just to make sure that they spend the morning hours profitably. I have told them they need to be more independent, very soon.

I think questions that elicit the student's own personal (authoritative; self-talk) experiences/analogies/relevancies in their own life would in turn result in more engaged, uniquely creative, fulsome, learned, and thoughtful responses.

Excellent discussion above..

I would just like to point out that if we plan on assessing critical thinking, then we should be teaching it too. otherwise it is unfair, judgmental and reflects discordance between various aspects of the curriculum (more at planning stage).

i think alternating closed and open ended questions as part of a structured discussion on real life problems (Case based discussions) is a very nice way of assessing depth of knowledge as well as critical thinking... this should be a teaching strategy as well as assessment strategy.

to illustrate, i would have to resort to a clinical example of teaching residents as part of a case based discussion. case of a patient with problem x.

Q1. what do you think is going on. (open ended)

Q2. how would you reach a diagnosis (open ended)

Q3. which investigation would you like on this patient (close ended)

Q4 why do you want to do this investigation (open ended)

Q5. if the result is abc, what is your diagnosis (close ended)

Q6. how would you manage this patient. (open ended)

Q7. How would you manage this patient differently if the result was xyz.. (open ended question)

so if we want the students to think critically while solving problems, we have to teach them in the same way and assess similarly..

regards, raza

In fact, in answer to this question about questions, I would love to relate my personal experience in proctoring a physics exam. About 3/4s of the way in, a student raised his hand. Quietly I walked to his desk and he said he didn't think any of the multiple choices to the last question were correct. I looked at the question and multiple choices and told the student to do an experiment and check again, no more. When all the tests were turned in and the students gone, I took a look at his answer (that to me is in every question) and he chose correctly. To me, I hope tests can and should teach a lot more than just certain answers. They should teach the powerhouse that their brain they walk around with actually is.

The approach to set questions to make the participants think is highly 'society specific'-to be more precise 'the stages of intellectual growth' governed task. If the majority of the students are highly used to repeat the stuff, the "important questions for a particular examination year" and the teacher concerned starts asking "How would you act in such and such type situations?" - the students are baffled, the teacher gets isolated, communication fails. What I prefer personally is to begin with " Why do you need to study a particular subject ? give five reasons" type exercise. Then I scrutinize the answers and try to understand the minds of the students and then classify the students I am supposed to deal with. After explaining certain things, giving certain twists, invite the students to the blackboard to suggest different possibilities; sometimes, coin definitions by group activities (just to prove the point that a term can be defined in many possible ways other than the form mentioned in the standard texts) and associated questions demonstrating "insufficiency" (hence additional clauses) of certain proposed one. Thus, the magnitude of critical thinking is kept on varying and finally, that is, in the end-semester exam a mixed bag of question types are given (having alternative choice) where a compulsory question (covering the entire subject) is set to see whether the basic concepts are clear or not. Next, certain field conditions are described and the students are encouraged to give suggestions. The society where my institution is located, the prime task is to produce sincere workers; innovators are required after that. Even to question this norm, a teacher is supposed to understand first the intellectual growth history of the place and act accordingly to avoid self-alienation.

Tolga,,

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.4532v1.pdf

The art of science: interview with Professor

John Archibald Wheeler

Interviewer:

As you indicated, Niels Bohr created one of the most influential schools

of modern physics in Copenhagen. But it is well known that you have also

educated many leading physicists both in nuclear physics and in general relativity

in Princeton. What are your basic “rules of interaction” with students?

Answer by John Archibal Wheeler:

Isn’t there a mistake in your question? I am sure that it is really the students

who educate me! We all know that the real reason universities have students is

in order to educate the professors. But in order to be educated by one’s students

one has to put good questions to them. One always tries out questions on one’s

students. There will be some questions no student gets interested in, and if

after a while no student gets interested in a certain question, then you know

that question is not very good and you throw it away. But if there are questions

that the students get interested in, then they start to tell you new things and

keep you asking new questions, and pretty soon you have learned a good deal.

One feels very happy when a student gets to feel, as one does himself, that the

whole world of science is like a gigantic pie, and you can cut in the pie anywhere

you wish, and take out a slice and eat it.

@Louis, I think there is a problem in the RG software. The line breaks you see while typing do not translate to the line breaks when you post the question. I have noticed that a while ago. When you are manually hitting ENTER, check to see how it looks.

==============

I agree with Prof. Wheeler ... This is what I tell my students: When you are undergrad, you are learning the basics. When you are an MS student, you are learning advanced stuff, and when you are a Ph.D., it is time for you to teach me and the rest of the world more than what we already know ... Of course, MS students (and, undergrads) do research too, but, you know what I mean ...

There is an oriental proverb which says "the true Master is the one who is able to make discover by the the Student the Master he has in himself".

Regards

Didier

YES, friends, the true teacher makes his/her thinking visible and clear to a student; and also makes the thinking of the student visible and clear as daylight.

Let me add my one cent worth today. I always challenge my students to come to class prepared and ask me something that makes scratch my head, that student takes extra bonus. Although very few students will take the challenge, but when they do, they add value to everyone else's knowledge.

So, yes I learn from my students at any stage.

As educator we test what we teach. Formulation of question is guided by the learning objective. I give hypothetical case followed by questions similar to what you mentioned: Compare and contrast; Discuss; Explain; Evaluate. Added questions begin with develop, formulate, recommend strategies.

@Hussin, Tolga, Flor and friends: I have been thinking and practicing Louis' advice over the past few weeks. It was a good experience, you must try it:

'if there are questions that the students get interested in, then they start to tell you new things and keep you asking new questions, and pretty soon you have learned a good deal. One feels very happy when a student gets to feel, as one does himself, that the

whole world of science is like a gigantic pie, and you can cut in the pie anywhere

you wish, and take out a slice and eat it.'

A lovely metaphor Miranda