Once at the Niels Bohr was asked why you have so many talented students.

He replied - my students are not afraid to ask stupid questions.

Therefore, it is difficult to answer, that's a good question. Any question deserves attention. Likely to need a good answer. Then any question is a good one.

Once at the Niels Bohr was asked why you have so many talented students.

He replied - my students are not afraid to ask stupid questions.

Therefore, it is difficult to answer, that's a good question. Any question deserves attention. Likely to need a good answer. Then any question is a good one.

A good question is the question that is scientific and can be of interest to a large number of people. It has to be written in an attractive way to attract more number of colleagues to answer it.

As for the other part of the question ... When to ask the good question? I think, you may choose the time where there are not many questions raised. Timing is an important issue when you want to get more answes.

Dear Hashem,

I've asked a similar but opposite question and got very good answers. To  see answers to my question please see the thread at RG link below:

My question was: What answers are “good answers” in your opinion?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_answers_are_good_answers_in_your_opinion?_tpcectx=profile_highlights

Dear Vyacheslav Lyashenko,

I respect your opinion. However, if student or any one do not have good insight in the field then good question cant be formulated. 

Dear Mahfuz,

I thank you for a good answer.

Dear Hashem,

Yet, there is another question like this and I answered your question there already:

How to ask the "right" question: do we think enough about it?

My answer was:

Something needs to be changed. We (Teachers) should be open-minded, curious and encouraging, else we should not expect our students to be curious, life-long learners if we don’t believe in / show this very same characteristic ourselves. Alternatively, do you think our students even know how to ask the right questions? Too many of us spend too much time teaching them to answer our questions. Surely we ask questions to which we already know the answers! Should not be the other way around? Is not a good idea to let them ask, not just answer, questions.

Finally, as Albert Einstein once said “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes.”

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_ask_the_right_question_do_we_think_enough_about_it?_tpcectx=profile_answers

A good question is one that is not simplistic;  has been thoughtfully designed and lucidly written; interests the largest possible number of researchers & clarifies their doubts;  and if of exploratory nature generates a good debate and/or brainstorming about the issue.

Dear Hashem. In answer to your comment.

If I do not know, I

- Do not ask the question

or

- Ask any questions to understand the essence of the subject, detailed understanding of the subject (I'm learning). Then I have an opportunity to formulate a good question.

If this is a learning process then any question is a good one. This is due to the fact that I'm learning. And how can there be a matter of bad during training.

I could be wrong. But this is my opinion.

http://scientificmethod.com/bklet/i_1.htm

There are 14 steps of Scientific methods available at the above link and these are nicely elaborated and discussed.

Moreover, it all depends on individual involvement and aptitude. There is a saying, go as deep as you can( in the ocean), more you will get it and enjoy.

Best u can learn from a child about questioning, what , why, how it is, what next and so on.

http://scientificmethod.com/bklet/i_1.htm

Well my personal view till date was^there are no stupid questions ,only there can be stupid answers. ^ Let me see whether I will change at the end of this thread.

I think any question is a good question.

Any question is good, also simply depending on the age and environment of the person that asked the question.

difficult to answer the good question for some body is non sense for the other its subjective issue thats why there is no black and white no clear answer

Although I think that Dr Hashem did not mean "stupid questions", I do agree that there are no stupid questions and first of all students need to know that. Thereby personal perceptions about the importance of questions vary. However, to answer the question and talking namely about the Middle East countries, I would encourage students to improve their research methods knowledge. They cannot get any information from a book or a paper regardless the author. Indeed they have to critically analyse whatever they read. This will hopefully lead them to ask more valuable questions since they become more critical to others and themselves. This answer is based on my own experience.

I would distinguish different kind of questions.

1. A question asked to get some points or score, just to have asked. Not much sense.

2. A question asked from a really interested beginner in a special field: very important and all the informed scientists, teachers in this field should do great efforts to explain, even answers which had frequently been given. Here is someone who wants to learn.

3. Questions from scientist in the own field: can be very specialised and complicated, but must be a really earnest question to improve cognitions.

4. Questions asked from scientists in an unfamiliar, strange field, but with earnest interest: important and appreciated from the "out-fielder", who wants to learn because of curiosity.

In learning -teaching process, there are five main objectives and steps too:

1. Knowledge, 2. Understanding,  3. Application, 4. Analysis,  5. Synthesis.

These are applicable to all subjects.

As for the questions that are raised in RG, I think that a good question is the one which comes from a scholar who seeks knowledge & is not testing the others.

As for the questions that we want the university students to ask, there is a method which I tried & it worked. Out of 100,there are 10 marks for activity or participation & this includes asking "good " questions. Of course, some questions are not that good but I never showed any "mocking". I just try to modify the question & continue. If the question is really good, I'll praise the student strongly. After some time, other students are encouraged to "show" their talents in front of the class to get excellent remarks besides the activity mark at the end of the semester.

Dear Dr. Nizar Matar,

thats a good technique, especially because it´s encouraging the non-askers.

A good question generates thought, is usually open-ended, allows for multiple answers (when applicable), contains or includes multiple variables or approaches. It is usually more interpretive and evaluative rather than factual, and is best asked in the right context of the relevant discipline. By 'right' here, I mean, at the right time and place. And by that, it indicates something that clarifies our current state of knowing and generates a curiosity toward furthering that state of knowing. A good question could carry the need for greater understanding, clarity, coherence, and the identification of newer patterns, connections, and interrelationships. Most importantly, it lays the ground for generating more good questions to come.

This question is related with Teacher's training or Science teaching. You can pick up any book on Science teaching . Every thing is nicely elaborated. Likewise, topics, such as , ACTION RESEARCH PLAN or Game theory or Fish bone diagram /Ishikawa Diagrams are really interesting.

There should not be any constraints in asking questions. But whether its a good or bad is been decided by others who look forward to answer these questions. Framing a good question takes time. But we all learn from mistakes. So I encourage to learn by asking questions howmuchever stupid it may look. I centum agree with @ Kamal, one should avoid repeating the same question.

I fully endorse Vyacheslav Lyashenko. In fact there is hardly anything more I can add. Yet the academic in me is itching to take some space....so....

In my opinion, the whole concept of education rests on understanding the question so elegantly posed by Hashem. In ancient India, there were two distinct terms for teachers - Acharya and Guru. An acharya is the one who teaches arts/sciences needed to live material life. A guru on the other hand instills an ever lasting thirst for knowledge by making the student fit for material pursuits as well as for living a meaningful life; he encourages the child like curiosity in the student to explore the unknown and guides him to obtain a meaning out of all his pursuits. Due to this difference, in ancient India, an acharya got his 'dakshina' (fee) whereas the guru was venerated as god. The ancient vedic poem says:

"Guru brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru devo maheshwara; Guru sakshat param brahma, thasmy sri guru ve namah" (Guru is the creator, he is the protector and the destroyer; He is the very meaning of life itself; my salutations to my guru).

A teacher becomes stagnant and stale if he carries out his teaching with the knowledge gained during his student days. The questions, however silly, irrelevant or provocative, asked by the students propel him to read, upgrade and research his own knowledge. That way the teacher himself becomes better and also becomes a role model for students. Unless we encourage the students to ask whatever is in their mind, how will we ever know what they do not know? And, if we do not know what they do not know, what will we ever learn and what will we ever teach them? We must seek to be a guru than being a stereotypical acharya.

Have a great day.

I thank you all for your comments.  I learned from your participation how to ask a question. 

Different cultures, different questions, different answers .....

At least on the surface level, i.e. looking at the prima facie concepts and patterns of explanation. Deep inside, people are very similar. How could it be different, given the fact that they are genetically built out of the same substance, as has been unequivocally proved by science?

Caught in the cave

What is so strange and frightening, is that many human beings are caught in their superficial culture, like a cave with tiny windows to the outer world. They will pose many questions, silently, and they will get answers, loudly, but those answers are very much determined by the superficial "language" - verbal and non-verbal - of the superficial cultures, both inside and outside the respective caves.

Beyond the cave

If they happen to look outside the tiny windows, they may get glimpses of other cultures and people, and perhaps get frightened by the misleading signals they observe and answers they hear. And as we know : anxiety is the mother of much misunderstanding and evil in our small world: a large and dense network of caves.

Insight and outsight

Only if we learn to ask questions which go outside our small caves with its cultural - mostly arbitrary, i.e. historically contingent but not necessary - limitations and distortions, and study the answers carefully and fearless, we may hope to arrive at genuine wisdom and insight, pardon: out-sight (out-of-the-cave). Some people are very good in asking such questions: whether we call those people guru's or philosophers is irrelevant.

i appreciate all the above interesting answers. according to my opinion A good question should be answerable, asked in the right format and should be adapted according to the ability of the student. A good question should be initiated at a time where critical thinking has to be created. Its better a question doesn’t contain the same words from the textbook.  a good question should be with varying difficulty when it is formulated for the evaluation point of view. Questions should also lead to an inquiry or investigating idea in a learner.

Guidelines for developing GOOD questions:

Ideally there is no such Good Question, the one when applied should bring the best answer possible from the person answering it.

Does question-answering lead to what we call intelligence? In a very restricted sense, I would say, yes. But I may remind you of Turing's Test which in its original form was a question-answering method, actually an experimental set-up, to answer the deep question of those days: "Can machines think?", in other words: can we build machines which behave in a way that we would call "intelligent" if it would be done by a human being? However, 60 years after Turing's question and paper, the study of Artificial Intelligence has come to the firm conclusion, that intelligence - whether of the human or the machine type - is much much more than being able to answer questions correctly or intelligently.

http://www.amazon.com/Years-Artificial-Intelligence-Dedicated-Anniversary/dp/3540772952

A good question is one that is of an interest to a larger audience.  It needs to shape some creative thinking.

Friends, I beg to differ with many responses in this thread on the view that a good question should be of interest to a larger audience. The quality of a question, I believe, has nothing to do with its ability to attract a larger audience. In fact, majority of the people tend to love the questions answers to which are readily available with them. They might be GOOD questions, but BETTER are those responding to which requires some novel thinking, exploration of ideas and generation of possibilities, and the “larger audience” may not like doing all that. And some of the potentially BEST questions may be well ahead of time (may be generations ahead) which could not be appreciated by “the larger audience”. But yes, inquisitiveness is never BAD.

Thanks.

What is the purpose of asking questions? It all depends on the individual's aptitude, professional ability and thinking. One can be  extremely benefitted by question and answer session to arrive at some concluding aspects, which will give new direction for future research.

@Palani,

nice receipt of your professor. But some times you are not sure, that your own answer is sufficient. So to get an agreement or a contradiction can be disirable. And to your second point, of course it´s without sense to ask a question to somebody, who cannot know the answer at all. But hear in RG you don´t know your readers and listeners. Therefore go on asking, even if you have some doubts in the one or another way.

Dear Palani,

The theme is to be able to formulate a good question not to embarrass the presenter. In some cases you ask a question to help the presenter to more elaborate on the hidden things.