Question Formation Exercises

Assignment Overview

During Friday sessions, you will meet with the instructors and students in the sections—designated by the course reference number (CRN)—in which you enrolled for the class. During selected sessions (please refer to the course calendar), you, as a member of a small group, will be asked to complete an in-class “question formation exercise”.

For the exercise, each group will develop a single, concise question that addresses the reading assigned for that day, or previous readings, lectures and discussions held in class during a particular course unit (the class is organized into three units). The single question will be accompanied be accompanying by a brief —150 to 250 words—explanation both of the background of the question (what ideas, sources, events, discussions prompted or inspired the question) and why the group thinks the question is a good one.

On Monday I will select at least one, perhaps a few, of the questions and explanations and ask the group’s members to further discuss their question and explanation. The entire class will be encouraged to join us.

Selected questions, either as a whole or revised (given our discussion and the questions developed by the other groups), will appear on the take-home exam.

Explanation

Benjamin Bloom Links to an external site. (1913-1999), an American educational psychologist, developed a highly influential, and widely adopted, set of hierarchical learning objectives focused on “cognitive, affective and sensory” domains. The cognitive domain, our emphasis, moves through a series of hierarchical steps from using or applying knowledge—and, so, posing questions like “Would more chocolate make better brownies?”—to judging or evaluating knowledge—and, so, posing questions like “Why is the Pillsbury recipe the best approach for making brownies?”

By posing and evaluating questions on the readings—and for us to answer on the exams—we are both addressing the different learning objectives proposed by Bloom, and emphasizing the ways in which we synthesize and evaluate knowledge. Thus, our emphasis on asking and determining good questions.

Good questions provide the lifeblood of scholarship and research. And good, or excellent, scholarship and research inspires further good questions. But what features, aspects or elements make these questions good? Or, asked another way, what should good questions ask? Judging whether or not a question is “good” appears a difficult task. The task grows more complicated as our judgments depend, in great measure, on the context in which the question is asked—and what comprises a context, or the proper context, remains a question in itself. Still, we can analyze our intuitions of what makes a good question by, of course, asking questions:

❧ Where does the question aim? Given, for example, a research or scholarly framework, is the proper aim determine who, what or where as opposed to how or why?
❧ What kind of thinking does the question provoke? Does the question ask for a description? A judgment? An opinion? Data?
❧ How is the question posed structurally? Is the question short, long, compound, over determined, vague, careless, precise, wordy?
❧ How might the question be answered? What resources might be needed to answer the question—personal opinion, experience, expertise, experiment, close reading of the text, interpretation?
❧ Who does the question ask the respondent to be? Fellow seeker? Novice? Dope? Collaborator? Believer? Cynic? Judge? Agent of change?
What is the goal of the question? Affirmation and Confirmation? Provocation? Knowledge seeking? Information?
❧ When might the question be answered? Does the question assume an immediate answer? Does the question assume a certain vision of the future? Does the question assume a certain understanding of the past? Of current events?

Learning Goals

In completing the Question Formation Exercises, we will practice ways strategies to approach and analyze the issues and arguments raised in the complex social interchange involving science and technology. The learning goals of the conceptual exercises are:

❧ To develop approaches to examining issues involving science, technology and society;
❧ To refine, through collaboration and specified outcomes, questions for analysis in class and on exams;
❧ To compare approaches to how we understand, and communicate about, the dynamic involving science, technology and society.

Exercises Protocol

During nine selected Friday sessions, you will be asked to complete a Question Formation Exercise. The exercise will be uploaded to Canvas. However, the specific approach a class takes in the Friday session will be up to participants to determine.

The exercises will fold directly into the conduct of our Monday sessions. Selected individuals, or group leaders, will be called upon to discuss the outcome of the exercise. Our discussion and analysis of the questions will connect to the reading assigned for that day. In addition the questions, as originally or revised given the discussion will appear on our take-home exams.

Assessment of the exercises will be based on the total number completed. However, if the instructors determine the outcome of the exercise to be clearly neglectful, it will not count. Please avoid any problems by completing the exercises as fully as possible within the constraints that result from a populated fifty-minute class session. Your instructors well understand, and are generally sympathetic to, classroom constraints. Please refer to the syllabus regarding assessment criteria.

Please contact Jim Collier (jim.collier@vt.edu) with any questions.