Creating questions to ask in web conferences
Questions asked during a web conference should be those that cannot easily be answered from information on the website or from other simple reference sources. This is an excellent time to reinforce good questioning techniques.
For further information about questioning techniques we recommend:
- Bloom's Taxonomy and Critical Thinking
- Chuck Wiederhold’s Question Matrix
When preparing questions from the background pages consider:
- How to build on existing knowledge?
- What are the key ideas and concepts?
- What is important? What is interesting to you and to other listeners?
- How to make the most of the experiences of the people on location eg the LEARNZ Field Trip Teacher and experts
- What relationships are there to local and global issues
During each web conference, experts on location will be participating with the LEARNZ Field Trip Teacher to answer questions. They are at work, in the field and have stopped work especially to answer your questions. You may wish to ask them about their experiences.
What makes a good question?
The background pages and online interatcive activities are designed specifically to support the field trip. Studying them will help in the development of good open-ended questions.
During LEARNZ audioconferences we aim for FAT questions rather than SKINNY ones. That means we prefer questions that are asked for a reason and demand several sentences to answer.
eg
"What would you do if you discovered a serious threat, such as invasive seaweed, in the reserve? Who would be responsible for its removal and who would pay?"
"If global warming is a cycle could we be heading into an ice age and how would that affect the earth? Do we have information from past ice ages that would give us clues?"
"We used to say BC and AD but you have used BP for before present. Has the way we talk about time changed? If so what is it now and what is the new term?"
"Have the tokoeka kiwi adapted to being not nocturnal, or were they always different to other kiwi?"
"We have been learning about insects and would like to know what insects would we find on the Rakiura Track?"
"We read that three penguin species nest around the coast of Stewart Island/Rakiura. We have been involved with making and putting out nesting boxes to encourage the little blue penguin back to our coastline at Palliser Bay. What do you think we should focus on to ensure that we are successful?"
