Questions: Informal Communication Activities
| What learning goals are most important to your course content? |
| What forms of inquiry are important for your students to be able to master? |
| What structures of communication activities would fit best given your course constraints? |
| What kinds of follow-up strategies could hold students accountable for these informal activities? |
| What challenges do you expect your students to have with informal communication activities? |
| How can you proactively address these challenges in designing the activity? |
The seven steps in designing informal communication activities include
•Delineating learning outcomes and forms of inquiry
•Identifying the structure of the task you want students to complete
•Articulating the particular areas of content you want students to focus on
•Designing prompts/tasks that have multiple possible responses and audiences
•Designating guidelines for interaction and potential relational issues
•Setting clear expectations for outcomes of the exercise and, if appropriate, instructions for reporting the results of the process/product
•Holding students accountable for their communication choices and behaviors in these activities.
The first step in designing informal communication activities involves thinking about what you want students to learn and what forms of inquiry you want them to engage in or practice during the activity. This decision involves a process similar to articulating course-based outcomes and objectives but is focused at the level of this exercise or assignment. Put this activity in the context of your entire course: What particular student-learning outcomes do you want to achieve for different parts of your course? How does this activity or exercise help you achieve those outcomes at this point in your course? As mentioned in Chapter 1, many of you have probably been exposed to the taxonomy of questioning developed by Benjamin Bloom (often used when articulating students learning outcomes, as well). While Bloom’s taxonomy is widely cited and is often used as a guide for developing levels of outcomes for assessment purposes, it might be helpful to use Bloom’s three domains—cognitive, affective and behavioral—to guide designing communication outcomes.
Given that your goals for these communication activities will be more focused on how well students learn course content, it is likely you will be writing outcomes that focus more on cognitive and affective outcomes. You will focus on the form of the communication itself primarily as a means to achieve these ends. One way to think about the learning outcomes for activities is to consider the forms of inquiry that you want your students to engage in for this activity. Do you want them to evaluate? Interrogate? Compare? Contrast? Regardless of the final format of the exercise of assignment(s) you create, the kinds of inquiry you are expecting of your students needs to be made explicit, both to yourself and to your students. For example, if you want your students to “compare and contrast,” what does that mean?
As you think about generating outcomes for informal communication activities, it is also important to consider the kinds of questions you think are important for students to ask as they participate in those activities. Students often believe that what is most important is imparting their knowledge. They need to be encouraged to ask questions—and you will need to prepare them to be able to accomplish what you are asking them to do, in part by identifying the multiple ways to approach problems, texts, and issues. There are many different kinds of questions, and it is often enlightening to students to realize these different forms. Students often get stuck at the level of asking factual/knowledge questions, never considering that there are different forms of questions that can illuminate a text or an issue. It is helpful to discuss with students the different ways of asking questions and the types of insights that might be associated with different question forms. There are many different taxonomies of question types, ranging from highly abstract categorizations to fairly mundane descriptions. We have listed typical categories here in Table 4.2, although the categories are not all mutually exclusive. Of particular note are convergent and divergent questions. There are those who assert that convergent thinking and divergent thinking utilize different brain functions (divergent thinking utilizes the right brain, developing imaginative and creative abilities; convergent thinking utilizes the left brain, thus developing the deductive, rational, and analytic abilities (Guilford, 1967; Robinson, 2011; Runco, 1991).
Table 4.2. Types of Content-Focused Questions
| Form of Question | Examples |
| Factual/Knowledge: To get information, open discussion, or test for knowledge | Questions that ask “who, what, why, where, and how” |
| Explanatory: To elicit reasoning, create an opening for further information, or to clarify a purpose or goal | “What other factors contributed to this problem?”“Why did the author use this analogy? |
| Leading: To introduce a new idea or focus attention on an idea introduced by someone else | “Now consider XYZ. How would these additional factors have changed your solution?” |
| Analytic: To focus on relationships among concepts or to break issues into smaller parts for further examination | “How does A relate to B?”“If X is true, what do we do with the fact that . . .?” |
| Hypothetical or Application: To focus on a potentially unpopular position, or to try out how a concept or solution would work to solve a problem or address an issue | “What would happen if…?”“Let’s say we decided to….?”“Now let’s change the scenario and see what happens if….” |
| Justification and Evaluation: To challenge old ideas, develop new ideas, or focus on reasoning and evidence | “I’d like to hear your reasons.”“What observations did you make that led you to your conclusions?”“Does this solution meet our criteria?” |
Table 4.3. Questions to Expand Ways of Thinking
| Form of Question | Examples |
| Disjunctive: To clarify alternatives or show problems with oversimplification | “Of the two most likely possibilities, which is preferable?”“If A is not the answer, then what must the answer be?” |
| Convergent: To develop accuracy, think deductively, develop consensus, move toward action, or direct attention to specific elements | “Based on our information, what conclusions can we draw?”“Where are the points of overlap?”“Where do we agree?” |
| Divergent: To develop open-minded thinking, discover new ways of approaching an issue, show connection, focus attention on many elements | “How else might we approach this?”“If you were to research this topic, how would you proceed?” |
The second step is to clearly identify the structure of the task. Given what you are trying to accomplish at this point in your course, as well as the character of students in your course, does it make sense to use a more or less structured exercise? Will you have students do small-group discussions in order to try to gain insight into a text? How structured do these small-group discussions need to be? What kind of preparation will students need in order to be ready to ask the kinds of questions that will lead to insight, and be able to talk intelligently in response (for example, reading the text, preparing discussion questions, freewriting, journal-writing, outlining essential arguments)? Will this be an in-class debate? Micro presentations? Poster presentation? Discussion? Role play? Pair-and-share (see example at the end of this chapter)? Will the task be completed fully in class or will there need to be preparation work or follow up work outside of class? How much class time will you devote to the activity and how much out-of-class time (if any) will students need to devote to the preparation and/or follow-up?
The third step is to identify the content with which they will work. Is it a particular text? A chapter in the book? Their own opinions? Web-based research they will do during the activity? Experiential events? Clearly specifying the content they need to have read, found, experienced, generated, or otherwise prepared will make the process more efficient and will help students prepare.
Fourth,
