Tips for handling QnA in the classroom

Questions are a great tool to facilitate discussion in a classroom. In today's blog post, I want to touch upon the various things one should take care of, when dealing with QnA in a group setting.

A husband, five wives and a "witch"

You won't believe this, but I struggle to remember the different words an open ended question can begin with and I use the mnemonic of "a husband, five wives and a witch" to remind myself of the various questions. As you can see in the diagram above, open ended questions can either begin with a How (Husband), What, When, Where, Why, Who (all the wives) or Which (the 'witch'). You can ask your open ended questions for various reasons.

• ‘About’ ­ ‘How do you feel about ...?’
  
• Reflective ­ 'Which aspects do you feel uncomfortable with ...?’
  
• Hypothetical ­ ‘What do you think would happen if ...?’

Generative Discussion vs Specific Discussion

At ThoughtWorks we tend to use a lot of generative questioning when we're trying to create hearty discussion. There's nothing wrong with specific questions except generative questions generate discussion! Here are a few situations where you may prefer generative questioning.

Specific	Generative	Assumption
Are there any questions?	What questions do you have?	People have questions. What are they?
Is this an accurate summary?	How do you feel about this summary?	The summary is up here, but lets talk about your feelings around it, without pronouncing judgement about it yet.
Can anyone give me the answer?	Who wants to tell me what the answer is?	Everyone knows the answer. Who wants volunteer and tell me?
Do you understand?	Who can rephrase what they understood?	Everyone understands to some extent. Lets express what you understood so we're all on the same page.

Other styles of questioning

There are various other ways of framing questions and accepting input and its up to you to choose the right method of questioning for your purpose:

• Framing Context ­ ‘How do you compare this new model with ...?’
  
• Silence ­ .......................?
  
• Statements ­ ‘Rosemary, you look as if you wanted to say something.’
  
• Closed Questions - "Does a rooster lay eggs?"
  
• Leading Questions­ ‘Would it would be better to ...?’

Whatever mode of questioning you use, be careful not to ask a string of consecutive questions. Pause for at least 5 seconds after asking your question, so that your audience can understand it and then throw back an answer. Remember, just because you understand the topic, it doesn't mean that your audience will answer you in a split second!

Reflect - Deflect

Very often, participant questions are not really questions!. They may just be a demand for the spotlight. If it is a closed, real questions ­ answer it succinctly. If you suspect it is not, then try the Reflect-Deflect technique.

• REFLECT back to the questioner what you thought was the question. "If I understand you correctly, you're saying..." 
  This gives you time to understand the question better. Depending on how the questioner rephrases the question, answer it,
  OR
  
• DEFLECT it as follows:
  • Group : ‘How do the rest of the group feel?’;‘Who else has faced a similar problem?’
    
  • Ridirect : (to one participant) ‘Martin, you have some experience with this - what's do you thing’
    
  • Reverse : (back to questioner) ‘I can see you've done some thinking in this area. What’s your  view?’

By taking away the pressure of answering every question yourself, you'd have already made the classroom more engaging and yourself more relaxed!

Mind your lighthouse

The last thing I'd like to talk about, is 'your lighthouse' in the classroom. Just like a lighthouse at sea, you need to balance your eye-contact with everyone in the classroom. This is easy enough to by sweeping your eyes across your entire audience when you're delivering a lecture. Its not that easy though when you're answering or asking a question. Its tempting to focus all your attention to that one person asking you the question or answering your question and that can often put off the rest of your classroom. I always like to stick to 25-75 rule in my classroom. I pay make 25% eye contact with the individual student, so she knows that she's in the spotlight. At the same time, I adjust my lighthouse so that I can balance the remaining 75% of my attention to the rest of the classroom. This could mean that I pay a second's attention to the questioner, take 3 seconds to make eye contact with the people around her on each side and come back to make a second's eye contact with her. I find this extremely useful and it helps me also keep the rest of the class interested in what's going on.