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Handling Overzealous Student Questions

April 26, 2011, 8:00 am

By George Williams

It’s the end of my semester, and students are understandably stressed out about getting all of their final projects finished on time. This stress sometimes means that they’re full of questions about such nuts-and-bolts issues as assignment requirements, deadlines, and methods. And often the answers to those questions are right there on the assignment sheets I’ve created or they’re about to be shared by me in class as we discuss the assignments in question.

But what do you do when you start class and students keep raising their hands with questions that you’re just about to answer through your introductory lecture? This happened to me last week in one class, and I decided to stop and answer each question as it arose. As a result, I later found out, students ended up confused about some of the key details. (Fortunately, we were able to resolve that confusion before it was too late.)

In the next class session, I tried a different approach: The first words out of my mouth were “How many of you have questions?” Almost every hand went up. “Okay, take out a piece of paper and write them all down.” After about five minutes, I started class and explained everything that I had to explain that day. If a student raised a hand, I asked them to add their question to the piece of paper in front of them. When I was finished talking, I asked how many of them still had questions. Only two hands went up, and I was able to answer their questions quickly. Every other question had been answered through my planned introductory remarks.

I’ll be sure to do this again when faced with a similar situation. It’s important for students to have their questions answered, but it’s also important to focus their attention on the very sources of information that will answer those questions.

How about you? What strategies do you have for handling overzealous student questions?

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by Gareth Simpson]

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  • Catherine Anderson

    I just say, “That is a very important question! We will get to it in about X minutes.” Then once I’ve covered the relevant material, I make sure to check back with the student to see that her question has actually been answered.

  • http://twitter.com/chattyprof Ellen Bremen

    Honestly, I find that the number of students asking questions at all has decreased so much in my 10+ years of teaching. I’m thrilled when they do! I think letting some questions go to an online forum or e-mail can be really helpful in preserving class time. However, I teach mainly hybrid (part online/part on-campus), so this is a standard procedure because the classes that I teach range from two to four-hour blocks. Also, if the material is about to be covered, the author’s strategy was certainly reasonable asking students to jot down their questions, listen to the information, then see what questions remained (if any). From those questions, if the instructor is using web support, CMS, etc., then maybe a FAQ section could be developed out of those commonly asked questions.

    The author notes that students already have the answers on assignment sheets. I face this all the time: Students asking questions that are very clear either in documents within my course management system or the syllabus. Hence, I always refer students back to the resource, itself. If I don’t, then they will not look through the important documents that are online to help them. I tell students that I’m not trying to be difficult by not answering their question, but that hunting and locating resources is an extremely important skill to hone. Additionally, I don’t want them to be hung up waiting for me, particularly if it is the middle of the night and I’m not on e-mail! If students find the resource and then have specific questions, I’m glad to answer them. Thank you for this thoughtful article. Ellen Bremen @chattyprof http://chattyprof.blogspot.com

  • sadamsdelaney

    That’s a good method–particularly since I can’t always remember what questions folks asked, and they might not remember after I’ve been talking about something else. I also like to have students freewrite questions and concerns and then meet in small groups with the course materials to try to answer each other’s questions. Then, if there are questions left, we can discuss them as a class. This is particularly helpful in first-year writing, when I’m trying to teach them how to be effective students.

  • http://about.me/dittman dittman

    I imagine this would be a terrible problem with larger classes. I’m blessed with small class sizes, but I train them from the first day to know that the first thing I do when the class starts is to explain what we’re going to cover that day in outline form. They know that there will always be time for general questions, but at the end of class (when I’ve already answered most of them) not at the beginning. An important part of the training process is not to budge – when a random general question comes up, I always respond, “We’ll have time for general questions at the end of the class.” It’s really about building trust and consistency.
    On a side note, this problem is much more prevalent in my online courses. Because (in my opinion) Blackboard is such a mess for students to navigate, their first response is to contact me via email or text or IM about information that is covered in the course material. here again, I refuse to answer the question directly but guide them back to the syllabus or “Faculty Office” Q & A, training them to look there first before firing off a panicked missive.

  • jpegan

    I think it’s important to: have detailed, unambiguous (!), comprehensive and well structured course outlines/syllabi; and redirect students to the outline whenever the answers are found there. Push back consistently and early and emphatically. In short order they should be less stressed because they’ve a resource that’s as accessible as they make it. In this sort of scenario being “nice” fosters an unhealthy dependence on others to gatekeep materials. Once these folks graduate they will need to be largely self-directed. Better to learn that in university (even if it means a lower grade) than in a workplace where the assessment strategy is effectively “pass/fail”: do the job well or lose it.

  • cwinton

    Everyone has to develop their own approach, but I’ve found for the nuts and bolts variety it helps to bring up the on-line material that provides the answer (of course you have to be using a projector for this to work), which simultaneously reminds them of how it is accessed while you answer the question. For substantive questions, I always over answer, in the process guiding my response towards material I am planning on covering. That’s particularly easy when the answer involves mathematics, because there almost always are multiple ways to approach the problem prompting the question.

  • drjeff

    Yes! I do almost the same thing; “that’s a great question, and we should work our way up to it in about X minutes.” It works very well. I found it too difficult to keep up with the number of questions, so I tell the student “if you still have this question at (5-10 minutes before the end of class), please be sure to raise your hand.”

  • wayne_detzler

    This is a ever-recurring problem. I started my teaching career during the revolutionary 1960s in Germany, where such questions wefre a “blood sport.” Now I am dean of a small institution here in the States, and it is still a “blood sport.” My method is old-fashioned, but it works. I walk them through the process realizing tha tnothing cools the ardor of an inflamed student like academic process. Also, it protects me from the twin danger of uninformed decision and sentimental response. In this way the student gets a fair response, and the academic process is also satisfied.

  • leesey1026

    I like the approach of having them prepared to ask questions with a sheet of paper. I become overwhelmed when it appears students are not LISTENING to you and interupt with questions that were already answered and left unheard.
    I will try this in my classes tomorrow. :)

  • raza_khan

    Excellent tips by the author and other members. Here is a quick rundown of my observations in the last 12 years:

    1. Number of “good” questions has decreased at a dramatic and an alarming level.

    2. With the academics moving from a pure “lecture” teaching methodology to a “learning environment” methodology, we as faculty find that we have less time to cover the required concepts required for the course. Therefore,
    A. I use the timing in group session to answer student questions. In fact, I prefer that the students in a group answer each other questions. Almost all of my classes have at least 5 to 10 minutes of group session dedicated block for each class period.
    B. If there are still some questions that were not answered, I have the students write them on post-it notes on their way out of class which I answer the next class period.

    I primarily used clickers (also referred to as Personal Response Systems) to see if students has questions. However, after trying that for 3 semesters, I found it took a valuable time out of the class to cart it in and set it up.

    I have tried the group session to answer questions for both smaller classes (6 students) and larger classes (up to 150 students) and found it works well. Students seem to enjoy and in fact, they go around asking partners questions and using their “life-lines”!

    We also have an online system of community but that is a post on its own!!!

    Raza
    ________________________
    Raza Khan, Ph.D.
    dr.raza.khan@gmail.com

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=55300089 Khara House

    I usually have my students write down their questions at the beginning of class (the difference being I *make* them write one, whether they think they have one or not–usually this works out the issue of someone who thought they didn’t have a question who realizes they do later). I’ll take about five minutes (during which they do in-class writing prompts) to sort through the questions, and “adjust” my introduction to make sure I answer all of them. This is also helpful because it sometimes helps me remember things I forgot. Beyond these questions, my students are told to save the rest for the end of my introduction, or sometimes until the end of class. It works pretty well!

  • delonix

    I take that approach, though how to answer questions depends as others have noted well, on class size and online options.

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