What kind of questions do you want to ask? A guide to asking questions that encourage discussion and help you meet your teaching goals.

Goals for Discussions:

To test ability to solve problems (application)
This use of questions aligns with the notion of the “public quiz.” Can students apply the math theory or language exercises to variations you suggest in the class setting?

To raise the brain activity level in thinking about the content of the course (analysis)
Here are examples of lifting off the layers of what is apparent, and looking for what is to be found in deeper layers, e.g., consider causes of events, explore details of social or political or historical issues, consider the uses of media in any of the arts, look for patterns that play into problems that need to be solved in any number of disciplines.

To pull together various ideas that have been presented and develop a cohesive picture (synthesize)
In students have been reading various authors, or if you have been presenting varied viewpoints in the class, the time comes to compare ideas and see how they differ, and explore why. Sometimes some authors see one side of an issue and others see the opposite; students need to bring the viewpoints into a larger picture.

To assess aspects of the course’s content in order to put it into a bigger picture of “content” (evaluation)
Sometimes evaluation has to do with determining the validity of issues or research regarding a particular idea, and sometimes evaluation has to do with considering how material fits into a discipline: Is it mainstream? Is it fringe? How well is it connected to what’s done before, or is it revolutionary? Answers to these questions may “fall out” of discovering its location in the larger world of ideas.

Question Types

  1. Open-ended questions:
    • “What are your reactions to the General Motors Case?” 
    • “What aspects of this problem were of greatest interest to you?” 
    • “Where should we begin?”
  2. Diagnostic questions:
    • “What is your analysis of the problem?”
    • "What conclusions did you draw from this data?”
  3. Information-seeking questions:
    • “What was the Gross Domestic Product of France last year?”
  4. Challenge (testing) questions:
    • “Why do you believe that?”
    • “What evidence supports your conclusion?”
    • “What arguments might be developed to counter that point of view?”
  5. Action questions:
    • “What needs to be done to implement the government’s anti-drug campaign?” 
  6. Questions on priority & sequence:
    • “Given the state’s limited resources, what is the first step to be taken? The second? And the third?”
  7. Prediction questions:
    • “If your conclusions are correct, what might be the reaction of the Japanese auto industry?”
  8. Hypothetical questions:
    • “What might have happened to the company if a strike had not been called by the union?”
  9. Questions of extension:
    • “What are the implications of your conclusion about the causes of the Boston bottling plant strike for executives in plants in other large cities?”
  10. Questions of generalization:
    • “Based on your study of computer and telecommunications industries, what do you consider to be the major forces that enhance technological innovation?”

Reference: “The Discussion Teaching in Action” Roland Christensen, p. 159. Education for Judgment Ed: Roland Christensen, David Garvin, Ann Sweet. Harvard Business School, 1991