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How to Develop Effective Discussion Questions - Part II: Guidelines for Writing Questions that Achieve Critical Thinking

Ron Benson

Adjunct Faculty

Graduate School of Management and Technology

Published: November-December 2007

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Classroom-communication

Part II of How to Develop Effective Discussion Questions explains how to use the competencies of Bloom's taxonomy and case studies to develop discussion questions that promote critical thinking.

Introduction

My teaching philosophy is that the primary goal of higher education is to develop critical thinking skills. My personal experience is that discussions among class colleagues are crucial to the critical thinking development.

According to Conceico (2005), critical thinking skills are effectively taught in an online mode. In a phenomenological study, Conceico recorded the following faculty reaction. "There's a tremendous gratification in [online teaching] because of how well I get to know the [learners], and I believe the opportunities I have to assess their application of the knowledge and skills that we're talking about during the semester…. I feel like I can have a greater impact on each individual [learner]."

Bloom's taxonomy provides a useful framework of critical thinking competencies that can be used for developing and evaluating discussion questions.

Bloom's Competencies and Manager Responsibilities

Bloom's taxonomy provides a source of ideas and a check list to develop questions.  I have extended Bloom's taxonomy to include desired managerial responsibilities, which assist in preparing management courses. In the first column of Table 1, is a list of Bloom's competencies acquired from an adapted version of Bloom's Taxonomy from the Learning Skills Program of the University of Victoria (2005). In the second column of the table is a list of typical management situations that help to develop questions that correlate directly to management responsibilities. Column three lists example discussion questions that provide students with the opportunity to learn the competencies that are necessary in the field of management.

Using Bloom's Taxonomy

I find that the critical thinking competencies are mainly focused in the last four rows of Table 1: Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation (Bissell & Lemons, 2006). The Bloom's taxonomy table (Learning Skills Program, 2005) contains a list of verbs that I found particularly helpful in composing discussion questions that address the higher order competencies. By developing questions in this way, I concluded that effective discussion questions are often not questions at all, but rather imperative statements, such as: apply this; explain; integrate, recommend; etc. The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy from The Quarterly Review of Distance Education (Chyng, 2003; Krathwohl, 2002) is another good resource that offers perspectives on developing competency related discussion questions.

Case Studies

Case studies work exceptionally well with discussion questions when addressing Bloom competencies.  Cases or vignettes can vary from a few sentences describing a unique situation to a 30-page description of an entire organization or industry.  Following is a vignette that requires responses that cover a range of Bloom competencies. Note that the question for the case study is within the course context and it is not involve a repeat of particular course content. The question is intended to encourage critical thinking in an area related to student interest.

A question that works particularly well with case studies is, "Describe any lessons you personally learned from this case?  Anything particularly hit home?  Was there anything in the case that you think needs to be emphasized or communicated, or that is commonly done poorly?"  This obvious requires reflective thought.  It is meaningful to students personally.  And it always generates further discussion.

Ineffective Discussion Questions

Effective questions should provide opportunity for discussion.  If they do not, don't use them. For example, inappropriate questions for discussion would be factual type questions that leads to only one answer and for which responses are binary, (yes/no, true/false). The only discussion might be whether an answer is right or wrong and discussions of this sort tend to negate the collegial environment needed for successful discussions. Questions that do not enhance learning and are merely busywork are also inappropriate.  An example might be a question that asks for information which requires little more than a retyping of another document.  In an online educational environment, one has the documentation to determine which questions are ineffective and to continually improve them.

Question Development/Review Criteria

In summary, developing or reviewing effective discussion questions can be achieved with a simple set of criteria. Questions should 1) be open-ended enough so everyone can answer differently based on their backgrounds, knowledge or perspective—no one correct answer; 2) be challenging enough to separate those who are more knowledgeable or capable; 3) be challenging enough to require a search for information; and 4) be congruent with learning objectives for the course and the learning unit.