Creating a Positive Environment for Finding and Asking Questions in Class

In our teaching, we observe that students rarely explicitly ask questions, no matter what channels we offer, and even though there obviously are open issues that need to be clarified, both organizational and content-related. However, to support our students properly, we require their cooperation in order to identify what they really need. To achieve this, we analyzed the situation in more detail, identifying possibly relevant facets such as the ability to identify open issues at all, formulating a specific question, selecting an appropriate channel for posing a question, as well as emotional issues such as shyness, shame or fear of humiliation. In order to validate the relevance of these different facets, we conducted both qualitative and quantitative investigations with our cohorts over the last two years. The results indicate that students struggle with each of these facets to a certain degree, especially with the emotional aspects. To improve the situation, we suggest a set of good teaching practices and interventions that foster our students' abilities to identify open issues, formulate specific question, select an appropriate channel for posing their question, and to overcome possible shyness or even fear.