Questions for Classroom Response Systems and Teaching Instrumental Element Analysis

Abstract

Asking students questions is a central, although understudied and underappreciated, ingredient of teaching. Formative questioning provides many opportunities for teachers and students, e.g. to practice skills and receive feedback. Among other approaches, classroom response systems (CRSs), which run on the mobile electronic devices of students, facilitate such active engagement of students in the lecture hall. This paper presents an overview on questions for teaching with a focus on questions for CRSs and provides considerations and brief guidelines for the development of multiple-choice questions. Examples from a mid-sized analytical chemistry lecture illustrate additional challenges and different probes for potential misconceptions. Moreover, limitations of valid interpretation of students' responses are emphasized. This leads to a discussion of the value of incorporating prompts for justifications into questions.

Interface Model and Implementation Framework for Classroom Response Systems

“…may pose the greatest challenge and is addressed in more detail in a separate publication. 28 All in all, the list of aims, in Tables S1 and S2 (Supporting Information), provides a guideline for CRS implementation, which has been summarized on the basis of practical experience.…”

“…In subsequent lectures, the voting procedure quickly became routine, about half a minute per vote. Most of the time was needed to develop questions, 28 which in turn, depending on the topic and whether some similar questions were available, could take a few hours per lecture. However, this was mostly time needed upfront.…”

“…While examples are provided, details regarding questions for CRSs, their selection, development, and associated topics are addressed in a separate publication. 28 This conceptualization of CRSs is particularly helpful when comparing CRSs to alternative approaches of student engagement in the lecture hall (Table 1) and can lead more directly to proper use of the "tool". The main differences from verbal interaction are participant capacity and the inherent possibility for anonymity.…”

“…Moreover, a framework for CRS implementation was developed with a set of guiding questions. While examples are provided, details regarding questions for CRSs, their selection, development, and associated topics are addressed in a separate publication …”

On video lectures during remote teaching and beyond

“…Therefore, lectures were pre-recorded for asynchronous delivery in spring 2020 in a large lecture hall and made available to the students from the time of the scheduled lectures via a learning management system to the end of the academic year. As with face-to-face lectures, the videos included regular prompts, about three per 45-min lecture, for participation in a classroom response poll system [ 24 , 25 ] and some open-ended questions. The polls for a lecture were open during the entire day, but only a few responses were received after the scheduled lecture time slot.…”