{"id":1257,"date":"2022-11-17T19:12:14","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T19:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trainthebrain.com\/?p=1257"},"modified":"2022-12-01T18:52:35","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T18:52:35","slug":"effective-questioning-techniques-for-online-tutors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trainthebrain.com\/effective-questioning-techniques-for-online-tutors\/","title":{"rendered":"Effective Questioning Techniques For Online Tutors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plenty of research has been done to prove how important effective questioning techniques are in an academic setting, but without purposeful planning, your question game as a tutor might be lacking. If your students seem to be too dependent on you for right answers and stare at you like \u201cWell?\u201d even if the answer to a question is staring them in the face, it might be time to up your questioning skills. Train The Brain<\/span><\/a> has your back with these helpful tips to fully prepared you with an arsenal of effective questioning techniques before your next tutoring session.<\/p>\n

Plan Ahead<\/h2>\n

If you plan questions ahead of time based on the content your student needs help with, you\u2019ll feel more confident as you come into the session, and both you and your student will benefit from the prep work. You might not get a chance to ask everything you plan to ask, but these questions will be a good way to structure your time if you start to feel at all lost during the session. Some students will come to you with clear knowledge of where their learning has broken down; others won\u2019t know where to begin. Starting your session with some basic content questions and then moving into higher level questions will help you clarify where the student\u2019s understanding starts to wane. Of course, you don\u2019t want to drill your student, but checking in to see where they start to need intervention and guidance is a great way to make sure your student gets the most out of their session time.<\/p>\n

Make A Cheat Sheet<\/h2>\n

The Ohio Department of Education actually provides a great cheat sheet of Depth of Knowledge Question Stems<\/span><\/a>. Depth of Knowledge (DOK) helps you make sure that students more deeply understand content you\u2019re trying to help them learn by laying a foundation of knowledge first. By following the Depth of Knowledge levels, you can help your students come to conclusions on their own by starting with some basic questions and moving up to more in-depth understanding. DOK helps you teach your students how to learn by demonstrating the progression from DOK 1 (knowledge acquisition) to DOK 2 (knowledge application), and then to DOK 3 and 4 (knowledge analysis and knowledge augmentation respectively).<\/p>\n

Ask Open-Ended Questions<\/h2>\n

One of the mistakes tutors sometimes make is to ask students a question that is too direct and doesn\u2019t require them to think. Those are fine to set a foundation for helping them, but if you\u2019re basically leading them to the right answer most of the time instead of showing them how they can find the right answer, you\u2019re teaching them to be dependent on you, and that won\u2019t transfer to success when they\u2019re independent of you in the classroom. You want your students to make progress, so be sure that your questions are more open-ended to encourage them to find the answers themselves. The human brain retains much more of what we discover ourselves than what is simply provided for us by someone else.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Try some questions like the critical thinking questions below:<\/strong><\/p>\n