Discussion Questions

Asking questions has been found to be a critical skill toward developing critical thinking abilities, improve learning performance, as well as career development.

Edutopia: Teaching Students How to Ask Productive Questions

“Student-generated questions put learners in the driver’s seat,” she writes. “They advance both learning and engagement.”

Week 0:

Cheers! https://youtu.be/7KtAgAMzaeg

"....Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name

And they're always glad you came

You want to be where you can see

Our troubles are all the same

You want to be where everybody knows your name..."

Create a new thread. Introduce yourself and please tell us who you are, where you're from, and a little bit about what you hope to learn from this course. Then get to know your fellow students through their posts and respond to at least two.

Week 1: Teaching and Learning during a pandemic


From the Boston Globe:

What is your story, as either a teacher or student in a pandemic? Can anything good come out of collective experience?

Create a new thread describing one thing that has worked and one thing that has not, and respond at least briefly to two other students' posts.

Week 2: Defining real-world problems

Create a new thread, where you define three(3) real-world problems experienced by you or your students. They do not need to be solely about science and teachnology; most are a mix.

To define your problem, answer each of these questions:

  • What is the problem or need?

  • Who has the problem or need?

  • Why is it important to solve?

The answers to these three questions are the what, who, and why of your problem.

Your problem statement should incorporate the answers as follows:

[Who] need(s) [what] because [why].

"I need to be able to supervise hands-on-learning remotely because of Covid 19."

Comment briefly on two other posts.

Week 3: Can creativity and critical thinking be taught?

Week 4: Ask three questions related to integration of math and ELA into STEM projects, and respond to two questions raised by your peers.

Week 5: How can distance teaching and learning be made more engaging?

Week 6: Ask three questions related to motivating students, and respond to two questions raised by your peers.

Week 7: In project-based learning, where the main focus of assessment is the exhibition/presentation of a research or a design project, what is the place for more traditional test-based assessments- should these be individual or collaborative?

Week 8: Ask three questions related to exhibition of student work, and respond to two questions raised by your peers.