Asking Qs and Not Knowing the Answer

Learning Goals: 

  1. As an educator, it is normal to come across scenarios where you don’t know how to help. 
  2. If you don’t know the answer to a student’s question, you should:
    1. Try to figure it out with them.
    2. Ask someone else for help.
    3. Help the student write a post on your course’s discussion board.
  3. If you don’t know the answer to a student’s question, you should NOT: 
    1. Pretend to know the answer.
    2. Show them how you solved the problem.
  4. Asking students questions might be helpful because:
    1. A student might be able to figure the answer out by themselves just by answering our questions.
    2. We can get a better understanding of what explanation would help them if we have more information.
    3. Students can learn to ask themselves the questions that we ask them.
  5. You can share the website and questions from https://www.csteachingtips.org/tips-tutors with students to help them develop strategies for problem solving and debugging. 

There are three videos to watch this week. 

You can watch them on this mediaspace playlist (if you login): 
https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/playlist/dedicated/1_tj9tesra

OR you can watch them on the web

  1. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/luther/2910/S2021/player.html#45-Dunno.webm Links to an external site.
  2. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/luther/2910/S2021/player.html#15-Socratic.webm Links to an external site.
  3. https://youtu.be/ZNX1WkOXJJc Links to an external site.