PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Margaret Lewis
Industrial/Organizational
Spring 2008

Classroom Intervention to Facilitate Students’ Questions

    The researcher hypothesized that students would ask more questions if they could ask them anonymously, that the quality of questions would change from lower-cognitive types to higher cognitive ones during the intervention (based on Bloom’s taxonomy), and that there would be a significant change in student learning approaches.
    The present study used a pre-post intervention, two-group research design to examine whether and to what extent a classroom intervention would affect the rate and types of questions that undergraduate students ask in the classroom.  The intervention allowed students to submit questions anonymously in writing at the end of each class, then receiving answers in a following class.
    Results of the study were mixed.  Students did ask significantly more questions during the intervention.  Further, there was a significant shift from baseline surface-learning approach to deep learning approach among some students.  However, the types of questions asked did not change.

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