Does Anyone Have Any Questions? Encouraging Question-Asking Behaviors in Online and In-Person Graduate Student & Faculty Workshops

Presenter(s) Information

Hannah Gascho Rempel, Oregon State UniversityFollow
Adam Lindsley, Oregon State UniversityFollow
Clara Llebot, Oregon State UniversityFollow

Start Date

3-12-2024 3:00 PM

End Date

3-12-2024 4:00 PM

Author(s) Bio

Hannah Gascho Rempel is the Research and Learning department head at Oregon State University. She has co-authored two books and was recently the co-editor of Teaching Critical Reading Skills: Strategies for Academic Librarians. She has also authored or co-authored over twenty-five articles and book chapters and presented over fifty presentations regionally, nationally, and internationally in the field of librarianship on areas such as graduate student needs in the library, fostering curiosity, learning through play, and technology uses in the library. She served as the convenor for the ACRL Academic Library Services for Graduate Students Interest Group. Adam Lindsley is the Engineering Librarian at Oregon State University. He teaches a range of workshops for graduate students on topics including QGIS and Illustrator. His research interests include pedagogical best practices for working with graduate students and information behaviors of engineers. Clara Llebot Lorente is the Data Management Specialist at Oregon State University. She teaches graduate student workshops on topics including Git, Intro to Data Management, and Latex. She has published articles on supporting data management workflows and examining institutional repository policy practices. She is an active member of the RDAP community.

Keywords

workshops, engagement, question-asking, virtual, in-person

Description of Proposal

Academic libraries frequently offer workshops to graduate students and faculty as a way to develop their information literacy skills, including building skills with citation managers, literature review searching, and data management. In many academic libraries in-person delivery of workshops was the norm prior to the COVID-19 global pandemic, but during the pandemic online workshops were the only option. Workshop participants now appreciate being able to choose between the modality that works for them. In our library, we now regularly offer most workshops in both in-person and synchronous online modalities. This change in how we offer workshops allows us the opportunity to critically evaluate how we engage participants in both formats. We conducted a study to examine potential differences in participant engagement in online vs. in-person library workshops by observing participant question-asking behaviors. Our goal is to better inform the pedagogical approaches librarians use in both of these instructional formats.

Creating an environment in which students can develop question-asking abilities is a critical part of learner-centered teaching. Pedrosa de Jesus and collaborators (2003) argue that generating questions is key in the learning process because it improves learning and information retention. Asking questions also increases student interest and engagement.

Question-asking behaviors can be used as an indicator of student engagement, but most of the literature on question-asking behaviors, including studies of online classes, describes term-long, credit courses where students have clear external motivators to ask questions. In addition, in term-long classes, students can develop a relationship with both the instructor and their peers, providing the emotional support often needed to ask questions. Most workshop settings do not include the same external motivation factors or the time needed to develop trusting relationships in the classroom.

We collected participant question-asking information in 12 workshop sessions across two terms. The workshops covered three topic areas. Each of the workshops had an iteration that was offered synchronously online and another offered in person. Data collected included information about the questions, as well as the workshop context. Questions were coded using the question classification system described by Pedrosa de Jesus and collaborators’ (2003). Data was analyzed to determine potential differences by workshop logistics, instructor practices, and question types.

We will share our findings, including any differences in question-asking behaviors. We will also discuss pedagogical recommendations for creating question-asking contexts in both in-person and online instructional settings.

References

Pedrosa de Jesus, H., Teixeira-Dias, J. J. C., & Watts, M. (2003). Questions of chemistry. International Journal of Science Education, 25(8), 1015–1034. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690305022

What takeaways will attendees learn from your session?

An in-depth understanding of pedagogical factors that influence participant engagement in the form of question-asking.

Strategies for encouraging question-asking behaviors in both synchronous online and in-person workshops.

Strategies for instructors to stay engaged while facilitating online workshops.