3 Ways to Turn Memorizers into Inquirers

3 Ways to Turn Memorizers into Inquirers

3 Ways to Turn Memorizers into Inquirers

It can be tempting to rely on traditional lecture methods, especially when your students seem to be doing well on their exams. But are your students really learning, or are they simply memorizing? It happens to the best of us. In fact, Harvard Professor Eric Mazur describes when he realized his high achieving students weren’t really learning to think. So how can you break the cycle of memorization? Interact with your students during lectures. Here’s how:

Update Socrates: If you want to turn your students into inquirers, why not first inquire them? The socratic method has always been a great method of engaging students. After all, why interrupt class to test knowledge, when you can seamlessly integrate thought and assessment by asking questions within the lecture. Now you can make the socratic method even more seamless by integrating text comments into the socratic method. Alternate between asking the entire classes and individuals questions to keep the whole class alert.

Add student Q & A day: In this technique, students drive the class with their own questions once a week or twice a month. Let your students know that they will be graded on the quantity and quality of their questions. This will force your students to think critically, while allowing them to fill gaps in knowledge. nClass can help you keep track of these questions and answers more easily by virtually raising hands and collecting questions in a queue.

Ask open-ended questions: Turn your students into inquirers by example. Little questions can be nice throughout a lecture, by why not start or finish class with a big thinker? You’ll show students the kind of questions they should be asking while giving them a chance to think critically. Tie in these open-ended questions with exit tickets, a technique to integrate critical thinking into every class period.

How shift student thinking from memorization to inquiry? Let us know in the comments.