Guided Response: Review several of your peers’ posts and respond to at least two discussing their answers. In your response you must give a simple, yet meaningful, answer to the discussion questions they have presented. 

Open questions.

These questions represent the best kind of discussion questions: those with multiple respectable answers. They invite risk-taking and creativity in problem-solving and have the greatest potential for expanding students’ intellectual and affective horizons. (Nilson 2010)

To me, most discussion board questions are open questions because they pose a question that allows for more than one answer. It allows for a deeper understanding for students when posed with a question that isn’t just cut and dry. The best questions are the ones that allow for creativity and thinking outside the box in order to really brainstorm and research such questions and come up with an answer that works best for them. 

An example of an open question would be: How can we as teachers bridge the gap between high school education and college education in terms of preparing for college what is not being taught in high school? 

Reference: 

Nilson, L. (2010). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors (3rd 

ed.). Retrieved from https://www.vitalsource.com

Chapter Fourteen in Teaching at Its Best discusses the different typologies of good discussion questions. Choose one of these questioning types and explain the purpose and in what context it may be used. Then, generate a general question of this type that can be answered by your peers.

Open-ended questions are questions that are used by teachers and instructors to better understand the way in with a student thinks. These type of questions encourages the students to come up with their own solutions and demonstrate their own interpretation and understanding of the lesson content. It is needless to say, open-ended questions does not prompt students to feel like the need to state the “correct” or “right answer”. In order for open-ended questions to be effective, the instructor, as well as the students, must welcome all well-meaning responses and isn’t fishing for a preferred answer”.  

I think open-ended questions can be inserted and conducted in all academic setting. Open-ended discussions allow people to engage in a deep higher level conversation that requires people to use high-level thinking.

My example of an Open-ended: How can teachers truly cultivate the heart, mind and tend to the academic needs of an at-risk student who constantly is faced with harsh traumatic experience daily?