Talking About [Computer Science]: Better Questions? Better Discussions!
In this episode I unpack Allsup and Baxter’s (2004) publication titled “Talking about music: Better questions? Better discussions!” which is a short article that discusses open, guided, and closed questions, as well as a framework for encouraging critical thinking through questions. Although this article is published in a music education journal, I discuss potential implications for computer science educators.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is Jared O'Leary
in this week's episode I'm going to
unpack a very short article today's
article is titled talking about music
better questions better discussions and
is written by Randall Everett Alsup and
Marcia Baxter and yes I did say talking
about music so I have mentioned in
podcasts that I highly recommend reading
outside of literature within the field
itself and getting some inspiration from
other areas so in this instance I'm
going to actually talk about a music
article but I'm going to relate it to
computer science education and as always
as a friendly reminder you can find the
show notes that has a link to the
article itself and if it's available you
can click author and last names and it
will take you to their google scholar
profile where you can learn some more
about what they publish on this is a
very short article so there's actually
not an abstract with it however I will
provide a short one sentence summary
this short article discusses open guided
and closed questions as well as a
framework for encouraging critical
thinking through questions and they also
suggest that there are three question
types that can be asked open guided and
closed questions while there is a
tendency to start with closed questions
that might have a single right or wrong
answer the authors actually recommends
starting broad and narrowing down to the
more focused closed questions so you
might be asking well what are the open
guided and closed questions so let's
kind of talk about that a little bit so
they suggest the purpose of starting
with an open question is to kind of
gather information so kind of like
assessing what somebody knows so you
might be assessing understanding or
intent or just a kind of game
clarification on whatever it is that a
kid is working on this was a quote from
page 30 both answers to open questions
tell us where our students are what they
know and what they can recognize in
quote so here are some examples of some
questions that you might ask that can be
related to computer science education
that might be considered as more open
questions so after a student runs the
program you might ask what do you think
or something like what does this program
or project do
how would you describe your project to a
friend if you were to create a new
project based on this one what would you
do so those are some quick examples of
open questions that you might ask when
working with kids so on page 30 they
suggest that guiding questions are used
to quote elicit more targeted responses
from students end quote and here's
another quote from the same page while
guided questions remains a
student-centered activity the teacher
assumes responsibility for guiding
learning for helping students discover
and uncover new information in quote so
the purpose of a guiding question might
be to get kids to kind of discover or
uncover an understanding that they're
working on so here are some potential
examples that you might use that might
be considered guided questions so if
making the game you might ask what makes
this game fun to play or if making an
animation with code you might ask how
did your code work together to animate a
sprite or even asking questions about
specific concepts so for example how
might you include variables in your
project
what about conditionals I might you
include those in your project now close
questions often only have one correct
answer and here's a modified version of
a quote to make it more relevant to CS
education this is from page 30 hope
ideally teachers ask these questions to
draw attention to a particular computer
science concept practice or feature in a
program that guided questions have
failed to uncover in quote so for
example after asking a series of guide
questions you could pose questions like
nobody mentioned the use of conditionals
in this project what are the conditional
is used for or why do we need a variable
in this particular function or something
like how many functions are running in
parallel to animate the sprite so those
are all examples of some close questions
and so you'll notice it just goes from
as the name suggests more open-ended
with the open questions to more closed
in it in terms of right or wrong answers
but still kind of getting kids to kind
of think deeper about what it is that
they're working on so here's another
quote from page 30 and it's modified
quote questions like Lee's do not halt
discussions but they do help to fill in
missing pieces and give students a more
complete grasp of the project they are
examining and quote and by the way
because this is a music education
article I'm slightly modifying these
last two quotes just to make us of that
it
mentioning computer science rather than
a music project however the original
intent is still there
okay so the authors also discuss a
framework for critical listening
questions that I'd like to kind of
reframe for computer science education
so there are three categories that they
mentioned analytical questions judicial
questions and creative questions so
analytical questions can be used to kind
of encourage thinking through how a
program is constructed so for example
you might ask why does this program need
this particular function how does a
sprite or program change when we get to
this line of code or how is this code
similar to this other project analytical
questions can be used to kind of situate
vocabulary so for example if a guiding
question leads kids to describe a
function for scoring a point in a game
but they don't describe the score as a
variable this might present an
opportunity to kind of discuss what a
variable is and brainstorm how else
variables might be used in projects now
judicial questions on the other hand
invite kids to kind of share their
reactions or feelings so for example you
might ask what was your favorite part of
the story made in scratch what part of
this program is interesting to you why
did this program work judicial questions
can include analytical questions as a
follow-up to kind of support the
rationale so it's not like you have to
segment these questions into different
categories and but like I'm owning an
ask judicial questions today or only ask
analytical questions now creative
questions kind of often synthesized
understandings and can include both
analytical and judicial thinking so an
example of a creative question might be
something like what would you do
differently if you were to create a
similar project what code would you keep
and what would you change or now that
you've completed this project what can
we do with what you learned so that's
kind of a summary of some of the main
points that are in this particular
article again translating it for
computer science education now I want to
provide some of my own tips or
suggestions that are related to
questioning techniques and for computer
science I'd like to add that open and
guiding questions can also be used to
kind of encourage thinking through
project extensions or add-ons that
extend a project's functionality beyond
what it can already do as well as to
kind of assess understanding so here are
some examples of questions that are kind
of in relative order from open to guided
questions starting from open
what questions do you have about coding
what would you change or add in your
project if you were to give it as a gift
for someone how could you use this
project for another class wherever you
find a project like this outside of
school houses projects similar or
different from previous projects
what's something you want to do in your
project but don't know how to do right
now what are the projects could you
create that would use similar coding
concepts
what could you to make this game a
multiplayer game instead of a
single-player game
what could you add or change to this
code and what do you think would happen
what happens if we change the order of
these blocks or lines of code and Alice
might use variables in your project so
these are all kind of examples of more
of the open or guided questions I'm sure
you can come up with some of your own
close questions as well that would help
out kids now as another general tip one
of the things that I really like to do
I've mentioned in either podcast that
has released or will release soon is
that I'd like to engage in the ask -
before asking me and one of the reasons
why is because I didn't want kids to be
sitting there waiting while I was
working with somebody sometimes it was
for several minutes I'd be working with
a kid or almost for an entire class if
we're unpacking something that's very
difficult and I didn't want kids to sit
there just kind of waiting for an answer
and not knowing what to do
and getting stuck so I always encouraged
him to ask two kids before the two of
their peers before they asked me any
kind of question and if I was working
with somebody at the time then they had
to kind of keep repeating the process of
asking - before they could get to me and
one of the ways that I love to respond
is if somebody asks a question that I
knew somebody else knew how to answer so
I'd be like oh yeah okay so you want to
learn how to do some player controls
well Susie over here is an expert on
player controls so how about you go ask
her how to do that so that's something I
highly recommend if you're having some
difficulty getting to everybody and if
you listen to the interview with Bob
Irving he actually talks about like a I
need help list where people kind of put
up on the board what they need help with
and then you can also put up on the
board people who are willing to help
with specific areas or kind of like list
off their expertise so that can kind of
help with offloading it so that way if
kids aren't relying on you to 100%
answer all of their questions but they
can actually learn from each other which
is just in general a great process and
one more quick tip on that note is you
can actually get kids to kind of break
out of their habit of asking their
friends for help by saying do you know
anyone else in the class who is or has
worked on some things
and might be able to help you so that
kind of encourages them to think through
oh who might be an expert on this thing
that might be able to help out with
whatever question they have another
thing that I like to do is whenever a
kid asks a question that I knew was in a
resources I kind of asked are there any
tutorials or comments or guides that can
help answer your question so rather than
getting kids to just rely on asking
peers or myself actually their first
step in that process was to kind of go
through the built-in help or to read the
comments or reread through the
directions in something so if somebody
did get to me and I knew there is an
answer to that I'd kind of point them
towards the resource rather than answer
the question directly
so when reading through this article I
had a couple of lingering questions so
one of them is what other types of
questions might we ask to encourage
deeper understanding or creativity in
computer science
the authors presented some really good
categories of questions to think through
in terms of open guided closed and
analytical judicial and creative however
what other types of questions might we
ask that are more pertinent to computer
science this is again this article is
written for music education and music
educators what I think is super
applicable for us and a final lingering
question that I had is how might we
encourage kids to use each of these
question types to kind of guide their
own learning so rather than in adult in
the room asking the questions to peers
maybe we could have peers asking these
types of questions to each other maybe
at the end of class when they're sharing
understandings what they worked on or
maybe even just like through a nip
sitive self-reflective practice where
you're kind of thinking through okay I
know I need to be able to do XYZ but I
haven't figured this out yet so what
kind of questions can I ask myself to
maybe figure out an answer to this and
just kind of narrow down a process or
finding a solution I hope you found this
episode useful I know it was a very
quick one because this particular
publication was only a few pages long
however if you want to learn more I've
got a short video that kind of talks
about this approach that I created for
boot up and you can find that in the
show notes or you can find the resources
in the free lesson plans that I create
that are available at boot up PD org but
again links to that in the show notes if
interested in learning more about using
questioning techniques in computer
science education
now the next unpacking scholarship
episode is
also going to talk about questions and
it's actually a study on questions used
in a makerspace setting and then the
following two unpacking scholarship
episodes after that kind of dive a
little bit deeper into maker spaces in
that kind of culture and then actually
provides a critique of it that I think
is very relevant to see as educators
because we've mentioned several times in
this podcast using like rhizomatic
learning and things like that and other
approaches that are very common at maker
spaces so I like to spend a couple more
episodes talking about maker spaces
before I move on to some other topics to
unpack in these type of episodes I hope
you enjoyed this podcast I hope you
found it useful I did list some of these
questions in the show notes and you can
click on the link in the description or
just visit jared O'Leary com to find
these show notes in the sea sk8 podcast
page thank you so much for listening to
this episode I hope you're all having a
wonderful week and next week we'll be in
it another interview and then two weeks
from now it'll be another unpacking
scholarship episode
Article
Allsup, R. E., & Baxter, M. (2004). Talking about music: Better questions? Better discussions! Music Educators Journal, 91(2), 29.
My One Sentence Summary
This short article discusses open, guided, and closed questions, as well as a framework for encouraging critical thinking through questions.
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
What other types of questions might we ask to encourage deeper understanding or creativity in computer science?
How might we encourage kids to use each of these question types to guide their own learning?
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
Assessment Considerations: A Simple Heuristic
In this episode I read and unpack my (2019) publication titled “Assessment Considerations: A Simple Heuristic,” which is intended to serve as a heuristic for creating or selecting an assessment.
How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
In this episode I unpack Bowler and Champagne’s (2009) publication titled “Mindful makers: Question prompts to help guide young peoples' critical technical practices in maker spaces in libraries, museums, and community-based youth organizations,” which "examines question prompts as a means to scaffold reflection and reflexivity in the design, development, and use of technological artifacts in maker spaces for youth at public libraries, museums, and community-based organizations" (abstract).
Example questions:
Open
After a student runs the program, ask what do you think?
What does this program or project do?
How would you describe your project to a friend?
If you were to create a new project based on this one, what would you do?
Guided
If making a game, you might ask what makes this game fun to play?
If making an animation with code, you might ask how did your code work together to animate a sprite?
Or even asking questions about specific concepts
How might you include variables in your projects? What about conditionals?
Closed
Nobody mentioned the use of conditionals in this project, what are the conditionals used for?
Why did we need a variable in this particular function?
How many functions are running in parallel to animate this sprite?
Analytical
Nobody mentioned the use of conditionals in this project, what are the conditionals used for?
Why did we need a variable in this particular function?
How many functions are running in parallel to animate this sprite?
Judicial
What was your favorite part of the story made in Scratch?
What part of this program is interesting to you?
Why did this program work?
Creative
What would you do differently if you were to create a similar project?
What code would you keep and what would you change?
Now that you've completed this project, what can we do with what you learned?
More example questions that are in rough order from open questions to guiding questions:
What questions do you have about coding?
What would you change or add in your project if you were to give it as a gift for someone?
How could you use this project for another class?
Where would you find a project like this outside of school?
How is this project similar or different from previous projects?
What's something you want to do in your project, but don't know how to do right now?
What other projects could you create that would use similar coding concepts?
What could you do to make this game a multiplayer game instead of single player?
What could you add or change to this code and what do you think would happen?
What happens if we change the order of these blocks or lines of code?
How else might you use variables in your project?
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