Table 1 Categories of teacher questions and student responses
Coding scheme | Values | Brief description | Example from the coded material |
|---|---|---|---|
Teacher questions | |||
Didactically irrelevant teacher questions (unrelated to the learning goals of the seminar) | |||
0. Didactically irrelevant questions | 0.1 Organizational questions | … are focused upon aspects of seminar organization | “Do you need my signature to confirm you have attended the seminar?” |
0.2 Comprehension questions | … contain a request directed towards a student to repeat a statement which the teacher hasn’t understood properly (e.g. due to noise in the classroom). | “I somehow didn’t hear you. Can you please say that again?” | |
Didactically relevant questions (related to the learning goals of the seminar) | |||
1. Type of questions | 1.1 Initial Questions | … are teacher questions related to the case discussed in the seminar. These questions do not build upon a question posed right before. | “Which diagnostic procedures would you apply at this point?” |
1.2 Follow-up questions | … build upon a previous student response and/or an initial question | (Relating to the previous example) “In which sequence would you apply these diagnostic procedures?” | |
2. Openness of questions | 2.1 Open questions | … are not supposed to elicit one specific correct answer from students. They provide degrees of freedom to students to elaborate their thoughts. | “Do we already have all the information we need or is there anything we still need to know?” |
2.2 Closed questions | … have only one (or very few) correct answers the teacher intends to elicit from students. | “If you examine a patients’ x-ray image – what is the first thing you need to look at?” | |
3. Cognitive level of questions | 3.1 Reproduction questions | … focus upon information students should be familiar with (e.g. from previous courses) and need to be remembered to answer the question. | “What is the MCH value, what does it tell you?” |
3.2 Elaboration questions | … require combining, interpreting, or weighing information to elaborate and explain issues. | “Can your elaborate which diagnostic strategy makes more sense at this point?” | |
Student responses to teacher questions | |||
4. Type of student responses | 4.1 Organizational statements | … concern aspects of seminar organization | (In response to teacher question exemplified above, category 0.1) “Yes, we need your signature on this form here.” |
4.2 Questions | … posed in response to a teacher question. (Questions which are related to organizational aspects are coded as 4.1.) | “Do I know the history of the patient?” | |
4.3 Reproductive statements | … are contributions in which basic knowledge (e.g., from pre-clinical medical education) is reiterated (facts, numbers, or brief explanations). | (In response to teacher question exemplified above, category 3.1) “MCH means mean corpuscular haemoglobin, I think it’s about how much haemoglobin is in a red blood cell.” | |
4.4 Elaboration / Reasoning statements | … describe cause-effect or if-then relationships and considerations relevant for clinical decision making. | “One reason for constant thirst could be excretion problems. We should check the respective lab parameters to see whether his kidneys work properly.” | |
4.5 Non-response | No student answer to a teacher question is given | ||