Students always have questions in the middle of teaching a lesson. As a teacher, you will usually give your students the answer to their questions soon enough.
In some cases, students are active, impatient, or rude and speak the first thing that comes to mind. In a real-time physical or online class, it would best to simply catch those questions and let them know you are going to get to that shortly.
In other cases, students are properly digesting the content and thinking ahead about application. And if you are on the brink of answering the question on your next topic or lesson, you could even have the class brainstorm on some possible solutions before you reveal your best options for that problem.
Unique Scenario Questions
Some student application questions are truly unique and can’t provide specific class answers because each scenario is different.
Examples of unique student questions:
- How should my character dance if I’m feeling confused?
- How do I create a snowflake transition in premiere or aftereffects?
- How do I create a futuristic hairstyle look for men?
- What if one of my saxophone keys jams in the middle of my performance?
Real-Time Answers
When running a traditional or hybrid class with real-time in-person chats, live zoom, or interactive chat room, teachers can address unique questions in real-time as they come up or at the end of your lesson.
Students can decide when to ask and as the teacher you can decide if you want to answer or defer to later.
Direct Messages To The Teachers
Some students may be shy or may truly have a unique question and prefer to send private questions to the teacher.
Students can either send a direct message within the learning system (e.g., Kajabi, Learndash) or an email.
Keeping the questions on the LMS can help teachers manage questions because questions can be grouped by course.
If a teacher decides to use email, they could streamline all questions into one inbox for easy management. And if necessary, they could use rules to detect subject lines or keywords like lost password to move emails to different folders.
The worst thing about direct student questions is that you may have to answer the same question hundreds or thousands of times over the years.
Class Discussion Rooms
Some systems support student discussion rooms for the course where all the students can see all the recent questions as well as the answers and comments from other students.
Even if the student is the only one online at the time, they can see all Q&As that other students left at a different time.
You may be able to configure one big chat message board or lots of little rooms broken out by topics.
Discussion rooms are good because there is a good chance that a student may see that someone else already asked that same question. And teachers can provide one awesome answer instead of dozens of quick varying answers each time a student asks.
These discussion rooms can also allow other active students to share additional skills, tricks, and points of view.
Chatting about what you are learning breaks the monotony of endless video lectures and provides an interactive path for students to learn through chatting.
How Student Questions Help The Teacher
Remember your student questions will help you learn how to improve your content, materials, and delivery.
You may even hear a bunch of questions around a topic that drives you to develop a new niche course like sci-fi cosmetology.
Questions can also help you come up with class resource files to give away or ebooks to sell to your students.
Final Tips
In the beginning of your class or in your welcome email, you should let students know the best way to ask you class questions.
You should also let them know your preferences like place all Photography lesson questions in the module discussion area and any other questions can be sent to you directly using the class message system.
Students that take a class and engage with questions are more likely to learn and leave good ratings since you personally helped them.
