Questions can be a very powerful tool to enhance and guide learning. By asking effective questions in the right way, you can encourage your learners to think and ensure that they are achieving the learning outcomes.

‘Open questions’ cannot be answered with a yes or no, and require a fuller answer. They are useful for testing understanding, as they require learners to explain and give in-depth answers. These questions usually start with: Why? How? What? For example: How could you improve that search? What would you do differently?

‘Closed questions’ have a yes or no answer. They are useful if you want to test whether a learner knows a specific fact but will not give you any other information. They can be used to emphasize a point, for example, asking whether the learners agree with a point of view. However, this would normally need to be combined with an open question in order to explore why they agree or disagree. For example: Did you think that journal was a good source to use? Why?

‘Ask, pause and place questions’ can make a presentation interactive and test whether the learners have listened to what the teacher has said. If you want to ask a group of learners a question, ask the question first and then pause. Once you have paused for a few seconds, choose the person you want to answer. This means that everyone in the group will try to think of the answer as they will not know who will be asked to answer. If you choose a person first, then ask the question, only the person you have chosen is required to think of an answer. For example, try: ‘When would you use a search engine rather than a library database?’, pause, ‘Jo?’; rather than: ‘Jo, when would you use a search engine rather than a library database?’

You need to forewarn your learners that they will be expected to answer questions as they go along. To spring questions on them may cause some participants to feel uncomfortable.

The following example shows how effectively questioning can be used to develop critical thinking and evaluation. The ‘Blooming Blooms’ activity is aimed at young children and uses questions related to fairy tales. These questions are mapped to the levels of Bloom's taxonomy (see facilitating Learning).