The deaching frojessor September, 1987 Quotation Almost 63% of all questions asked counted as cognitive memory questions. The divergent and evaluative categories together accounted for less than 5% of all the questions asked. Quite bluntly, professors ask few questions which require students to think. Asking simple, regurgitative questions extensively contributes to participation problems and inhibits learning. From the students' perspective, why bother answering, especially if the answer appears right there in the book or yesterday's notes? These questions make participation mundane, boring and something you do so that you get the bonus participation points. You don't speak in class because you care or feel you have a legitimate contribution to make. Certainly, low-level questions have a place in the classroom. But should they occupy center stage as it appears they do? The case against faculty includes still more damaging evi- dence. This study also looked at the questioning patterns of fac- ulty, theorizing that what a professor does: immediately before asking the question, coupled with the kind of question, might affect student participation. The researcher considered 19 different questioning patterns. Five of these accounted for 61.5% of all fac- ulty questioning patterns. Of this 61%, half fit into two patterns where the professor lectured, asked a low-level (cognitive memory or convergent thinking) question and then followed it with more lecture, either with (in the first pattern) or without (in the second) an interval of silence. In other words, 32% of all ques- tioning patterns of college professors in this study elicited no student participation. In one of those two patterns there wasn't even an opportunity for it. This study makes it difficult to let professors off the hook as far as participation problems go. "Our sense of mythology Suggests that in college one would expect to find inquiring young minds being challenged by the intellectual and perceptive questions of learned professors.... In this respect, the findings of this study were disappointing. Not only were many of the classes void of intellectual interchange between professors and students, but they also lacked excitement and vigor. One of the primary tools at the professor's disposal to infuse this atmosphere into his classroom is questioning, an age-old technique, but one which has not yet been tapped for its full potential (p. 79)." And we support that optimistic final conclusion. Making instructors aware of how they contribute to the problem is a large part of the solution. Few in our ranks would argue that on most days in class more than 4% of the class time could be devoted to questioning. More challenging and thought-provoking questions can be prepared before class and raised two days in a row, if the first day brings no response. And questioning patterns can be changed once one becomes aware of habituated sequences. In fact, increasing the effectiveness of questioning strategies rates as one of the easier ways to improve one's pedagogical prowess. 1 A student does not come to college primarily to learn things, to store an intellectual garret with an assortment of odds and ends. He comes to college to learn how to learn, what to learn, where to learn and why to learn. -- Henry Merritt Wriston, Eighth President of Lawrence U.