• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.49-58
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to compare learners' perceptions regarding the processes and the educational effects of fostering learner-generated questions in engineering education according to the questioning attitude of engineering learners. For this, after developing and implementing the appropriate strategies for fostering learner-generated questions in an engineering statistics course, this study analyzed 56 learners' survey responses and used ANOVA to investigate the group differences. The results showed that the educational effects and implications of fostering learner-generated questions were different according to the learners' questioning attitude. The study also confirmed that learners' questioning attitude should be considered as one of the important learner's characteristics in developing and implementing the strategies of fostering learner-generated questions in engineering education. Especially, fostering learner-generated questions produced positive effects on the passive questioning learners but not particularly on the learners who were asking no questions at all in other courses. Learners who asked no questions still have difficulty in generating deep meaningful questions and presenting them and thus require more instructors' strategies and active support for them.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.11-21
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• 2023

In engineering education, stimulating students' questions and encouraging learning participation are crucial for achieving higher-order thinking abilities. This study aims to investigate the use and effect of an online communication channel in fostering engineering students' questioning abilities. Consequently, in this research, we gauged students' satisfaction with an engineering class that implemented a communication channel, and scrutinized the changes in their perceptions regarding the significance of questions, their engagement in learning, and their academic self-efficacy. In addition, we interviewed the students who participated in the class. The outcomes are as follows: Firstly, student satisfaction improved compared to the previous semester's class where the communication channel was not utilized. Secondly, learners' understanding of the importance of asking questions positively escalated, alongside their actual frequency of posing questions. Thirdly, there was an improvement in learners' active engagement in their studies and their academic self-confidence. The findings of this research suggest that communication channels should be employed to motivate learners to pose questions and involve students in effective learning.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.301-318
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• 2017

This paper explores students' question generation process and their study in small group discussion. The research is based on Anthropological Theory of the Didactic developed by Chevallard. He argues that the savior (knowledge) we are dealing with at school is based on a paradigm that we prevail over whether we 'learn' or 'study' socially. In other words, we haven't provided students with autonomous research and learning opportunities under 'the dominant paradigm of visiting works'. As an alternative, he suggests that we should move on to a new didactic paradigm for 'questioning the world a question', and proposes the Study and Research Courses (SRC) as its pedagogical structure. This study explores the SRC structure of small group activities in solving ill-structured problems. In order to explore the SRC structure generated in the small group discussion, one middle school teacher and 7 middle school students participated in this study. The students were divided into two groups with 4 students and 3 students. The teacher conducted the lesson with ill-structured problems provided by researchers. We collected students' presentation materials and classroom video records, and then analyzed based on SRC structure. As a result, we have identified that students were able to focus on the valuable information they needed to explore. We found that the nature of the questions generated by students focused on details more than the whole of the problem. In the SRC course, we also found pattern of a small group discussion. In other words, they generated questions relatively personally, but sought answer cooperatively. This study identified the possibility of SRC as a tool to provide a holistic learning mode of small group discussions in small class, which bring about future mathematics classrooms. This study is meaningful to investigate how students develop their own mathematical inquiry process through self-directed learning, learner-specific curriculum are emphasized and the paradigm shift is required.