How can we make you more comfortable asking questions and making comments?
Below is a chart showing the survey results over the past 15 weeks. As you can see, #3 received the lowest percentage on "Strongly Agree" (77%) compared to the other 3 statements (82%-87%). This is the case for all three SLMTA 3 eLearning cohorts.
What can the master trainers do to improve the rating for #3 so it is similar to other statements? What do we need to do differently?
Comments
To make participants feel comfortable to ask questions and make comments during office hour or webinar, it will be very important to appreciate that the participants come from different continents with different languages that they can use fluently to express their thoughts or ask questions. Eg there are some continents which use English as their international language and others use French as their international language therefore it will be good to give them a chance to express their thoughts using the language that they will feel more comfortable and fluent to express themselves. This will also require an interpreter who again will make all the participants to have a common understand of the questions or expressed thoughts.
For our course structure because we use English then the French participants are slightly disadvantaged.
Other features are taken in to account to my understanding because all participants are treated equally regardless of the race or the country they come from.
Thank you.
I have a thought that whenever the topic is already known to some participants’ skills it becomes not possible to feel comfortable on asking questions or making comments for the statements already known in their mind.
In my view an effective of learning often goes hand –in hand with questioning, It is particularly important to ensure that the nature and complexity of the language used by the facilitator is at appropriate level for participants to understand. The participants’ skills to pitch language in making appropriately use of asking questions is based on their current level of understanding the purpose or topic statement. Indeed, questioning is the best way to check understanding, knowledge and skills therefore Facilitators are encouraged to be grammatically simple, clear and make good use of examples, define any technical terms and more importantly, not go on explaining for too long.
@Alice Kyalo and @Jaffer Mgumila Sufi , Thanks for being the first to provide comments. However, it is not clear to me from your comments what changes we need to make, or what we need to do differently to move the % up for Statement #3.
@Dr. Katy Yao For French oriented participants allow them to express themselves in French as it is with English speaking Countries. This will bring much comfort when asking questions.
This finding is a brain teaser and and my view is that there is a need to dig deeper and try to get to the root causes of why participants may not feel very comfortable to ask questions and feeling free to make comments whenever relevant. One way to obtain this information could be through the use of survey, targeting and understanding reasons why participants may not feel comfortable to ask questions and making comments . Findings from the survey may assist in designing specific intervention or approaches that could be used by facilitators to get more participants on board to contribute and ask questions.
The fear of failure may also be a contributing factor which impacts this kind of participation. Facilitators could remove the fear associated with being wrong or not comfortable to participate by demonstrating failures in class through demonstrating / presenting a wrong fact and acknowledging same i.e. modeled how to resolve such scenarios.
I think that naturally, most participants would usually probe further by way of questioning when the subject matter being taught or discussed is well understood and interesting so as to know more. However, I also think that some students or participants naturally are not motivated to ask questions, or feel uneasy asking questions irrespective of their understanding or otherwise of the subject matter being discussed. An extrinsic motivation or encouragement such as providing incentives or compliments for asking questions is required. I also think that providing a platform under which participants could ask or put their questions anonymously would encourage most participants, especially the shy ones to feel comfortable in putting out their questions.
@Dr. Katy Yao If there is spotted participants who are not asking questions or making comments during zoom sessions give them assignment in many small specific parts for them to comment or asking while solving each small problem given. This will help them to create an attitude of responding during e-learning sessions
This is adult learning and most people in the class are very experienced. many people opt to share their experiences which brings up room for more conversations and subsequently prompts many questions between the facilitators and trainee. i am of an opinion that the facilitator can out a participant to share their experience. both teams will learn from each other and this will help similar questions or experiences to be shared with the next cohort or when implementing SLMTA in our respective countries.
Hello Dr. Katy,
Questions from the participants allow the trainer to understand the participants level of understanding in a given topic or activity. it's therefore important to encourage participants to ask questions. These are some of the tips I think might encourage the participants to asks questions;
Thanks.
Dear Dr. Katy,
I think that the participants who didn't select strongly agree they maybe not so comfortable because of some reason:
To response to that issue, I think we can:
I hope that this do help! 😉
Thank you
@Gerhardus Van Rooyen That is why I am using this discussion thread to get to the "Root Cause" of this. I hope all the participants will share their thoughts about the reasons why they don't feel VERY comfortable asking questions or making comments.
@Naomi Gatambu I think our master trainers are already doing all what you suggested in your comments. Are you saying we are not doing that, or not doing them enough?
@Vanny You Thanks so much, Vanny, for your insights. I think your comments do shed light into the "mystery." I am also happy to see how you plan to address similar issues in your country.
Dear Dr Katy,
I think we should deeply find out what the problem is from the group of people who not choose strongly agree. Even it is not a good idea but it is the only one way can help us to find the real problem.
I also one of the participant who not choose strongly agree in this question (I choose just only agree) because i am challenging with English . I am not confident in asking question even i have some questions to ask. I just worry that the facilitator or other participants not understand what my question is. We are from difference continent, so it is hard for me to listen and understand the difference accent.
Thank you
Lamleav
@Lamleav Leak Thanks so much, Lamleav, for sharing with us your personal challenges. It helps explain why some people chose Agree instead of Strongly Agree. I really appreciated that. Just that you know, I think you communicate very well in English. You have been an excellent student in this course. We are so happy that you are with us.
In my view, in other to improve the comfortability for participant to ask the question, facilitators should add more times for question and answer of each topic (add additional time during the live session). Moreover, there should be one forum that participants can drop a question on each topic before and after each live session. Facilitator collect and response during office hours/live session. Facilitator also can give sometimes for participant to ask question on previous topic or current topic during the officer hours as well or they can wait at the end of live session to ask more questions as well if facilitator is run out of time. Office hours is good time that they can ask more questions on the topic before the live session or after the live session. Moreover, if participants have more question during live session, please let them drop in the chat box, then facilitator can bring up to discuss more during next office hour.
Based on my lesson learn during this course, all facilitators always welcome all participants answers. They always respond all my questions and other participants well. In some case, participants could not ask question due to time constraints. The active student always be the first to ask question; therefore, less talkative participants no chance to ask the question. Another reason, participants might feel shy to ask question or they want anonymous question. Therefore, I just list down a few actions to improve such as
- Add more time for question and answer and gave more chance for participants who still have more question to drop their question in chat box or discussion forum (for an open question).
- Create anonymous question parking lot (open question) for those who filling shy to have a chance to drop question
- Encourage more group discussion during office hours and encourage each participant to have a chance to ask question to other participant from different country and let them learn from each other.
Thanks Dr Katy for this question.
In my opinion, I would say the problem lies in how the online environment is set up. Some of us prefer to chat than talk, while some also prefer to get some time to think before we respond which could be limited because the session is timed and the master trainers are trying their best to be within the scheduled time. What we can do is to encourage the participants to use available options to attract the attention of the facilitators.
We also need to stress the use of live transcript option to enable those with some difficulties understand what is being said. Even though, the facilitators often indicate this at the beginning, there is need to spend more time explaining this to make the participants be aware of this zoom option.
Another option is to have breakout rooms with fewer participants which will require everyone's output/participation.
With all these, we can make the e-learning environment a better platform.
Hello Dr. Katy,
I think I got the question all wrong. The Master trainer have done an excellent job that have enabled us ask questions freely by creating various channels of communications like chats and allowing participants to be left behind after a session incase of any further questions.
The only area of improvement I can think of is maybe allocating more time for Q & A during the office hour, the trainer can also pick frequently asked questions from other cohorts and pose the questions to see if it will probe the participants to ask further questions related to what you have asked.
In order to improve on this rating, I will suggest you reach out to do a further analysis. Check whether it's the same set of participant that are not always feeling comfortable to ask questions, then reach out individually to them. Can you add a follow on question to say if you don't feel comfortable asking questions please provide more details. Thank you.
Participants who didn't pick "strongly agree" may have, in my opinion, one or more of the following reasons:
a) Time constraints prevent them from freely asking questions.
b) They felt uncomfortable in the online setting, perhaps because they are shy or lack the confidence to ask inquiries publicly.
As a master trainer, the following is how I feel about addressing the issues raised in the conversation above:
a) Call out the names of others who aren't as involved so they can have a chance to chat or respond once in a while.
b) I will have a plan to increase tome of Q & A sessions especially during office hours
Thank you so much Dr Katy.
Thank you Dr Katy for the question.
Its interesting to learn that it has been a trend now in the SLMTA e-learning cohorts; my concern then would be, as facilitators, have you checked which particular webinars had such responses, which might lead to the rating of the content of the lecture teachings that were involved there in, the amount of homework entailed in that particular week as well as the office hour times allotted to during those weeks; if that particular week was packed with work, as adults time pressure will contribute, and cause one to rush through the material to finish homework in time and thereby miss certain concepts. (i.e inadequate preparedness for class)
-time constraint during Q&A, - consider prolonging the time for it.
-Consider requesting ALL participants to write down their questions about what to expect at debrief or what they didn't understand, strictly as password homework before the debriefs, and let each participant say their question aloud for discussion, of course emphasising that all questions are relevant to accommodate the shy and the introverts.
-link the same webinar question, with 'please state a reason why you didn't strongly agree