open ended questions

Open-ended questions cannot be answered with a simple yes or no and require learners to elaborate on their knowledge.

Open questions should allow every learner to participate and contribute to a discussion because there is no singular, wrong or right answer. They require learners to elaborate on their points and apply knowledge of concepts to new settings or to synthesise and combine them with the information they already know. Instead, an open-ended question should provide a hook to what the learner already knows or allows them to connect new information to a circumstance they are familiar with. Good open-ended questions tend to be grammatically closed but cognitively open. They provide a narrow or simple framing but allow the learner to open up and invite elaboration and enquiry. An initial yes/no answer to a question can be opened up by a follow-up question like "Why do you think that?", "Could there be an instance where that's not the case?".