Approaching students whilst they undertake a lab exercise or experiment might feel intimidating at first – you might feel awkward, as if you’re interrupting them, and be unsure about what kind of questions to ask them. However, being proactive, rather than waiting to be asked for help, means that you can move around the room and get to know the students, and also use questions to check their existing knowledge, and help to scaffold their understanding of what they’re learning.

You might want to start with something more basic, to build up students’ confidence in answering questions. These are some different types of questions you might use:

• Factual: What is this?
• Convergent: Why has this happened?
• Divergent: What could happen if? How could you test/measure X?
• Evaluative/Analytical: So what? What does this mean?

If you’re given a wrong answer, try to correct it in a supportive way – students need to know that it’s ok to fail. When one student from a group has answered, make sure that you make eye contact with the rest of the group when responding, so that they all feel involved. And don’t be afraid of pauses – when you’ve asked something, especially if you’re feeling a bit nervous or artificial in your interactions with students, it’s really tempting to ask something, and if no response is forthcoming within about two seconds, to instantly rephrase it and ask again, or start answering yourself. I know I used to do it all the time when I started teaching, but it can be confusing for students, who might just need some time to think.

Here are some useful questions to use when teaching in a lab environment:

• What would you predict would happen if…?
• What are you assuming?
• At which point did you get lost/did X happen?
• Why has this happened?
• What have you done so far?
• Why do you think this is wrong?
• Which part specifically do you find confusing?
• What do you think the answer should be? In what range? What are the units/dimensions?
• How can you figure this out/calculate this?
• Tell me about the theory from the lecture behind this
• What do the lab instructions say (exactly!)?
• What is important about what you see/observe/results here?
• Who is doing what in this group? Have you all swapped roles?

This post has adapted materials from Dr Giles Martin, Bath Spa University and the University of Western Ontario’s Graduate Handbook.

Have you got any other examples of questions which have worked particularly well in your lab teaching?