FAQs

Several events conspired to make me read a bunch of FAQs this past week. My laptop drained its battery twice as fast. Fixing the problem required an OS upgrade, which then caused several applications to stop working; I had to fix those, mostly by reading FAQs. On top of that, I’m enrolled in a self-paced week-long how-to remote-teaching course, which encourages engaging the material two hours each day. Yes, I’m reading FAQs on how to use different tools whose role supposedly is a handmaiden to technology, although one wonders if such boilerplate language is simply a veneer. But wait, there’s more! We are also switching G-Chem textbooks, moving back to a Pearson book which comes with the online Mastering Chemistry, but of course it comes in a new enhanced version. So it’s back to the FAQs to figure out how to do what I want through the new interface.

Why do we have FAQs? If I asked someone (or the web) what the acronym stands for, the response is frequently, Frequently Asked Questions. But really, we’re looking for Answers to our Questions, supposedly frequently asked. Back before web pages, in the old days, when I got stuck, I would pick up the phone and call someone to get help. Nowadays, the A.I.-powered phone menu sounds like an FAQ. I’d rather read or skim through FAQ web pages than plod through the annoying audio. In the old days, the phone support answerer would (usually) patiently answer my questions and help me get unstuck. Patience is important, because I’m probably caller #1001 who is asking the same question. Why waste manpower money when you can stick it up on a web page or get an A.I. bot to do the same?

As a teacher, I sometimes have the same experience as the old-school phone support answerer. Students ask the same questions frequently. “Will that be on the test?” “What’s going to be on the test?” “Do you provide a review session before the test?” There are many others. A detailed syllabus acts somewhat like an AFAQ, as in Answers to Frequently Asked Questions. The questions themselves are relegated to relative unimportance, particularly when their answers are informationally simple. Just tell me the answer quickly so I can fix the problem I’m having and go on with my life.

But I think FAQs could play a different and more useful role in education. Students want to know what’s on the upcoming test so they can prepare appropriately and do well, hopefully in an efficient manner with as little work as possible, so that they can go on with their lives. Indeed a good indicator of what topics/skills are important in a course is how often a question is asked in that area. Frequently Asked Questions tell you what is important to know. Those are the questions I’ll be asking as an instructor. My G-Chem syllabi include key points for each class day, and things students need to learn/know. “By the end of today’s class you should be able to [insert learning objective with appropriate Bloom’s Taxonomy verb here].” I also provide previous year exams, satisfying the same objective.

As I’m going through the self-paced blah-blah [insert hyphenated dyads here] course, I’ve been thinking about course design for a remote audience. Perhaps I should put together an FAQ page, not like the tech-support AFAQs, but a true Frequently Asked Questions featuring… Questions. The focus is on the Questions. Yes, the answers are important too, and students think the answers are more important than the questions at the novice level. But I’m trying to move them along the continuum from novice to expert, and that means learning how to Ask Good Questions. Asking good, careful, and thoughtful questions helps to define and advance a field of knowledge. It leads to new knowledge, and correcting or updating previous knowledge.

All that sounds fine and dandy, and perhaps ivory-tower-ethereal. Maybe as a start I could focus on recasting my learning goals into a FAQ page on my course web site, one that might structure the conversation on the larger goals/themes of the course, in addition to the fact-ish minutiae students are more concerned about.