Students become aware of a gap between the task s goal and what they need to know or to do to meet it. Creating this need to know in students is a basic strategy underlying inquiry learning and problem-based learning. Socratic questioning is a variation on this theme. The basic structure of Socratic questioning begins with inquiry, leads to perplexity, and ends with enlightenment. Ask students to reflect on their responses to the course content and on their learning processes in private journals.
Students can move toward both goals by writing in private journals.
For example, one can grade journals holistically on the criteria of thoroughness and responsiveness to the instructor s questions. Like everyone else, students seem to have opinions on any issue, whether or not they are well-informed. To generate interest in assigned readings, an instructor can conduct a survey of students opinions on the issue or test their prior knowledge of the facts presented in the readings. Another pre-reading strategy is to mix data from the assigned readings with wrong data that the instructor invents and then ask students which facts are true and which are false. Present activities that require considering opposing views.