Abstract:

Intellectual curiosity and question asking are at the heart of science and engineering. Therefore, to develop and research scientific curiosity and question asking in Chinese undergraduate students, we present the results of a pilot project in a communications class at a recently established Sino-Israeli Engineering School based in China. In this STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) university, 60% of educators are from Israel and all have been trained internationally. Students are almost entirely a product of the Chinese education system where rote learning is required, and question-asking is strongly discouraged. In Israel, in contrast, asking good questions is often seen as a key sign of intelligence. Consequently, there is a challenge in encouraging students to ask questions of their professors - something that professors working in Israel have never encountered.

Therefore, a pilot project was developed to foster scientific curiosity and question asking skills. There were three main goals of the project:
(1) to expose students to a higher level of question-asking by looking at past questions that have led scientists to investigations and research, that they later received the Nobel prize for;
(2) to encourage students to investigate how prize winning research has been applied or implemented in industry and society; and
(3) to leave students with questions for their future, for either future scientific research or engineering careers on the basis of scientific inquiry.

Pre and post project surveys were completed by students and personal reflections on learning were collected. We found that students not only were surprised at the “simplicity” of the questions asked, but at the importance of tenacity, passion and learning from mistakes.

This research demonstrates how a project in question asking in science can contribute to more active participation and student inquiry that may benefit students future scientific research and thought. "There are no foolish questions, and no (human) becomes a fool until he[she] has stopped asking questions (Charles Proteus Steinmetz)."

Keywords:

Question Asking, Project based learning, Israel, China, Engineering Education.