I don't see the importance of asking questions in real-time. Then again, I never once asked a question in school. In the flipped classroom, questions are asked the day after lectures are viewed. Students still get to ask questions before they are expected to apply what they have learned, so I don't see the need to develop any misconceptions.
That might skew your perspective a bit.
Some learners operate in a very active Socratic approach, they create a web of "unpromoted" hypotheses and rely on key questions to validate their constructs. Being an active process, the structure can become rather diaphonous without input at the time they are ready to promote the material to learned.
YES. And for high-ability students who operate Socratically,
you HAVE to keep them fed or they drift away and occupy themselves. Teachers don't do this
because the rate-- fundamentally-- makes them uncomfortable, as someone else noted above.
The internet is not a substitute for a live expert-- at least not for most Socratically-operating learners. Because it's all about asking the RIGHT questions to get the information you're seeking-- and as anyone exasperated and shouting incoherently at a search engine knows... the internet is incredibly OBTUSE about details like "noooooo... I wanted to know about WHY _____, not how to build MY OWN from recycled materials..."
Honestly, non-Socratic learners are rarer than Socratic ones. IME as an educator, I mean. My estimate is that the percentage among science and pre-health majors is about 4 or 5 to 1.
Among Gen Ed students, it's still about 3 to 1, and the ratio becomes even higher during the college years. Many students are conditioned to consider understanding to be a black-and-white phenomenon, and Socratic learning is antithetical to that, which makes students-- initially-- very uncomfortable.
Experiential learning is directly
related to the Socratic model, incidentally, through the common thread of "inquiry-based learning" and that is the entire theoretical engine behind flipping classrooms in the first place.
Experiential/Socratic/Inquiry-led learning
is a good thing. But not having to wait to get basic questions answered is also a VERY good thing.
For anyone that "never asks questions" I offer-- what do you do when you're challenged and do not have apparent access to the answers that you need, then? I understand not asking questions, as I tend to be that kind of individual, as well. But as a teacher, I'd feel that a student was not sufficiently
challenged if they didn't EVER have questions that they couldn't answer for themselves without assistance.
That, to me, is part and parcel of keeping students learning within their proximal zone.
