While checking in the intra/extra oral exam you notice a lesion on the buccal mucosa. The student has not mentioned it to you and you have not looked at the intra/extra oral exam page yet. What question do you ask and why do you ask that question? What follow up questions might you ask? Remember to follow the principles introduced in the readings and discuss how your questions follow those principles.
I would ask the student first, “Did you notice anything on the intra/extra oral exam of concern, note worthy, or interesting?” I would ask this question because it leaves room for an open discussion of what the student did or did not find. There is no wrong answer to this question but allows the student to explain, elaborate, discribe, or ask questions about anything they found. It also allows the student to communicate their thought process while giving the oral exam and to verbalize it. Even if nothing out of the normal is found on the exam, I would ask the student to elaborate why they believe that. This allows them to explain their reasoning for their answer and use their critical thinking skills.
Some follow up questions could be, “discribe the diamter/size of a lesion found, is it elevated or not, color, boarders, location?” Another good follow up question would be, “How or why did you determine that the lesion is note worthy or out of the range of normal anatomy?”
When asking questions of students in clinic it’s important to be aware of the knowldge level of the students. For example, I would expect senior students who have had oral pathology to describe lesions using the correct terminology. And for juniors, I would not expect them to use proper pathology terms like, vesicle and macule. I believe the questions I mentioned earlier were both factual and thought provoking like that stated in the article about developing questioning skills. From what I learned in the article, I tried to avoid “yes” or “no” questions, and if that was unavoidable then I followed up the question that made the student elaborate on their reasoning. Other questions I avoided were ones that lead the student to the answer I wanted them to give me. The questions I asked were aimed to evaluate the level of knowledge the student has by incorporating all the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy; like knowldge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation in order to answer all my questions. It’s important to ask questions that require higher levels of cognitive skills, especially for students who are seniors or are more advanced, in order to facilitate learning.
Great Questions, they scream senior dental hygiene student. These questions can help the instructor evaluate where the student education level is at with oral pathology by incorporating Blooms Taxonomy. Its crazy how much thought has to go into a question to ask a question! 🙂
Good point about senior vs. junior and considering what courses they have taken. I think all of the current students started with the same question, because that is what we are asked. However, I was asked the other day if there was anything of concern and I said no, but the instructor was looking for me to mention the extreme cheek chewing.. not something of concern, but something to note. Of course I had it noted, but where do instructors draw the line of what needs to be said?
Great thought about incorporating questions that require students to use higher level thinking and cognitive skills because it helps develop critical thinking skills as you mentioned and is what we all need.
It is a good point that you brought up about jr. vs. sr. students. So this goes back to understanding the curriculum and where students are in the program, what classes they have taken, etc. You do have different expectations for students depending on where they are in the curriculum. You also got at another good point that your questions should hit at all levels of bloom’s taxonomy.
I thought both of your question were great! I like how they do leave it open for further discussion. I also agree that it was very hard to come up with questions that required more than a yes or no answer!