Stimulating Student Engagement and Motivation By Asking the “Right” Questions
This workshop explores how purposeful questioning can enhance student engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes. Grounded in frameworks such as Bloom’s Taxonomy and the 5E model, participants will examine how different types of questions promote deeper understanding and active participation across disciplines. The first part will address questioning for engagement during teaching. This will focus on informal, in-class questioning strategies that stimulate curiosity, encourage participation, and promote critical thinking. Participants will explore how to design real-world, reflective, and higher-order questions that connect content to students’ experiences and support inclusive classroom dialogue. The second part of the workshop will address questioning for graded assessment. This will addresses the design of questions for assignments and evaluations, emphasizing a balanced approach that integrates foundational knowledge (recall and understanding) with higher-order thinking. Participants will consider how to align assessment questions with course and program learning objectives to ensure meaningful measurement of student learning. By the end of the workshop, participants will be prepared to:
- Differentiate between questioning strategies for in-class engagement and graded assessment
- Design questions that balance recall and critical thinking across teaching and assessment contexts
- Align questions with course and program learning objectives to enhance student learning and evaluation
Instructors
Sami Mejri, Khalifa University
Workshop Schedule
This one-session online workshop meets in Zoom on on Wednesday, June 10th at 8-9pm Gulf / 12-1pm Eastern / 11am-12pm Central / 9-10am Pacific/Arizona.
Audience
This session is designed for educators with some teaching experience that are familiar with assessment and digital technologies, but is generally open to anyone interested in stimulating student engagement and motivation.
Registration and Enrollment
No cap. Registration opens on Monday, May 25th at 10am CT and closes on the day of the workshop.
Accessibility
If you have access needs, please let us know what they are. Contact Zoe Zuleger (zmzuleger@wisc.edu) who is supporting this workshop, to let us know how we can help you have a successful experience. In addition to meeting individualized needs, we will also take measures throughout the workshop to support accessibility for all our students:
- Sending pre-session reminders with upcoming assignments to all students
- Sharing materials for synchronous sessions with students (slides, activity instructions, etc.)
- Enabling live captioning in synchronous sessions
- Incorporating multiple modes of interaction into synchronous sessions
About CIRTL Programming
CIRTL Network programming is designed to develop future faculty committed to implementing and advancing evidence-based teaching practices to create undergraduate educational experiences that are accessible to all learners. Participants can explore our programming in any order, and to whatever extent supports your own teaching development needs and interests. To help participants understand what they can expect across all our programming, all CIRTL programming aligns with four broad learning goals; within those goals, programming might provide participants with an introductory, intermediate, or advanced learning experience.
This institute supports the following CIRTL learning goals at an intermediate/advanced level:
- Goal 1: Develop evidence-based teaching knowledge. See more Goal 1 programming.
- Goal 2: Connect with community to enhance teaching. See more Goal 2 programming.
- Goal 3: Cultivate teaching skills through reflective improvement. See more Goal 3 programming.
- Goal 4: Prepare for an impactful career. See more Goal 4 programming.

