Explanations, Analogies, and Elaborations: Incorporating Questioning Prompts in Instruction Sessions

Educational psychologists have long studied and advocated for using learning techniques that help students achieve their learning outcomes in a variety of different contexts. These strategies include elaborative interrogation and self-explanation, which bring the processes of comprehension and synthesis to the explicit attention of the learner. A similar case can be made for the use of strategies such as self-explanations, analogies, and elaborative interrogation prompts that enhance learning by facilitating the various stages of the research process. This presentation highlights ways to incorporate specific questioning prompts as a pedagogical tool including examples of prompts in deconstructing a topic, identifying resources, platforms, and knowledge gaps, and synthesizing ideas from multiple sources. The focus of this presentation is to illustrate and engage participants on how to embed these examples of question prompts in their information literacy sessions.