Educators to Offer Instruction on Maximizing the Effectiveness of Questions, Technology as Teaching Tools

While many rheumatologists serve as educators in different capacities, many have not received formal education in teaching. Further, many educators may be unaware of new technologies that have been developed over the last 10 years that can be utilized to optimize learning.

Two experts will discuss these new technologies and the use of well-formulated questions during the session Bringing Socrates Into the ClassRheum: Using Questions as an Innovative Teaching Tool on Sunday, Nov. 17, from 10:30–11:30 a.m. ET in Room 206 of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The session will be available on-demand to all registered ACR Convergence 2024 participants after the meeting through Oct. 10, 2025, by logging into the meeting website.

Jonathan Hausmann, MD, is a pediatric and adult rheumatologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As a medical educator, Dr. Hausmann has been investigating evidence-based teaching and learning methods. He will discuss how questions can be used to enhance rheumatology education.

One of the most powerful ways of learning is through questions, Dr. Hausmann contends, noting questions are more effective than reading or taking notes. Not only do they show that learners know the information, but the act of retrieval makes that information more readily available in the future.

“What we often do in rheumatology, and medicine in general, is ask questions with one specific answer. While it is important to know that information, asking for that information really just requires the learners to spit back memorized information,” Dr. Hausmann explained. “It really doesn’t allow them to apply any sort of critical thinking or higher-order thinking.”

Further, people think that the questions should always come from the teacher. However, studies show that learner-generated questions are just as powerful for learning as questions created by teachers. Based on this, Dr. Hausmann wants trainees to ask themselves better questions about the materials they use to enhance learning.

This session will offer practical tips on asking questions in various settings.

Andrew Vreede, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, will discuss audience participation technologies for asking questions to learners in the 21st century.

“The session will provide a broad look at all the different technologies — which questions you could ask, when to use different technologies, and the drawbacks and advantages of different technologies. We will also do a deeper dive into Kahoot!, which is the audience participation technology that was chosen by the ACR for this meeting,” said Dr. Vreede.

At the end of the session, participants will have a 30-minute workshop to practice developing questions that promote critical thinking and utilizing different technologies to ask them.