http://qhub.com

The basics

“Qhub is a quick & simple way for anyone to build their own Q&A website in minutes. Q&A is a great new communication channel and it is time to engage your community through Q&A before your competition do. ” While designed as part of business / marketing, Qhub actually provides a very simple platform for creating a Q&A relevant to any need. There are rich commmunity features – rewarding people who answer questions, and enabling members to feel attached to this particular activity. “Each group is set up and started by an “owner”. Friends, colleagues, club members and more are invited to join and the questions can begin. ” The site is fully hosted – there are paid options for more control and no adverts, but it works well in the free version.

Knowledge networking

Interactions between people online happen best when there is a focus and a structure for that exchange. Sometimes the focus can be provided by an external task, or goal, or similar. However, it is also common among WEb 2.0 tools to find applications that take a particular kind of knowledge work process (the ‘Q & A’ in this case) and use it to constrain and manage interactions. Sure, there are not the same opportunities for expansion, enrichment and so on, but the value comes from the precision and clarity of the structured exchange that results.

What is great

Q&A cuts through a lot of the unstructured nature of online communications and focuses people on asking and answering questions. An example from the site http://netstudies.qhub.com which is used at Curtin to support the Internet Studies courses is:

How people ask and answer questions

The very fact that the site is coded as ‘Q&A’ can make it more productive than other, more generic formats of online asynchronous communication. Crucially, Qhub allows you to build an FAQ on the fly, rather than by trying to anticipate questions in advance.

Pedagogic Challenge

Getting students to ask questions is critical in improving their learning; indeed, the best sign of a mature, independent learner is that they always respond to some kind of input (didactic presentation, reading etc) or a task by asking a question that attempts to refine and better understand the material at hand. The very best students actively use questions to ensure they have learned what they are meant to and can re-express and understand it. So, in some ways, Qhub is a brilliant tool for online learning. However, the challenge could be (as always) to get students to ask questions safely enough that they do not look stupid, wrong or are otherwise embarrassed. We also know that the transition from presentation to Q&A can be difficult to manage (as evidenced by the rapid preparation for exit that greets the lecturer who says ‘are there any questions?’ at the end of their talk). Qhub can assist the first, by making questions anonymous (but then limiting the degree to which community and exchange can develop); it can assist the second, by distributing the question process in time. Ultimately however, the challenge will be to get students to take risks in answering questions.

The following advice on questions and learning is worth citing in detail”

One student commented that “asking questions is integral to learning. By asking questions, fellow students and instructors would go deeper into the subject. Going deeper made the subject matter more understandable.” The online course environment typically provides communication tools (such as threaded discussions, e-mail connectivity, and live chat) that students can use to ask in-depth questions. Students also can take the time to craft questions that may go beyond what they would ask in an in-person course, probing the subject with greater specificity. Another student explained,

Asking questions helped me to understand the material. I was a student that did not have experience in many [online] classes, but the other students did. Asking questions of some of the other students helped me understand the principles and practices professionals in the field face on a daily basis.

From the responses to this survey, successful online students spent time researching and crafting questions (21 percent) and making them clear and understandable (10.5 percent). They found thoughtful questions to be a valuable resource in support of their online learning experience, although 26.3 percent of their peers admitted they just asked questions. (Roper. 2007. How Students Develop Online Learning Skills. Educause Quarterly.

One scenario for using this tool

Question and Answer distributed in time

An advanced-level unit in sociology requires students to engage in scholarly reading and review, backed up by giving presentations which model the kind of scholarly seminar papers which professionals in the field give. The unit is being run in a blended mode, with students spending the first six weeks of semester working individually on their reading and thinking, preparing to give in-class presentations in the second half of the study period. To ensure that students are able to engage in effective, but focused dialogue about their work, the teacher uses a qhub site and awards bonus marks to students depending on the quality and depth of their answers to other students’ questions. Clear instructions are given (including a model question and answer) which saffold students’ use of the system. The results are then used, by all students, as the basis for a final reflective essay on the nature of sociological thinking.

Qhub:

• allows Q&A across time and space, even if students could come to class;
• focuses on the written word, enabling more considered questions and answers; and
• is amenable to moderation, permitting the teacher (if necessary) to prevent misuse of the system.

Alternatives

Q&A applications can be custom-built into many websites, but Qhub is the only realistic option for a ‘pick up and use’ tool off the virtual shelf of Web 2.0.

Further discussion and concepts

Harper, F. et al. 2009. Facts or friends?: distinguishing informational and conversational questions in social Q&A sites. CHI ’09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems.

Heinrich, E et al. nd. Learner-Formulated Questions in Technology-Supported Learning Applications.

Tomura, N. and Lytinen, S. 2004. Retrieval Models and Q and A Learning With FAQ Files. New Directions in Question Answering.