Asking the Right Questions

Much of the educational system relies on textbooks and fixed laboratory experiments to teach students industrial microbiology skills.  As a starting point, this is a reasonable approach to convey foundational information, but this method is not best serving students entering the job market.  Application of knowledge and problem solving are the primary tasks for scientists and engineers along with the difficulty that the challenges faced in the workplace are often open ended.  Students come to expect a clear answer from their assigned lab and homework and often try to find answers in textbooks as a fallback in the workplace.  To enhance a student’s immediate impact once employed, the problems posed to them in school should have many answers and require the student to use their knowledge and judgment to best decide the proper outcome.  This can be accomplished by posing questions that direct students down false paths or give them unnecessary information that they have to sift through to reach the problem’s true solution.  In the case of lab work in school, the students should be required to put things together, or better yet, make something work with equipment that is not ideally suited for the experiment.  Ultimately, the problem solving skills that result from asking the right questions of students will best serve the next generation of industrial microbiologists.