Do students ask better questions as they learn a subject? A semester-long look
Evidence level: Level 1: Descriptive or exploratory (automatic grade, not yet checked by a person). The study followed one group of students over a semester with no comparison group. It describes patterns and links, but it cannot show cause and effect. How we grade
Source: Knowledge Reshapes Inquiry by Changing Question Asking Ability and Impacting Academic Assessment, npj Science of Learning, 2026 (listed in ERIC as peer reviewed). Part of our Beyond AI coverage. We read the abstract, not the full paper.
The question
Asking good questions is central to learning. Does learning more about a subject change the questions students ask, and do question-asking skills relate to grades?
What the study did
68 undergraduates in a semester-long Intro to Psychology course completed question-asking tasks at the start and end of the semester. Some tasks were general and some were specific to the course subject. Students also completed an open-ended final project and a multiple-choice exam.
What it found
The authors report that:
- question-asking specific to the subject improved over the semester, while general question-asking stayed the same or declined
- question-asking skill was negatively related to multiple-choice exam scores and positively related to open-ended project scores
What this means for you
- Knowing more about a subject seems to go with asking better questions about that subject, not better questions in general.
- How you assess matters. In this study, students who asked better questions scored higher on open-ended work but lower on the multiple-choice exam. A multiple-choice exam alone may not capture this skill.
- This is one course with 68 students and no comparison group. Treat it as an interesting pattern, not a proven effect.
What we have not checked
We have not read the full paper, so we cannot report the size of these relationships or how question quality was scored.
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Reference
Raz, T., & Kenett, Y. N. (2026). Knowledge reshapes inquiry by changing question asking ability and impacting academic assessment. npj Science of Learning, 11(1), Article 19. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-026-00402-0