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Case Report

“Curious Is as Curious Does”: Fostering Question-Asking in a Sino-Foreign Engineering School—A Case Study

by
Tzipora Rakedzon
1,2,* and
Constance Van Horne
2,3
1
Department of Humanities and Arts, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
2
Department of Humanities and Arts, Guangdong Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Shantou 515063, China
3
Abu Dhabi School of Management, Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 6844, United Arab Emirates
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2024, 16(17), 7308; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177308
Submission received: 21 June 2024 / Revised: 18 August 2024 / Accepted: 23 August 2024 / Published: 25 August 2024
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in STEAM Education Research and Practice: Towards Sustainable Development)
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
Curiosity and question-asking are at the heart of science and engineering education. However, question-asking can be difficult for students due to several factors, including fear, language barriers, and cultural norms. This is especially true among Chinese students, who represent a growing number of upcoming engineers. To address this, in this case study from a university teaching reform project, we investigate the perceptions of curiosity and question-asking among Chinese science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate students following a newly developed semester-long project in a second-year communications course at a recently established Sino-foreign engineering school in China. In this period, students engaged in project-based learning centered around Nobel Prize-winning research, allowing them to explore the driving questions behind groundbreaking discoveries. Through a combination of qualitative analyses from students’ personal reflections as well as from a post-survey, the study examines students’ perceptions of curiosity and question-asking, the influence of gender on these skills, and the role of failure and perseverance in scientific inquiry. Findings indicate that the project increased students’ curiosity and improved their confidence in asking questions while providing insights into gender differences. Moreover, students were inspired by the curiosity of the Nobel Laureates, by the “simplicity” of the questions asked, and by the great importance of tenacity, passion, and learning from mistakes.

1. Introduction

The goal of science and engineering is to make technological advances through intellectual curiosity and question-asking [1]. Universities, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), foster this curiosity and lead to innovative thinking through their activities [2]. Curiosity “is considered to be the source and driving force of creativity” [3,4]. Curiosity can be expressed in many ways; however, question-asking is key to expressing that curiosity through action [5]. Indeed, research demonstrates that curiosity is promoted by intellectual activities such as question-asking and the research process [6]. Moreover, curiosity is often developed in the form of question-asking, and developing curiosity has been described as the ‘desire to seek information by exploring or asking questions’ [6,7,8]. In this way, curiosity and question-asking can be seen as a virtuous circle, with curiosity being expressed through questions, which can lead to increased curiosity and further question-asking.
While encouraging curiosity and question-asking is challenging in any context, it is particularly challenging to teach Chinese students, who have been trained in a school system in which rote learning is required and question-asking in class is discouraged [9,10]. Ma et al. [11] suggest that fostering question-asking is a challenge even among Chinese students of Sino-foreign partner universities who receive a foreign education experience while remaining in China.
The challenges of encouraging question-asking and curiosity were also found at a newly established Sino-foreign engineering school where this project was implemented. At the home campus, and in the West in general, asking questions is both encouraged and expected as a regular part of teaching in tertiary education in STEM. At the Chinese campus, there is a great obstacle in encouraging students to ask questions of their professors, 60% of whom are from the home campus, and all have been trained internationally.
While some research has investigated soft skills among Chinese students [12,13], the subject of question-asking and curiosity has hardly been addressed in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have investigated attempts to develop, implement, and assess project-based learning (PBL) to better understand and encourage Chinese students’ perceptions of question-asking and curiosity. On this basis, a decision was made to develop a project within the second-year communications class to develop these soft yet necessary skills.
As part of the course, we implemented project-based learning aimed at Chinese STEM students to create a learning situation where curiosity and question-asking would be encouraged. The project was designed to cultivate an awareness of the importance of curiosity and expressing it through questions. As this university is a research-based university, expressing curiosity through question-asking is considered a way of encouraging cutting-edge research as well as fostering communication and conditions for success.
This paper presents the results of this project that lasted the whole semester. The assignment asked students to map out the timeline of questions in self-selected Nobel prize-winning research, from the initial “spark” to the breakthrough discoveries. The Nobel Prize was chosen as it is one of the most prestigious prizes that can be achieved in the sciences, and is given to those who have contributed the “greatest benefit to humankind [14]”. Students investigated and presented how results have been implemented in industry and how researchers have developed the results. The project specifically directed students to investigate past research questions that led scientists to Nobel Prize-winning discoveries and investigate how prize-winning research has been applied or implemented in industry and society. The project was divided into four stages and included cumulative deliverables and instructor feedback. Students participated in surveys and wrote personal reflections on their learning process.
Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate Chinese undergraduate students’ perceptions of asking questions and curiosity following a project in a scientific communication course, and whether there are differences in their perceptions of skill development by gender. We made the supposition that expanding students’ perceptions to question-asking and curiosity would be the first stage in asking their professors more questions in and outside the classroom, and in self-question-asking in their personal study and future research projects [15] to “[elicit] student passion for questioning and nurture the sense of genuine inquiry they already possess”[16] (p. 4). All these after-effects have an impact on encouraging the communication skills necessary for future work in industry or academia, especially in English [17,18].

2. Literature Review

2.1. Curiosity

Developing curiosity, or allowing students to rediscover their curiosity, was a key objective of the project. Given the home university’s ties with Albert Einstein, a quote is extensively used to inspire students: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing”. In education, Litman [19] defines curiosity as a powerful guide. For him, curiosity is a form of motivation that is naturally emerging, focused on the acquisition of new information or experiences, and associated with feelings of interest, engagement, and pleasure when learning new things. This definition encapsulates the essential elements of curiosity: it is inherently motivational, directed towards the unknown, and is typically accompanied by positive emotional states. Litman’s definition emphasizes the role of curiosity as a natural and intrinsic drive that stimulates learning and exploration. However, there are different ways to consider what curiosity is, including state-based and trait-based curiosity.
State-based curiosity refers to curiosity as a transient, situational response triggered by specific circumstances or stimuli. It leads to an immediate desire to acquire new knowledge or experience and is characterized by a sense of wonder or inquiry about a particular topic or event [19]. It is momentary and heavily context-dependent. For example, encountering an unfamiliar object or a puzzling scenario can spark state-based curiosity. This form of curiosity drives individuals to seek explanations or explore new information relevant to the immediate situation, aiming to bridge the information gap caused by the novel stimulus. The resolution of this gap typically leads to a decrease in curiosity [20].
In contrast, trait-based curiosity is a stable characteristic of an individual, indicating a predisposition to be curious across various situations and over time [21]. People high in trait-based curiosity consistently tend to seek out new experiences, learn new information, and engage in exploratory behaviors. Unlike state-based curiosity, this is a more enduring part of an individual’s personality, where such individuals continuously engage in activities that fulfill their need for novelty and challenge, thereby regularly addressing and creating new information gaps [21].
Both state-based and trait-based curiosity are crucial in understanding the dynamics of how curiosity drives learning and cognitive development, highlighting the multifaceted nature of curiosity as both a temporary response and a long-term trait [19,20]. Both types of curiosity, exhibited through the behaviors of explanation and exploration, are fundamental to scientific advancement and education in the STEM fields.

2.2. Question-Asking, Curiosity, and STEM

Asking questions has been shown to have an important role in both research and education [22,23,24,25,26]. Indeed, research questions are integral parts of research projects and papers [27]. Orr [28] argues that ‘‘Good science demands two things: that you ask the right questions and that you get the right answers. Although science education focuses almost exclusively on the second task, a good case can be made that the first is both the harder and the more important” (p. 343). In other words, intellectual curiosity and question-asking are at the heart of science and engineering and at the foundation of scientific inquiry [29]. They form a virtuous cycle where curiosity sparks questions and asking questions sparks curiosity. Research has shown that question-asking aids STEM students in increasing their curiosity [30]. In addition, question-asking is one of seven key aspects comprising the higher-order cognitive skills (HOCSs) as relevant to science education [31].
However, several studies have shown that question-asking is often not an easy task for students [27,32,33]. Specifically, there is difficulty in asking questions and expressing their thoughts in science class due to students’ fear [34] or the teaching style [35], for example. Indeed, both the motivation and ability to ask higher-order thinking questions develop over time with proper training [36]. This can be done, for example, by eliciting questions and answers through discussion [37], case studies [24], encouraging active learning through group work, or the use of scientific research papers and creating a classroom atmosphere in which question-asking is encouraged and valued socially and academically [30]. Other studies have investigated what encourages question-asking and inquisitiveness, which can include activities such as PBL and case studies [23,24,30,38].
Research on student perceptions of question-asking shows several interesting insights. One study conducted among elementary school students concluded: “students generally ask questions when they are curious about the topic” [39] (p. 1). Moreover, a positive perception of question-asking by students and teachers has been established by several authors [25,26,40]. These studies reveal that asking questions is often considered a useful way to guide classroom learning. However, these perceptions were mitigated by the impression that they could lead to a waste of time or a distraction from the lesson’s learning objectives. Overall, curiosity and question-asking are also seen as part of the global and local goals for future engineers [41,42,43]. Chin et al. [44] concluded that students become independent thinkers when the teacher stops generating questions, problems, or challenges and turns the task on them. Apart from helping students to learn, students generating questions can also guide the instructors in their work, indicating student comprehension of the material and skills development.
In STEM education, questioning can be the beginning of hypothesizing, predicting, experimenting, and explaining, which helps them to complete the missing spots of knowledge in their development [44]. According to Woodward [35], questioning is an accepted way of seeking more knowledge about subjects of interest. Following this logic, students’ questions can show different functions such as confirmation of an expectation or resolution of an unexpected puzzle [45]. Questions can demonstrate that students have been extending newly acquired knowledge and ideas to their already existing knowledge. This reveals the depth of students’ critical thinking, understanding, and reasoning.
Since both the motivation and ability to ask higher-order thinking questions develop over time, and since our students do not have a tradition of asking questions in class, this project aims at the first stage of this process, by inspiring and motivating students to change their perceptions about question-asking and curiosity through a semester-long PBL following Nobel prize-winning research.

2.3. Question-Asking: Culture and Gender

As questioning is widely used as a teaching strategy in the classroom in Western education, the process of questioning is an essential part of how instructors monitor their students’ understanding and knowledge [44]. In contrast, in a teacher-focused classroom, such as those in the traditional Chinese education system, questions are generated by the instructor. However, studies have found that allowing the students to generate their own questions encourages them to have more curiosity about the course material [44].
In many East Asian classrooms, particularly in China, students in primary, secondary, and tertiary education are generally taught not to ask questions as the textbook and science teachers are seen as the authority [46,47]. In addition, researchers have explained that Chinese students often find it difficult to ask questions for fear of teachers’ or fellow students’ derision [48]. For these reasons, Chinese students’ ability to ask questions is regarded as weak and not well-developed [47]. Moreover, research on Chinese students has shown a reticence to ask questions both in and outside the classroom [49,50]. This difficulty begins even in terms of general participation in the classroom, and many studies have found Chinese students to be uncommunicative in class [51,52]. Indeed, the difficulty of communicating in class among the Chinese has been shown to be a result of learned behavior in the Chinese school system [51,53]. However, there has been a growing emphasis on scientific inquiry in China since the 2001 curriculum review, which promotes scientific inquiry in science-related subjects [54].
In other countries, in contrast, asking good questions is often seen as a key sign of intelligence. In fact, it is acknowledged that asking and answering questions is at the heart of learning in some traditions [46]. A recent study from Israel posits that scientific literacy is one of the main goals of its high school science curriculum. Here, a key component of scientific literacy is seen as the ability to ask well-defined questions, and scientific inquiry is at the heart of scientific education in that country [5]. This has often been seen as a contributing factor to the image of the Start-Up Nation in recent years [55].
A combination of cultures in which China meets the West can be seen in some Sino-foreign universities, such as in the particular context of this project. In general, the challenges in transnational education include learning shock, language barriers, and cultural differences [54]. For an engineering school, an important challenge is instilling a Western-style curiosity-driven scientific training in a population of students who have been trained to succeed in the standardized test to enter Chinese universities—the GaoKao. Ma and his colleagues [54] suggest that Chinese students are confused when there is no “right answer” to open-ended questions, for example, as they are accustomed to memory-based learning. Therefore, improving students’ curiosity and disposition to ask questions through a communication course can contribute to Chinese STEM students’ soft skills, so greatly needed in the workplace.
Culture is not the only attribute that affects question-asking; while question-asking on the surface would appear to be a genderless issue, many studies have found differences by gender, specifically that women ask fewer questions than men in STEM environments. For example, Hinsley et al. [56] found that female attendees ask nearly half as few questions as male attendees at STEM academic conferences. The 1.8 times more frequent questioning rate was found with both established academic conference attendees and young researchers, suggesting it was, in fact, due to gender and not personal habits. These findings are supported by research on question-asking at a professional conference in STEM by Moazzam et al. [57]. The researchers discovered that while women made up 39% of attendees at the conference, and roughly 50% of speakers and moderators, they asked only 23% of the questions. Additionally, their observations and coding revealed that when women asked the first question, this increased the chance that women would ask subsequent questions. They go on to suggest that active encouragement could help narrow the gender disparity.
In research on the role of gender in scientific inquiry and question-asking competencies, Cheng et al. [58] defined scientific inquiry as a process of developing questions that can be answered through investigation. Their research with Taiwanese undergraduate students participating in inquiry-based learning revealed that women developed a greater ability to ask research questions than their male counterparts. This suggests that the ability to formulate questions is not the issue, but the ability to ask questions is.
In this project, we analyze the differences in perception of skill development across the genders, including question-asking and curiosity.

2.4. Research Questions

Given our unanswered questions from the literature review, we ask the following research question:
  • What are students’ perceptions about question-asking and curiosity in research following a project-based learning intervention in a communications course, and what role does gender play in this process?

3. Materials and Methods

The need to develop question-asking and curiosity among undergraduate STEM students in China is one of the main goals of the foundation of the Sino-foreign university in China [1,2]. This is based on the home university’s tradition of innovation and technology and a strong belief. The role of the communications course was to foster soft skills. Therefore, to foster these skills in Chinese students, project-based learning (PBL) was incorporated. PBL encourages learning centered around the students, giving them the power to do their own research, blend theory with practice, and use their knowledge and abilities to find effective solutions to specific problems [59]. Research has shown the effectiveness of incorporating PBL to foster soft skills, specifically benefiting learning and active participation [60]. Moreover, research has shown that students prefer tasks that “(connect) theory and practice as well as collaborative elements” as we do here [43,61].

3.1. Participants and Context

Data were collected from the undergraduate course, “Scientific and Professional Communication”, which meets twice weekly for two 2 h sessions over 13 weeks. The course is required for all students who have successfully completed two semesters of Technical English. The course has been offered in the home university for 20 years and has been offered at the Chinese campus for 3 years by instructors trained by the original developers of the course. As part of the course, a new unit was developed to encourage question-asking, following the realization that this is more difficult for Chinese students than in the home university. All enrolled students were Chinese nationals, aside from one of Chinese heritage, in their second year of a STEM program (Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Math and Computer Science, Chemical Engineering, and Materials Sciences majors), and almost equally divided by gender.
The research was conducted in two phases. First, a pilot test was conducted following the project in the communications course with 40 students in the winter semester via Zoom. The results of this pilot study were presented in [62]. Adjustments were then made to include more face-to-face meetings with the instructor to ease misunderstandings from written feedback, more time was given in class given the amount of time the project took, and more detailed guidelines for each deliverable were provided. The assignment was given to all groups in a traditional face-to-face classroom environment in the spring semester. One hundred and forty-six students participated in a post-qualitative survey asking them to reflect on their experience during the project.

3.2. Procedure and Analysis

According to the fundamentals of PBL, the project started with a driving question, allowing students to design, investigate, and make decisions based on feedback from the instructor and team collaboration. The students then developed and presented a formal academic presentation of their findings.
The project was designed as a team assignment in which students were asked to explore the questions that led to Nobel prizes. They were asked to investigate the advances these discoveries have made to science and industry. In other words, the project’s driving question was to investigate the initial question that sparked Nobel Prize-winning research.
There were four stages to the 13-week semester-long project to allow students and groups to work iteratively based on feedback from the instructor and group discussion. The first stage involved creating self-selected groups of 3–5 students, filling out the pre-project online questionnaire, choosing Nobel Prize-winning research from the hard sciences, investigating the biography of the winning researchers, and conducting an initial investigation of the scientific “curiosity” that initiated the research. Students were allowed to focus on one or all the researchers of the prize-winning research and the aspects of the winning research that interested them the most. The fact that students chose their own researcher to focus on and materials to investigate was not only an integral part of the goal of facilitating curiosity and question-asking but such autonomous choices have been shown to increase curiosity and learning outcomes [3,63].
The second stage involved incorporating feedback from stage one and continuing research into the development of the questions that guided the Nobel Prize-winning research. Students were also asked to investigate any industrial applications (where applicable) and research spawned with the “answers” found to the questions asked by the winning researchers. Stage three again involved incorporating feedback, preparing an outline of the presentation, and collecting all potential images, videos, and animation that could be used in the final presentation. Finally, the fourth stage involved a formal group presentation and handing in the PowerPoint slides.
Students were required to fill out a personal reflection following the course (n = 146); however, the content of the reflection was left undefined so as not to bias any results. In addition, students were also asked to individually fill out a post-project survey (n = 95) the survey included both open and closed questions. While the reflection was a compulsory task in the course, the post-survey was optional; therefore, the number of participants differs. The surveys were adapted by the authors based on the project and previous studies on question-asking and PBL [64,65,66,67]. The thematic qualitative analysis [68] was conducted independently by both authors, who have been researchers and communication instructors for over a decade. In the initial round, they started with a deductive approach, anticipating that key elements of the project as core themes of the project would appear in the qualitative data, i.e., curiosity and question-asking. They then conducted an inductive analysis, finding additional themes that arose from the students’ reflections and answers to open questions [69,70,71]. The data were put into tables according to the generated themes by both authors. Themes were placed in tables and discussed until a consensus was reached. After further investigation by the two authors, topics were made more explicit and descriptive—and some topics were combined due to their deep connection in the data. This led to the final round in which topics were refined for accuracy and specificity, creating three final topics: question-asking and curiosity; gender; and failure and perseverance.

4. Results

In this research, we investigated student perceptions following a communications course and project on question-asking and curiosity. Using qualitative and quantitative analysis resulted in rich findings. The results are presented by theme, starting with students’ insights on question-asking and curiosity, followed by the effects of gender, and then failure and perseverance. The results below show students experienced, learned, and benefited from the Nobel Prize project, and that such projects positively influence student awareness of question-asking and curiosity in research.

4.1. Curiosity and Question-Asking

Here we present the findings on curiosity and question-asking. We can see that students came to understand that questions and curiosity were a valuable, if not vital, part of the scientific process and learning in the classroom. For example, one student was inspired to ask questions, remarking that:
“During the whole process, we learned a lot about the history of the Nobel prize, the life and research experiences of each prize winner. The solid knowledge foundation and a strong sense of curiosity motivated this successful research, which also inspire me to work harder and be more curious to find some questions rises from life (author’s emphasis). We got an insight of the timeline of its discovery and were excited by the indefatigable spirit of exploration”.
Students also seemed to grasp that curiosity and award-winning research are not about complicated questions but sparks or flashes of intuition that lead down a winding path of scientific inquiry:
“During this project, finding sparks is a very interesting entry point for me to understanding better. The Nobel Prize is an ambitious project, but no matter how ambitious the study was also started by an original spark, a small idea (author’s emphasis). I think it’s very inspiring: grab some sparks and keep working on them, never give up, maybe you can also be the next Nobel winner”.
Some students were also surprised that curiosity is expressed in many ways and that it can even be a result of ‘strange’ ideas:
“[The discovery of graphene by isolating it from chemical waste] “Actually it was totally strange behavior for a scientist since chemical waste is always useless and dangerous. But Geim acted from curiosity, and with this strange behavior he created a legend. Probably, I should put more curiosity into everything around me.” Geim impressed another student as well, “…I have a lot of new understanding of science from Andre Geim. He won both the Ig Noble prize awarded to research that makes people laugh and the 2010 Nobel Prize. I think the source of success is curiosity. He always has strange ideas which can achieve very amazing results…. So, I think in my study I need to keep curious all the time. The strange ideas are not bad. Sometimes they may be the source to success”.
Other students remarked that the project allowed them to learn about the power of curiosity, not just for science, but for life:
“I also saw that winning the Nobel Prize is actually a consequent result of his [Dr. Honjo] extraordinary traits of perseverance and curiosity. The project acts as a powerful tool to show us how these qualities matter in our life.” Also, “From Dr. Feynman’s life I know that curiosity is not only important, but also makes life interesting and that being proficient and focused on one’s own profession is almost the best gift to life”.
Other students connected curiosity with knowledge-seeking:
“I also learned that scientists who won the Nobel Prize are not always excellent and untouchable. They would be distressed about finishing their undergraduate studies. But he [Yoshinori] also had one of the qualities that all successful scientists almost invariably have, which is a constant curiosity and thirst for knowledge. All these will affect my future study”.
These extensive thoughts about curiosity, and how it is related to many aspects of research and life, show students not only became more aware of the role of curiosity in research but to what other ideas it connects, such as knowledge and ‘strangeness.’ Moreover, the above results are further supported by the quantitative data from the post-survey (data shown in the descriptive statistics in Table A1). We can see the success of the project from the students’ perspective, as well as their perception of improving communication and question-asking. For example, about two-thirds of students felt that they greatly improved their communication skills through this project (67.4% answered 4–much/5–very much). Moreover, when asked about the skills they improved most, well over half (57.9%) said their question-asking improved 4–much/5–very much.
When further examining the data, we find that the curiosity-driven approach is positively correlated with both enjoyment of group work and improvement in question-asking skills, indicating that students motivated by curiosity tended to have better experiences in group settings and enhanced their questioning abilities (Table A2).

4.2. Gender and Change in Attitude towards Question-Asking

From the analysis, the theme of gender was found to be a factor in perceptions of question-asking. This is supported by previous research, which has shown differences in gender when asking questions in STEM environments [56,57].
Indeed, in China, as in many societies worldwide, women are underrepresented in the STEM fields, despite the progress made specifically in China in the past decade [72]. Research claims this may, in part, be due to a gender difference in achievement motivation and gender socialization, i.e., lower gender-specific expectations and lower career motivation in women [72].
Gender emerged in the personal reflections and answers to open questions as an influencing factor for many female students and raised thoughts about feminism:
“I learned [from Frances Arnold] good scientific spirit. She is a feminist and showed me that women can be powerful too”.
Additionally, from other female students in the same group, we see how choosing a female prize winner strengthened their own sense of women in science. Some explicitly mentioned the lack of female role models in their selections and how it influenced their perspective on gender in science.
“It was surprising to see how few female Nobel Prize winners there were, which made me think more about gender inequality in science”.
“We marveled at her [Frances Arnold] experience and were impressed by her perseverance. At the same time, all the members of group saw ourselves as new age women. We are convinced that setbacks cannot stop is, that the future is created by us, that the core of scientific discovery lies in discovering “no man’s land”, and we must dare to discover and innovate!”
The large disparity in the number of female winners compared to males was inspirational to one female student. When deciding on which prize to investigate during stage one of the pilot project, she commented:
“In the process of preparing the speech, we studied the whole procedure of the discovery, and we also had a deeper understanding of the Nobel prize itself. I highly appreciate the laureates’ love for science, meticulous attitude towards research projects, and perseverance in the face of difficulties. Their deeds inspired me to study and work harder in the future, trying to change the situation that there are far fewer female winners than male winners (author’s emphasis)”.
Several responses also indicated that the project helped female students gain confidence in asking questions, but they sometimes expressed discomfort or nervousness about speaking up in class or presenting in public.
“I am really shy to present my ideas, but this project helped me become more confident in asking questions and participating” .
(Female student)
In contrast, male students also highlighted curiosity as a motivating factor, but they were more likely to mention that curiosity leads directly to problem-solving or fact-finding. They generally reported feeling more confident about asking questions.
“Curiosity drives us to find the facts, and this project reinforced my ability to ask questions and engage with the material”.
(Male)
While many female students reported an increase in confidence, they also mentioned more frequently the initial hesitation or fear of asking questions in public, reflecting a potential gender difference in classroom dynamics. Male students generally reported higher levels of confidence in asking questions, with fewer mentions of nervousness or fear. They seemed more comfortable with public speaking and engaging in class discussions.
“I feel more confident now, but I still find it challenging to ask questions in front of the whole class”.
(Female)
“Asking questions has always been something I enjoy, and this project made me even more confident in doing so”.
(Male)
This is further supported by the results from the survey when comparing male to female students. When asked about ‘Nervousness During Presentation,’ we can see that half of the female students, and only barely a third of the male students, were nervous (Table A3). This correlation of ‘Nervousness During Presentation’ and gender yielded a significant correlation (Table A2).
These reflections indicate that the issue of gender naturally arose in the project, including how gender can inspire and how gender is differently represented in the field.

4.3. Learning from Researchers’ Biographies: Failure and Perseverance

While our survey concentrated on the perceptions towards curiosity and question-asking, the process of investigating the Nobel Laureates’ research questions and the path to a Nobel Prize also exposed students to their biographies. These biographies were filled not only with milestones and successes but also failures. This theme greatly impacted students’ learning: they became aware of the role of failure and perseverance in the inquiry and research process.
In general, the biographies and personal trajectories of the Nobel laureates had a profound impact on the students, as can be seen in students’ reflections:
“But in this project, through step by step understanding of Nobel Prize winners. I also slowly discovered that these legendary geniuses are actually just ordinary people like us, who make mistakes and fail. It’s just that they work harder than us, have a solid academic foundation, and have more perseverance”.
In fact, the students found inspiration in the failures and perseverance of researchers more than in their successes:
“During the whole process, we learned a lot about the history of Nobel prize, the life and research experiences of each prize winner. The solid knowledge foundation and a strong sense of curiosity motivated this successful research, which also inspire me to work harder and be more curious to find some questions rises from life. We got an insight of the timeline of its discovery and were excited by the indefatigable spirit of exploration”.
Finally, the importance of team and scientific collaboration became evident, as shared prizes often involved researchers looking at the same questions in different ways:
“By learning about the biographies of the three winners, I found that they have several things in common: 1. they all have their own teams; 2. none of the research processes are smooth (author’s emphasis); 3. the research results among the three complement each other”.
While it seems from the analysis that the project inspired students greatly, it is clear here that the scientists’ biographies were interesting and insightful for students, similar to the success of the research.

5. Discussion

As instructors of Chinese undergraduate STEM students in this Sino-foreign university, we and our colleagues have experienced the reticence of our students to express themselves in class and ask questions. This is supported by the literature [27,33,34,51]. Since it takes time to develop the skill of question-asking, and research has shown that class activities and collaborative projects can foster curiosity and thus creativity [3,73], we used our communications course to facilitate such a process with a project on Nobel Prize-winning research. This course is a valuable means of switching the focus of Chinese students from rote learning to active learning through question-asking. A focus on question-asking was incorporated into the basic English courses after this project.
Question-asking serves many functions, among them learning and motivation [44]. As explained by the founding researchers and administrators of the university [1], question-asking is at the heart of the home-country innovative spirit, which serves as the foundation of the Sino-foreign university in which the project and research took place. The results of our qualitative and quantitative analysis demonstrate that perceptions of question-asking did change over the course of the 13-week semester and project.
Here we investigated and analyzed whether and how the Nobel prize intervention in a communications course made students more aware of, and possibly change, their perception of question-asking and curiosity, to demonstrate to them the importance of asking questions themselves in their own studies and research projects. Indeed, our results showed students improved the self-perception of their question-asking and communication skills. This supports other work that analyzed whether students see the connection between question-asking, scientific curiosity, and inquiry following an intervention [35,36,67].
Another aim of this project was to investigate gender differences in question-asking and communication skills following the Nobel Prize winner’s project. The fact that only 5 out of 25 projects focused on female Nobel laureates, combined with student reflections and answers on gender disparities suggests that the project also contributed to raising awareness about inclusivity and diversity in science. This outcome is significant as it adds a broader societal dimension to the learning experience, especially considering that only 64 women in total have been awarded the Nobel Prize compared to 894 men between 1901 and 2023, meaning women have been awarded only about 7% of the prizes [74]. Indeed, female students, compared to male students, were more likely to reflect on gender disparities, particularly in their choice of Nobel Prize winners, which influenced their views on gender roles in science. Female students showed a greater initial reluctance and nervousness in participating and asking questions, although they did report gains in confidence through the project. Male students appeared more confident from the start and focused more on the practical outcomes of the project.
Another significant contribution of this research, found in the analysis of student reflections and answers to open questions on the post-survey about the project and the Nobel laureates’ biographies, extensively showed student awareness of the issues of curiosity, perseverance, and failure. The students found inspiration in the non-linear nature of the projects and the hardships encountered by the winning researchers and how they persevered to overcome them. From the biographies of the Nobel laureates, students learned about the importance of tenacity, curiosity, and passion. Future projects could focus on making the connection between question-asking and curiosity more explicit to students in project instructions or class discussions.
Our work reveals that students not only understood the importance of curiosity but also began to appreciate the process of scientific inquiry. Student reflections and answers to open questions on the post-survey indicate a deeper understanding of how curiosity drives research and the importance of asking questions. This is important as curiosity has also been shown to have other academic benefits that are especially useful in STEM fields, such as fostering creativity [3,66]. Indeed, this project aimed to provide an opportunity for lecturers to promote these concepts, demonstrating the importance of question-asking and curiosity in research and encouraging this atmosphere as recommended in other research [50]. We believe this supports the effectiveness of the intervention in achieving some of its educational goals, such as enhancing engagement, fostering curiosity, and creating awareness and interest in question-asking while promoting broader awareness of gender issues in science and communication.

6. Limitations and Conclusions

The limitations of our research lie in the short time we were able to measure the effects of this course project. While ideally, we would like to follow students long-term to analyze their question-asking frequency and confidence in class and the types of questions they develop in future research projects, seeing how a project can already affect perceptions about question-asking is a first step. Moreover, considering the results on gender and perseverance that arose from the analysis of the surveys and reflections, researchers may find that this may be an additional, interesting avenue for future research.
When reading these findings, one must consider that two-thirds of all four-year university students in China are on the STEM track [75] and 1.5 times the number of STEM students graduate from elite Chinese universities than all American STEM graduates combined. The sheer number of Chinese STEM graduates underscores the importance of teaching the skills of scientific inquiry and question-asking in tertiary education. Similar project-based team learning assignments could be one way of teaching these important skills outside of a Sino-foreign university and increase the long-term development of innovative engineers and STEM researchers in China.
Overall, our results indicated that students were not only surprised at the “simplicity” of the questions asked by Nobel winners but also the importance of perseverance and learning from mistakes. This research demonstrates how a project on question-asking in science can contribute to more active participation and student inquiry that may benefit students’ future scientific research and thought.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, T.R. and C.V.H.; methodology, T.R. and C.V.H.; software, T.R. and C.V.H.; validation, T.R. and C.V.H.; formal analysis, T.R. and C.V.H.; investigation, T.R. and C.V.H.; resources, T.R. and C.V.H.; data curation, T.R. and C.V.H.; writing—original draft preparation, T.R. and C.V.H.; writing—review and editing, T.R. and C.V.H.; visualization, T.R. and C.V.H.; supervision, T.R. and C.V.H.; project administration, C.V.H.; funding acquisition, T.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department 2020 Guangdong Provincial Higher Education Teaching Reform Project 752 and the Guangdong Technion—Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT).

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Technion- Israel Institute of Technology (Approval number: 2018-070).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study for their anonymized data to be analyzed and reported in this way. Students were asked to sign a written consent form, noting that their participation was voluntary and would not affect their grade in the course. The data were collected anonymously.

Data Availability Statement

All data relevant to this study have been included in this article.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Appendix A

Table A1. Students’ attitudes on their skill improvement following the Nobel Prize project (descriptive statistics; n = 95).
Table A1. Students’ attitudes on their skill improvement following the Nobel Prize project (descriptive statistics; n = 95).
Survey QuestionQuestion Scale Number of StudentsPercentage of Students
Was your Nobel Prize presentation successful? 1 = No00.0%
2 = Maybe4143.2%
3 = Yes5456.8%
Were you satisfied with the presentation produced by your group?1 = No11.1%
2 = Maybe1818.9%
3 = Yes7680.0%
Overall, was the Nobel prize project an enjoyable learning experience?1 = Strongly disagree1111.6%
2 = Disagree33.2%
3 = Neutral2021.1%
4 = Agree3738.9%
5 = Strongly agree2425.3%
What skills did you improve the most on this project? [Communication]1 = Nothing11.1%
2 = A little bit66.3%
3 = Somewhat2425.3%
4 = Much2829.5%
5 = Very much3637.9%
What skills did you improve the most on this project? [Question-asking] 1 = Nothing22.1%
2 = A little bit1313.7%
3 = Somewhat2526.3%
4 = Much2930.5%
5 = Very much2627.4%
Please give your opinion on [I have gained insight into how scientific research is conducted as a result of this project.]1 = Nothing11.1%
2 = A little bit66.3%
3 = Somewhat2324.2%
4 = Much3536.8%
Please give your opinion on [I was encouraged to research topics outside of the classroom.]1 = Nothing11.1%
2 = A little bit66.3%
3 = Somewhat1920.0%
4 = Much3435.8%
5 = Very much3536.8%
Table A2. Analysis of students’ perceptions: significant correlations between approaches, experiences, and skills following the project.
Table A2. Analysis of students’ perceptions: significant correlations between approaches, experiences, and skills following the project.
Variable 1Variable 2Correlation CoefficientSignificance Level (p-Value)
Curiosity-driven approachEnjoyment of group work0.45p < 0.01
Improvement in question-asking skills0.43p < 0.05
Satisfaction with the Nobel Prize projectImprovement in teamwork skills0.55p < 0.01
Nervousness during presentationsGender (Female)0.50p < 0.01
Group work experienceSuccess in Nobel Prize presentation0.48p < 0.01
Satisfaction with group presentationClear division of labor0.52p < 0.01
Enjoyment of giving oral presentationsImprovement in communication skills0.40p < 0.05
Time management issuesDissatisfaction with group project outcome−0.47p < 0.05
Language barrierNervousness during presentations0.42p < 0.05
Table A3. Problems encountered by students throughout the project (by gender).
Table A3. Problems encountered by students throughout the project (by gender).
Problem/IssueMale (%)Female (%)
Group Members Not Participating35%40%
Nervousness During Presentation30%50%
Difficulty Reaching Consensus20%15%
Time Management Issues10%20%
Language Barrier5%5%

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Rakedzon, T.; Van Horne, C. “Curious Is as Curious Does”: Fostering Question-Asking in a Sino-Foreign Engineering School—A Case Study. Sustainability 2024, 16, 7308. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177308

AMA Style

Rakedzon T, Van Horne C. “Curious Is as Curious Does”: Fostering Question-Asking in a Sino-Foreign Engineering School—A Case Study. Sustainability. 2024; 16(17):7308. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177308

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Rakedzon, Tzipora, and Constance Van Horne. 2024. "“Curious Is as Curious Does”: Fostering Question-Asking in a Sino-Foreign Engineering School—A Case Study" Sustainability 16, no. 17: 7308. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177308

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