Although confusion is generally perceived to be negative, educators dating as far back as Socrates, who asked students to question assumptions and wrestle with ideas, have challenged this notion. Can confusion be productive? How should instructors interpret student expressions of confusion? During two semesters of introductory physics that…

College science teachers know that students get the most out of class if they have completed the assigned reading. To reinforce this expectation, we ask our introductory physics students to submit a question they had about the reading. In this paper we describe the rationale and logistics of this assignment. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)