Active student participation in college classroom discussion has been shown to have a positive impact on learning outcomes. Asking questions represents one way for instructors to encourage students to participate in class. This study explored college students' preferences for instructor questions and their experience of the way their instructors used questions in class. At a small public university, 232 undergraduate college students and eight instructors from three (e.g., Business, Nursing, Psychological Sciences) schools were surveyed. Analysis of the survey data revealed no significant differences between student preferences for instructor questions across the three schools, although there were some significant (p < 0.0025) differences between schools in students' experience of their instructors' use of questions. Students had preferences for questions that encouraged learning, but appeared sensitive to being embarrassed in front of their classmates. Students discriminated between those types of instructor question or questioning technique that promoted learning and those instructor behaviors that they associated with the risk of embarrassment. Instructors who use questions to encourage student participation should recognize that students have preferences for certain types of instructor question and for certain questioning techniques. Students' preferences may represent a factor of their willingness to respond to questions and actively participate in class.