Thinking about effective teaching practice reminds me of interacting with students when they are starting to plan their independent research project, which is part of their course. Students inevitably start to feel overwhelmed by the range of options of what they could study and once they get passed that then they have to figure out how to study it. I can think of several specific and very similar emails that I have received from students at this stage of the course. They ask me several questions and they want to talk on the phone as their brains feel so overloaded that they feel the need to talk it through.
My approach is to re-read any of their initial blog posts about their study site and read through their list of questions and try to read between the lines. I think about my own series of questions like what do they seem to be interested in, what did they say in their blog posts that maybe they are forgetting about in their confusion. Then, before setting up a phone conversation I send them back a series of questions that will make them think through things a little more and maybe remind them of some simple concepts to keep in mind that they have forgotten in their confusion.
I do inevitably talk to the students on the phone and I find the most helpful thing I do by that time is to reassure them that they are on the right path with their thinking and provide more of the technical advice / where to find resources related to their study. This is because by asking those deep questions instead of simply answering their questions, I have gotten the students to rethink the issue and start to come up with solutions on their own before we even talk.
I think it is a fairly well proven tactic for multiple situations that asking open ended questions is a good way to work through a problem/issue with someone. The key ingredient to this though is asking the right questions. Each time I go through a situation like the one above, I ask myself at the end if I asked the right questions and why or why not. I think it is a bit of an art and a science and you can only improve by continual practice.