Instead of seeing mistakes as failures, mistakes can be seen as necessary for true learning to occur.  Consider domains other than academics, such a learning a sport or learning a game.  When you are learning how to hit a golf ball or play euchre or climb a rock wall or run an offense in soccer or football mistakes are often crucial to learning how to do it correctly.  Why should it be any different in academics?

Question 1: Instead of thinking about mistakes as failures, how might our approach to a course change if we thought of mistakes a necessary for learning? Might we be less upset at making mistakes?  Might we focus on why we made the mistake and how we can correct it?  What do you think and why?

Consider this: if you never made any mistakes on the path to learning, then have you really learned anything new at all?

Question 2: What do you think? Are mistakes necessary to truly learn something new? Why or why not?

Finally, as regards testing, the goal should be to make mistakes early on—before you are taking the exam.  That way when it comes to taking the exam, you’ve already made all of the mistakes (and learned from them) so that when it comes to exam, it is less likely that you will make any.  If this is true, then making mistakes before we actually get to the exam should be, in part, one’s goal in a course.   This might sound strange: my goal in a course should actually be to make mistakes or to get answers incorrect?

Question 3: What kinds of things would you need to do in order to make more mistakes before you get to the exam in a course?

Directions

Please develop a post of at least 250 words answering questions 1, 2, and 3.

Rubric