Why You Want Your A & P Students to Fail

I want my students to fail. Of course Idon't want them to fail the course,but I do want to give them a lot ofopportunities to get things wrongas they learn new facts, apply new knowledge, and build their conceptual frameworks.Learning scientists have plenty of research that shows that failing to get things right at first, then correcting one's thinking by relearning forgotten facts and applying knowledge in better ways,strengthens mastery.And it reinforces long-term memory of facts —and long-term memory of how to solve problems.So I give my A&P students a lot of opportunities to fail.So that they can stop failing and be more consistent in succeeding.One way I do that is by using clickers —astudent response system—during lectures, labs, and discussion. I do assign "participation points" for answering questions using this system in class, but I do not assign points based on whether the answers were correct or incorrect.I want them take risks —to fail sometimes.By failing to get something right on a "clicker question," they wake up to where their deficiencies in learning are. Then we work together to correct their knowledge. It's more likely that when they encounter a similar challenge later on in my course, they'll be in a better position to succeed.I also give my students a lot of opportunity to fail in takingonline tests. In my courses, I give a lot of online tests that act primarily asformative assessments. That is tests that help them gain knowledge at the begin...

Source: The A and P Professor - June 22, 2017 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs