Error recovery and meta-cognition
20 July 2013
The typical feedback students receive when they get an exercise wrong is the correct answer. Although one certainly does want to know about the correct answer, perhaps a more important feedback is how to fix the wrong answer in the direction of a better answer, or the ability to recover from an error.
Error recovery is likely better than just the isolated plain correct for a variety of reasons, to name a couple:
- this is what happens in real life. Life doesn't come with a second chance, and when you make a mistake you have to cope with the consequences, hopefully finding a way out of it.
- learning how to get out of a mistake will likely make you remember that lesson forever. If all you have to remember is the correct answer, then the memories connecting to that lesson will be way too poor.
by Ricardo Pietrobon
About Me
My name is Ricardo Pietrobon and I am interested in big data and situated cognition applied to immersive distance education.
- Are you primarily aiming at educating readers in the Introduction section of your original paper? If so, stop!
- Us Brazil
- Coaching researchers: How to cite a reference in an original article: Despite what you think, it might not be so obvious
- Coaching researchers: Why avoiding spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel as the way to store your research data is likely not a good idea
- Coaching researchers: What is truly valued in an academic life in the US?