Learning from mistakes and misconceptions
With a video, you can exemplify, discuss, and highlight common mistakes and misunderstandings, and give your students a chance to learn from the mistakes of others. In this way, the students' ability to approach the subject from a broader perspective is promoted. Video allows a great opportunity for visualization and flexibility that is difficult to achieve in other ways.
Understanding mistakes is instructive
By highlighting common misconceptions about a subject area or demonstrating inaccuracies or mistakes that are made, you can help your students better understand various connections and principles about the topic. This type of in-depth understanding is called conceptual knowledge and it can contribute to increased insights into applications of the subject. If only facts are presented, students are not given the opportunity to break down incorrect assumptions, making it more difficult for them to get a more complete picture of the topic.
Video can visualize errors, mistakes and misconceptions
Video is well suited for reproducing various inaccuracies and mistakes or clarifying why certain misconceptions may prevail in a subject area since video technology allows flexibility and reusability. Below are examples of benefits of presenting mistakes with a video:
- Expensive and complicated demonstrations only needs to be conducted one time instead of repeated every course round, since they are recorded
- Misunderstandings of theoretical concepts can be modeled and presented.
- Models and real events can be interwoven.
- The learning process can be enhanced by using various camera techniques such as:
- Slow-motion, to show the events more detailed.
- Different angles allow you to show different aspects that are happening simultaneously.
- Zooming in and out can clarify details or the whole.
- Enhancing graphics can be added during the editing process to highlight particularly important details.
- The process can be paused and repeated.
Discuss every step
One way to highlight common errors, mistakes and misconceptions can be to start the video with a statement, such as: " for example by saying: "You might think that ... but it's incorrect." When the error, mistake or misconception is presented in the video, it is important that you help the students understand why and how something is not right. To promote active learning and interaction, you can, for example, pause the video flow and encourage the students to reflect on the consequences of the procedure in the video.
The dialogue may include questions about:
- When did it go wrong during the process?
- The sequence of events
- how it should really be
- how to correct the mistake or misconceptions
Showing and discussing the consequences of mistakes related to a subject increases reflection on the complexity of the subject, including surrounding quirks.