
Observing demos hurts learning, and confusion is a sign of understanding - ColinWright
http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/eric-mazurs-keynote-at-icer-2011-observing-demos-hurts-learning-and-confusion-is-a-sign-of-understanding/
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edtechdev
Right, see also:

"Graesser, Person, and Magliano (1995) found that during one-on-one tutoring,
when asking students "do you understand?", answering yes was not correlated
with performance, while answering no was positively correlated with better
performance." [Graesser, A. C., Person, N. K., & Magliano, J. P. (1995).
Collaborative dialogue patterns in naturalistic one-on-one tutoring. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, vol. 9, pp495-522.]

"twelfth grade science students all viewed the same physics demonstration by
their teacher, but they all disagreed beforehand about what they expected to
happen, and afterward disagreed about what they had seen and how to explain
what they saw (Roth, McRobbie, Lucas, & Boutonné, 1997). [Roth, W.-M.,
McRobbie, C., Lucas, K. B., & Boutonné, S. (1997). Why do students fail to
learn from demonstrations? A social practice perspective on learning in
physics. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34, 509-533. Retrieved from
<http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/45493/abstract> ]

And this summary presentation by Brian Pyper:

Best Practices in Physics Demonstrations Or Oh, I thought this was just for
entertainment."
[https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Femp.byui.edu...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Femp.byui.edu%2FPyperB%2FBest%2520Practices%2520in%2520Physics%2520Demonstrations.pdf)

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johnthedebs
There's some really interesting data here, but I think one of the main
conclusions they draw is wrong:

 _Confused students are far more likely to actually understand._

Looking at correct vs incorrect answers (almost 50/50 for 'confused'
students), it seems like confused students are far more likely to _guess_.

Edit: I realize after posting this that it's important to know the test format
to figure out whether students understood or were guessing. The article
unfortunately doesn't say much about the test format.

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TeMPOraL
Interesting research. However, before we try to generalize it to whole
schooling system, here's another thing - demos make physics interesting,
standard school teaching ways make physics boring as hell. The only reason I
cared about it was that I watched too much Star Trek when I was a kid. Most of
the people I know got bored by physics in school around age of 15.

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seagaia
Gee, I hope some high school teachers take this into account - especially the
ones that mean well. One of my favorite teachers in high school extensively
used physics demonstrations. The AP test scores were pretty high though, so
maybe his other excellence balanced that out?

Still, the confusion thing is an interesting statistic to read.

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iam
Maybe this explains why I was always so confused in school!

