11021

11021

Session - Conference Presentation Only (no formal paper)

Are Online Mistakes "Small Stuff"? Discuss!
Ann Reich, Kaplan University (online), Ventura, CA, U.S.A., areich@kaplan.edu

I would like to lead a general session-discussion about how we perceive and cope with errors, big and small, online, especially in academic settings and in the virtual classroom. With input from participants, I will offer some professional and historical sources about various types of errors and the nature of mistakes, their value in learning, and how errors are regarded in some fields. We will discuss student errors of various kinds (and how we cope with and use student mistakes to effect positive growth in a subject) as well as our own professional mistakes. Interlaced will be some pithy quotations from famous people, who no doubt learned from their own mistakes and pressed on. Examples of these: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new,” said Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and “All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes,” said Winston Churchill (1874-1965). Also, I will be quoting from articles such as "Help! Active Student Learning and Error Remediation in an Online Calculus E-Help Community" by Carla van de Sande and Gaea Leinhardt from the University of Pittsburgh and "The Bright Side of Wrong," by Kathryn Schulz. The discussion will hopefully serve as inspiration to all educators and provide food-for-thought in how we continue to perceive and work with student errors in the online classroom.

All Audiences general session discussion mistakes