I found a new blog on eLearning by Cathy Moore. Her most recent post is on giving feedback in scenarios that make students think. After answer a question of “what would you do next” you have one of two choices if the student picks the wrong answer:
- tell them the correct answer
- show them what happens if you pick the wrong answer, and then let them figure out if it’s wrong
Telling the students the answer is a passive process and so knowledge may or may not be retained. Showing them the effects of a wrong answer and then requiring them to figure out what went wrong is an active process and so the knowledge is more likely to stick. The students have to put it together themselves.
We can do this online with links to two different answers.
| A 32 year-old male comes in after a trauma in which he was thrown from his car. You notice he is tachycardic, hypotensive and decreased breath sounds on the right side. His neck is without crepitance but he has JVD and is trachea is deviated to the left. His abdomen is soft. What would you do next? |
While this is somewhat cumbersome in that you need several posts for one topic, it does force the reader to think more than just spoon feeding them the answer. You can couple this with forms within each answer in which students explain their choice.
my peripheral brain 