Let’s start with a misconception
Today is my numerical analysis practicum with Matlab class.
Previously I’ve learned about numerical analysis with Matlab, I’ve understand its basic properties, syntax and language. I also often use Matlab to analyze my simple numerical problem.
And today, I get my practicum class to practice (again) what I’ve learned in numerical analysis class. In this practicum class, we were given a module that explain what will we do and we learn in this class.
I intend to not care with the book, because I’ve know and frequently do with it. I just look it at a glance before class… and say to myself, “Yeah, I know this topic.”
And then I suddenly remember the advice from Arnold Sommerfeld to Wener Heisenber — that I got forgotten,
“Just do the exercise diligently, then you will know what you have understood and have not.”
I am shocked, that is one of advice that I believed for long time.
I beat my sense of arrogant, and then try to read the module diligently. I deeply read the module and follow the instructions.
I started type the example code in module with Matlab…
..and I feel something strange.
But I still continued to type until the end.
I run the code.
Ohh… my feeling is true. The code isn’t work.
Then I checked again every code I type before, and yes.. however, I know that this code will never work.
There is new variable that not yet clear, there is wrong parameter, and wrong syntax.
I fixed all of it, and the code work like I want.
I interrupted to myself, “So the module is wrong?”
Oh no, how can a module that will be use to teach have wrong content?
But, then I realize that this wrong code make me learn deeply and understand more than before.
I remembered Derek Muller’s video on Veritasium about similar misconception,
Derek Muller wrote his Ph.D about how to design film to teach physics. And he found that “If you just say the correct stuff, viewers don’t actually learn anything. They just feel like they’re learning and they become more confident in the things they tought beforehand”
The detail of his research is like this:
Few students given access to website where they took a multiple-choice pretest the questions were something like arrow of gravitational force to basket ball while it thrown.
After pretest, the student see one of several online videos that contained correct answers
for many of the pretest questions.
Immediately after watching the roughly the students took exactly the same test.
Some students also interviewed to see what they thought of the video. The most common comments were that it was clear concise and easy to understand. The students also increase their confidence in the correctness of their
Then answers compared to the pretest
So what about how much they learned on the pretest? The average score with 6.0 out of 26…
and after the video the average was only 6.3.
Meanwhile, another group of student do similar thing, but they see other videos involved an actor pretending to be a student with the most common misconceptions which were illustrated. He then discussed with the other dialogue participant why the misconceptions and work and have a scientific idea differed in interviews with students who watch this video.
No one used the words clear concise or easy to understand, most often they said it was confusing…
But on the post-test the average score nearly doubled 11 out of 26
Students who saw the dialogue with misconceptions average a whole higher than those who saw the explanation without misconceptions and it seems like it worked.
After I realize that this wrong content can help student to understanding the matter, I think that this wrong content is planned… because I see that the further code in other part is also have wrong syntax, parameter, etc.
So, based on my opinion, this wrong code will be show to the student, and then we fix it together… so we will get better understanding. It seems like explanation of Derek Muller.
But when the practicum class be held, another thing actually happened. What I realize before is wrong. Really really wrong.
It turned out that the practicum assistant prefer not to use these modules, and gives an example of another code… which seems right.
…but actually no.
The whole code is shown in front of class and the students type it in their computer.
It took about 15 minutes until all of code typed.
And when the code run.. the code isn’t work.
Hmmm… I rethink about my previous assumption that we will learn by fix this new wrong code.
…but actually no.
This wrong code isn’t planned. It just wrong.
The assistance start to fix it until the code work carefully, then show it again to the student. Then all of my friend see the correct code, start to type again.. they seems like understand the code.. but maybe don’t. They don’t understand deeply — based on Derek Muller.
Owh, I say to myself,
“This is not a planned wrong code, but it just really wrong.”
P.S: Maaf kalau bahasanya masih kacau. Tulisan ini saya pakai untuk belajar menulis bahasa inggris, hehehe
