Overview

A valuable byproduct of cultivating a supportive learning environment is that learners will likely feel more comfortable taking risks and making errors. These errors can provide opportunities to clarify teaching points for the entire audience and give feedback to you as an instructor on which content you can improve upon. Capitalize on learner errors by anticipating the sticking points and employing techniques to respond to errors effectively.

“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” - Ms. Frizzle, The Magic School Bus

Key Learning Points

  1. Cultivating a supportive learning environment creates a safe space for learners to make errors.
  2. Set high academic expectations during your teaching session and demonstrate you value the learning process over the “right” answer.
  3. Plan for likely learner errors during your teaching session and anticipate how you will respond to them.
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Guiding Principles

A supportive learning environment provides learners a safe space to make errors. Responding to errors effectively can advance the learning of all participants.

Anticipate Error

Ahead of your teaching session, reflect on content or activities learners may struggle with. This will allow you to plan your response to errors. If you’ve taught the content before, where did learners struggle last time? Were the errors individual or more pervasive? What are possible cues to use to get students on the right thought process?

Invite Error

When opening your session or interaction, tell learners you value their participation and that errors are expected. Praise learners for taking the risk of sharing their thoughts with the group whether they are “correct” or not. Be aware of your verbal and body language when listening and responding to a learner's error.

Responding to Error

Responding to learner error is a challenging skill that must be practiced. Consider the following strategies to maximize learning from student errors.

Excavate Error

Be curious about why the error occurred and use errors as an opportunity to clarify the issue for the entire audience.

  • Ask yourself: What did the learner get wrong and why? Analyze "wrong" answers for the audience.
  • Ask learners for an alternative response and provide a comparison of responses.
  • Be mindful of common themes for learner errors and dig deeper into patterns. A revision of your materials or delivery may be necessary.

Break it down: The goal is to re-frame a question or present additional information to lead a learner to the correct answer while still doing as much of the thinking as possible.

  • Repeat the learner’s answer back to them.
  • Give the learner a cue. If you’ve anticipated this area as one they may struggle with, you could plan out the hints you’ll use.
  • Provide the next step, but don’t give away the whole “right” answer.
  • Consider placing the question in the context of a clinical case or example.

Create high academic expectations: Unintentionally, we often drop our standards while teaching and don’t hold learners accountable for answers that are “all the way right.” With the shared understanding that thinking, working, and sharing are valued, learners will rise to the challenges you present to them.

  • Responding to “I don’t know”: Don’t let the learner opt-out. Provide a cue, or have another learner provide a cue, to stimulate thinking.
  • Avoid “rounding up”: when a learner responds with a partially correct answer, push them for additional detail until they are “all the way right”.
  • Prepare responses to error:
    • Praise participation but be clear and honest when more work is needed.
    • Respond to errors rapidly enough to allow the student to re-engage in the thinking process quickly.
    • Use simple, familiar responses that you can invoke near-automatically.
  • Consider the following prompts:
    • Can you elaborate?
    • That is correct. And what else?
    • You did some great work, but you’re not quite there yet.
    • Let’s build on what you just said.

By keeping these principles in mind, you can turn student errors into rich opportunities for learning.

Creating High Academic Expectations

In this video, Clare O' Connor, MD, MPH, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, asks students to do the work with "Who can answer that?" and, in addition, asks students to expand on their brief answer to get more of their thought process out for her and other learners to see.

Wrap Up

By cultivating a supportive learning environment, you invite participation from students and promote a safe space for learners to make errors. Being mindful of your response to student error can allow you to capitalize on these opportunities to promote learning.

Other Resources

References

Ambrose SA, et. al. How Learning Works: 7 research-based principles for smart teaching. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010.

Lemov, D. Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that put Students on the Path to College. Jossey-Bass, 2015.

Lemov D, Woolway E, and Yezzi K. Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better. Jossey-Bass, 2012.