Abstract

One attribute of experts is that they are likely to learn from their own mistakes. Experts are unlikely to make the same mistakes when asked to solve a problem a second time, especially if they had access to a correct solution. Here, we discuss a study spanning several years in which advanced undergraduate physics students in a quantum mechanics course were given incentives to correct their mistakes in the midterm exam and they could get back up to 50% of the points lost on each midterm exam problem. The solutions to the midterm exam problems were provided to all students in both groups but those who corrected their mistakes were provided the solution after they submitted their corrections to the instructor. The performance on the final exam on the same problems suggests that students who were given incentives to correct their mistakes significantly outperformed those who were not given an incentive. The incentive to correct mistakes had the greatest impact on the final exam performance of students who performed poorly on the midterm exam.

Highlights

  • One characteristic of experts is that they are likely to use problem solving as an opportunity for learning [1,2,3]

  • Research suggests that students who went through a productive failure cycle, in which they worked in groups to solve complex ill-structured math problems without any scaffolding support struggled to learn up until a consolidation lecture by the instructor [13]

  • Our research suggests that even students in advanced physics courses such as quantum mechanics are more motivated to engage with instructional material in a meaningful way if they are provided an explicit incentive [15,16,17]

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Summary

Introduction

One characteristic of experts is that they are likely to use problem solving as an opportunity for learning [1,2,3]. Research suggests that students who went through a productive failure cycle, in which they worked in groups to solve complex ill-structured math problems without any scaffolding support struggled to learn up until a consolidation lecture by the instructor [13]. These students from the productive failure condition significantly outperformed their counterparts from the lecture and practice condition on both well- and ill-structured problems on the posttests [13]. Schwartz et al have proposed invention tasks to prepare students for future learning [14]

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