Posting for Case Based Learning
What is learning?
Learning involves past experiences and relating new information to those past experiences. Learning involves stories, personal stories, other’s stories, or hypothetical stories to promote meaningful learning. It also includes experiences that make up those stories.
One of the most memorable experiences of my life occurred back,…. uumm shall we say several years ago (I guess I won’t give away my age.) I had the opportunity to fly the flight simulator for the B-1 bomber. I was able to be in the simulator for about 30 minutes. The experience was fascinating and one I remember clearly. I crashed on a number of occasions, in fact I don’t think I performed any maneuver correctly, but the failure was not the issue; it was the experience. For the pilots that learn in these machines the failure becomes something they can learn from. They can learn how to deal with situations that are catastrophic without having to experience the consequences of failure, so when they are in actual situations they can respond appropriately. When a teacher provides experiences that engage the student’s interest they can assimilate the information to use in the future.
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Submitted by Diana Maughan on Tue, 11/03/2009 - 8:11pm
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Any opinions expressed here, except as specifically noted, are those of the individual authors or commenters and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, or Utah State University.
What is "the rest of the story?"
Now I'm really curious about what you were doing in a simulator! I agree with what you said about experiences really leaving an impact, and then they become great ways to teach others certain principles. One question I have is about the possibility of failure, if you include failure but eliminate the consequences, how effective is it. Surely we don't want to see millions of dollars crashing just to teach a lesson but I wonder if anyone get's complacent because they have crashed without consequence before. Mabye I'm way off, this theory is a bit sketchy to me.
M
Good Question
Good question, I would think their consequence would be reflected in scores and competitiveness. That would be my quess, but one I'll have to put to my brother-in-law the next time I talk to him.