One response to “Effectiveness of Science Videos”

1. 

   Jeff Ryan

   March 25, 2011

   Very interesting video and comments here by Derek Muller. I actually just found out about the Kahn Academy last week when talking with a mathematics colleague she suggested I look it over and I was intrigued by the array of science instructional videos, and frankly the depth of the content on the site.

   I have to agree with Derek here especially after reflecting upon my own recent learning experiences in science immersion environments. The data presented by Derek clearly reminds me of the 3 three key findings in How People Learn, and the necessity of engaging a learners initial understandings about a topic at the beginning of the learning cycle. This allows the learner to consider actually “what do they think” and to helps to increase the possibility adding the new knowledge into their preexisting schema. When you consider how emotionally attached we are to our initial ideas (preconceptions), you understand why simply telling or showing a correct scientific explanation doesn’t always help us build a new and more correct explanation. We need to be confronted with first- hand, concrete experiences that provide evidence to counter our initial beliefs and even then we can be reluctant to except new ideas. The learners in the video only had substantial learning gains when they were confronted with misconceptions that potentially mirrored their own, and then reported an added level of rigor and confusion related to the instructional videos- but still an increase in overall learning. I think this nicely illustrates the stress created by cognitive dissonance, and the necessity to engage learners where they are in an attempt to build new knowledge

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