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Discrepant event lessons are timeless
Teachers using the inquiry method of teaching can easily
convert and update discrepant event lessons.
Learning, using the Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive!
discrepant event method, works best.
Why?
Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! show you how to get the
most from your student-centered lessons.
The two books also show your students how to solve problems, not just by
question asking, but also by using the scientific process, and by using
teamwork.
Would you like some proof before you use more discrepant
events in your teaching? The
following brief text presents findings from a new study. The study examined complex problem
solving.
Problem Solving: Teamwork May Be Best
Teams of 3-5 People Better at Solving Complex Problems Than
Individuals
By Miranda Hitti, MD
http://www.webmd.com/content/Biography/8/101415.htm
WebMD Medical News
Reviewed By Ann Edmundson, MD
http://www.webmd.com/content/Biography/9/112146.htm
WebMD
April 25, 2006 -- Got a thorny problem? You might want to call in your
problem-solving squad.
A new study shows
that complex problems are best solved by teams of three, four, or five people,
compared to people who tackle the same problems by themselves or with one other
person. Just ask Patrick Laughlin, PhD, and colleagues from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They
published a study on the topic in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
The study included 760 university students. All were given a complicated code in
which the letters A through J randomly represented the numbers 1-10. Laughlin's team asked the students to
try to crack the code as presented in a series of equations.
Go It Alone or Get Help?
The researchers randomly assigned students to work by
themselves or in groups of two, three, four, or five. Everyone got plenty of scratch paper and the same ground
rules.
Teams or individuals worked on the equations and then
submitted their answers. If their
answer wasn't right, they tried again.
Teams of three, four, or five people were better at solving
the problems than the individuals, submitting fewer wrong answers before
arriving at the solution. Even the
top-performing individuals didn't match the teams of three, four, or five
students. After the tests,
participants generally rated the challenge as enjoyable, whether they had
worked alone or in groups.
Groups of Three
What about the two-person teams? They were about as good as
the individuals who were best at problem solving. Brainstorming seemed to work best in groups of at least
three people, the researchers note.
"Group members combined their abilities and resources" to
outperform individuals on the task, write Laughlin and colleagues. The researchers point out that the
problems, while complex, obeyed the rules of math and logic and had clear
answers. The students weren't
tackling personal or emotional problems, which may be harder to nail down or
prove correct.
SOURCES: "Copyright (c) 1996 - 2004, WebMD,
Inc. All rights reserved"
Laughlin, P. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2006; vol 90:
pp 644-651. News release, American
Psychological Association.
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Discrepant Event Lessons are Timeless
