We take multiple
choice questions
that students did not
do well on in exams.
And we put them into
the discussion board.
And a student has to tell us
the context of the question.
What does it apply to?
And then they have to
falsify each answer choice,
because students come
in, and what they usually
do is they just pattern.
What do they know?
And we don't want
them to do that.
We want them to go
through falsification.
That's scientific thought.
You don't confirm.
You falsify.
So go through each
answer, falsify
why it's wrong until you
get to one you can't falsify
and tell me why you
can't falsify it.
Then we ask them to go
into the academic journals.
We ask them to find
use, current use.
If you want to be a
neuroscientist, a dentist,
I don't care.
Go out and find
out-- psychologist--
find out how this science is
being used in the real world
And they post about that. is
being used in the real world
And they post about that.
Then in the upper
division course,
I take all the structure away.
There is no question.
It's them that are-- they
are creating the questions.
They're creating the
debates themselves.
Anything we say in class,
because it's more--
like I said, it's an upper
division theoretical class.
They're allowed to
question everything
we say as long as they question
everything they think they know
and everything else they read
in the academic journals.
And they come in.
They have to propose
counter hypotheses.
They have to attempt to falsify
their own counter hypotheses.
And that's what the
debates are all about.
And it's what science is about.
Science moves forward because
of doubt and falsification,
not because you went
around believing
what you thought you knew.
So that's kind of how we
take the structure away
in the upper division class.
