Identify a concept that is often misunderstood in your discipline. Can you think of an analogy that can help make the concept make sense to students?

  • Does this analogy take into account where students are coming from in their previous experiences?
  • Or how could you break that concept down into bite-size chunks so your students can more easily digest that harder-to-acquire information?

To do:

  1. Re-state your misunderstood concept and then identify and expand on how you would explain your concept through an analogy.
  2. Explain the analogy in writing and include a visual metaphorical representation of this analogy (perhaps use the Curator Module Consider This activity as a guide to finding an image).
  3. After you make your submission, save the web address to your response (found in the green confirmation box) so you can use it later for your badge submission form.

This activity is part of the Prior Knowledge section of the Teacher for Learning Module.

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280 Responses for this Activity

  • Misunderstood
    by anh lam (@anhlam)

    Misunderstood concept:  Answering the questions for this activity from my position as a Project Manager. I am working with one team that hosts a number of live workshops with both internal and external facilitators. The facilitator needs to complete a storyboard of the workshop for an asynchronous version. The storyboard does contain notes, tips, and more… »

  • Misunderstood in Nursing
    by Jill Henderson (@jillhenderson)

    In the pharmacology courses that I teach for nursing, the concept of protein-bound vs. free drugs is often misunderstood. This concept describes how medications move around the body to arrive to their target tissue sites. Once they arrive at the sites, protein-bound drugs do not bind freely to the target site immediately because they need more… »

  • Misunderstood
    by Lucas Prestes (@Lucas Plautz Prestes)

    File with gif and description

  • What is a Project …. the concept
    by winton cape (@winton)

    It would be communicating the definition of a project…. project management. * It is temporary in nature * It has a start and end date * It produces a unique product or service All three must be true for it to be considered a project. Most of the students in my project management class are more… »

  • Misundterstood Activity
    by Peter Sheedy (@PeterS)

    I teach Management account, which is a topic that most students think they don’t have previous experience with formally, but with many concepts, they actually have personal experience (such as budgeting).  However, a concept that students struggle with is understanding and applying the different components of costs.  For example, a cost can be direct or more… »

  • Misunderstood Activity
    by Christopher Rugo (@chris.rugo)

    I do not teach a course, but part of my role is to support users at our library makerspace in learning how to use and create with our 3D printers. To make the most of these tools, students must familiarize themselves with the different parameters necessary to prepare a 3D model for printing. Currently, the more… »

  • Teacher for Learning Module – Misunderstanding
    by Michel Beaulieu (@msbeauli)

    “The North” or living in the north is one of the most pertinent to the area of teaching I undertake. The North can be defined many ways (e.g., geographic, administrative, political, distance, etc.); however, prior knowledge is often shaped by stereotypes, misinterpretation, misinformation, etc. established through lack of familiarity and the understanding that comes with more… »

  • Misunderstood
    by Ryan Walmsley (@rwalmsley)

    As a writing & communications prof, I found that many students obsessed over writing a perfect paragraph the first time, often burning time trying to find the perfect way to start or using digital tools to avoid learning the skills. Conceptually, it’s much better (after outlining first) to get the ideas down satisfactorily, and then more… »

  • The Filmmaking Process
    by Phillip McGregor (@PMcGregor)

    In film school, it is always stated that the filmmaking process is complicated and has several steps. But the nature of those steps, and what a student filmmaker will actually experience is difficult to convey. So, I like to use the following analogy: Filmmaking is like assembling a puzzle where all the pieces are blank. more… »

  • Misunderstood Activity
    by Carolyn Nesbitt-Larking (@Carolyn)

    Some students have difficulties understanding and applying principles of customer service. For many, the assumption made is that we just need “to be nice to people, and smile.” The foundation of this principle is that businesses determine its own basic foundations of what customer service is, how it will be delivered, and, more importantly, how more… »

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    3 Responses to “Misunderstood”

    1. Martina Kolodzey

      I teach CLB 3 4, and there are certain things that a level four student should be able to do that a level three student isn’t expected to do just yet. For both cases, the concept of questions is very difficult both in terms of answering and creating questions. In level three, it is expected that a student can read a short passage and answer simple comprehension questions. What I find is that my students will answer the question by rewriting the sentence from the text that contains key words from the question. That means that their answer will likely include much more information than needed to answer the question. The problem with them doing this is that I can see that they know how to find the answer, but I cannot see if they know what the answer actually is. For example, the question might be: When is Theresa’s doctor’s appointment? The sentence they choose to answer the question with says: Theresa must remember to bring her health card to her doctor’s appointment at 3pm. The student has taken the first step in finding the answer in the text, but didn’t take the second step in giving just the information that was asked for. The level four student, needs to be able to formulate questions. This is another concept that is difficult, but works along the same lines. My solution takes a few steps.
      1. Make sure the students know all the question words and what the question words are looking for, who – a person, what – a thing or concept, where – a place, etc.
      2. Read a short text.
      3. Look at the comprehension questions.
      4. First, underline the answers in the text, write which number question they correspond with.
      5. Look at the wording of the question. Rearrange the wording of the question to start answering the text.
      6. Go back to the underlined text for that question, and take only the what you need to answer the question.
      7. Do this for a number of questions.
      8. Part two – Take a full sentence from the text.
      9. Figure out what questions we can ask, for example: who, what, where, etc…
      10. Use the previous example on how to write the answer to the question, and reverse it to show how to formulate the question.

      Reply
    2. Rizma Butt

      Misunderstood Concept: In the realm of Marketing Analytics, a commonly misunderstood concept is the belief that one needs a formal understanding of marketing to effectively analyze marketing data. Here’s an analogy to clarify this concept: Think of marketing data as a jigsaw puzzle, with each data point representing a puzzle piece. A Marketing Expert knows the picture on the puzzle box due to their marketing knowledge and can quickly piece things together. On the other hand, a Data Analyst, like a puzzle enthusiast, may not know the final image but excels at recognizing patterns and fitting pieces together. Both can successfully analyze marketing data, albeit with different approaches, illustrating that while marketing expertise is valuable, data analysis skills can also contribute meaningfully to the field.

      Reply

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