Lying for Learning

I read an interesting blog post the other day, about Lying for Learning. The storey is that there was a professor who on the first day of classes told his students that in every lecture, he will plant a falsehood. There job was to find it, correct it and report back on it in the next class.

At first the falsehoods were easy to spot. Sometimes the students were even able to correct it and report it before the end of class, but as the year went on, it got harder to spot, and so the students started to form groups to identify and then correct the falsehood. This got the students to start questioning everything the prof had said and discussing and validating everything from the class.

What a brilliant idea! He challenged them, and as a result they ended up reviewing and analysing everything he had said. Which I am sure lead to a deeper understanding and knowledge of the course material.

Finally towards the end of the course, the students had a lecture in which they could not not find the falsehood. When they finally admitted it in class, the Prof admitted that in the last lecture there had been no falsehoods. Some of the students pointed out that he had said in the very first class, that there would be a falsehood in every class. His response:

I lied.

Beautiful!!! Now how can I use this in one of my courses?