Creating My Own ZPD?

How hard it is to not just look up answers! In the practice problems, there are links to the discussion forum where people put up the answers to people's questions. Today I was working on a problem involving Kirchhoff's laws, and I was unsure about the sign that should be applied to a specific voltage for different elements in the circuit. I thought I'd go to the forum and read about signs of voltages, but the page I landed on had the answer front and center. I tried to look away--was that the answer I saw? It was. I put it in and it helped me think about the rest of the problem--for which I needed to keep myself from looking at the rest of the answers.

I did see that one of the T.A.'s posted a response asking people not to post answers in the discussion forums. And by the way, there are some really smart people posting answers; I wonder how many people taking this class have already passed a similar course at another institution.

After seeing the answer I returned to the problem, and began trying out answers. Eventually, I went back to the textbook and read about how to assign the correct sign to a voltage when I am examining elements in a loop. This gave me the key I needed to answer the rest of the questions about how to solve for different elements in the circuit.

I know that some struggling is part of the learning--necessary for keeping that development moving along, to crudely paraphrase Vygotsky. But in MITx, I know that the answers are not far away. It's as easy for me to find the answer as it is to check e-mail. With some fortitude, I was able to figure out the rest of the answers. This makes me think about the zone of proximal development and how this zone is defined in activity when my "more knowledgeable peer" is the online textbook, or a post in a discussion forum. The particular difficulty I have is determining exactly what I don't know, or (in other words) my potential level of development and the right activities for developing a conception that is closer to my potential level. In MITx, I am painfully aware of my actual level of development and am grateful for the tips

How is my understanding of circuits changing--I am learning more about resistance and the different kind of elements within a lumped circuit. It really is simplified by Kirchoff's Laws that turn circuits into junior high math problems, provided you can figure out where to put the sign on currents and voltages, which I am learning to do, though very slowly.