Programming failure
How important is failure to learning?
I think about learning when I’m weightlifting a lot. Is that weird? Over the summer, I tried to hit a new squat PR, and I failed. I had to completely drop the barbell because, well, my legs did not want to stand me back up again. As of a few weeks ago, I was able to squat that weight for four reps successfully. So what happened in between, and how does this connect to failure being important to learning?
When you’re lifting weights, you can do a lot of the movements without really knowing the movement you’re doing. Here’s an Instagram reel that talks about doing a movement vs. using a muscle to perform the movement:
Oh, you didn’t know you were signing up for a newsletter about exercising, you say?
What I learned from failing a squat
I really had to reassess what I knew about squatting and what made my squats successful. In practicing squatting at lower weights, I made note of:
The points at which each foot drove into the ground (not just from the heel)
Actively pushing my knees out to engage the glute medius
The feeling of driving the floor away vs. using my back to lift the weight up/stand up
My focus on keeping my core tight and my back tight
Simply put, failing my squat forced me to examine how I was squatting and where I could improve. I took those improvements and put them into practice. I learned. I could probably have kept on squatting at lower weights doing what I was doing–the failure pushed me to better understand what I was doing.
When do we encourage failure in our learners?
Most of our first experiences with formal learning occur in school, where success is incentivized (through grades) and failure is penalized (also through grades). This doesn’t leave a lot of room for failure, and I think, leaves the opportunity for a deeper learning on the table. Being wrong about something, failing something, offers us a better opportunity to understand when we are right and why. When learning skills like learning a new tech tool, I believe failure can give us the confidence we need to explore and solve problems, especially when we encounter a behavior that is unexpected.
I’ve worked with so many people that are afraid to try things in technology because they’re afraid they’ll break something. I promise, you (usually) won’t!1 Sometimes, people are embarrassed to walk me through what they are doing when I’m helping them with a tech tool “because they might mess up.” That’s okay! Messing up means we can learn!
Generally, in formal learning, I don’t think we encourage failure enough.
How can we encourage failure in our learners?
Battling the mindset that failure should be avoided is pretty tough. The formal education system really grinds the idea into people’s minds that being wrong is bad. So how can we encourage failure, and learning from that failure, in our asynchronous and synchronous training? Here are just some ideas to start:
Synchronous training
Share your mistakes: Be candid with your learners! Share an example where you did something wrong and explain how you corrected it. This can help normalize failure for your learners.
Ask learners to share their mistakes: Then, ask your learners to share something similar! This can be helpful if you have power-user attending training especially. It demonstrates that even successful power users had to start somewhere.
Share a “reset point” with learners: This would vary from product to product, but if a user messes something up, where can they go back so that they don’t need to start all the way over but they can wipe out any mistakes they’ve made?
Explicitly share resources and where they can help if learners encounter an issue.
Asynchronous training
Allow quiz retakes: If learners are taking some kind of formative assessment like a quiz, allow many re-takes. This can force learners to review their responses and search for the correct responses–hopefully, in the end, better understanding what makes the right answer correct.
Encourage reflections: Offer opportunities for reflection. Ask the learners to submit how trying a new tool felt for the first time: did they succeed? Would they do something differently next time?
Discuss mistakes as a community: Create a community space specifically to discuss mistakes. Learners can share where they struggled, and tips for others on how to avoid the same errors.
The last thing we want our learners to do when they’re trying a new tool or strategy is to give up. Programming failure can help people learn what the best next steps are if they hit a road bump. What else can they try? Where can they get help? Success is not a linear journey, but learners need to know where they can turn should something unexpected happen that prevents them from reaching their goal.
Here, I’ve talked about why failure is important to learning. Next week, I’m going to do a kind of year in review post.
It is December, after all.
Thanks for reading, see you next week!
If you try something new and melt down your entire computer, I’m sorry, that’s on you. I am not liable.
Sound advice! Reminds me of Jessica Lahey's book, THE GIFT OF FAILURE