Proposal Title
Failing forward: How can we teach our students to embrace failure, and bounce back from it?
Session Type
Presentation
Room
FNB 1200
Start Date
3-7-2019 1:00 PM
Keywords
productive failure, resilience, failing forward
Primary Threads
Teaching and Learning Science
Abstract
Failure is a crucial component of science, however amongst undergraduate students, failure is often viewed in a negative light. How can we encourage our students to see the value of failure, and learn how to fail well? To answer this question, we began with a meta-analysis of productive failure in the literature, resulting in a scaffold of approaches for both teaching and assessing productive failure in different disciplines. Jumping off from what we learned from this meta-analysis, we have initiated a “re-framing” of a large introductory biology course to focus on teaching students about the value of failure in both science and everyday life, to model failure to the students, and to engage the students in “productive failure” through experimental design and science narratives. In this session, we will share the resources we have developed, as well as guiding the audience through some “failing forward” activities.
Diehl, B., Dy-Boarman, E. A., Bottenberg, M. M. & Mobley-Bukstein, W. Utilizing desirable difficulties for sterile compounding training in a skills-based laboratory course. Curr. Pharm. Teach. Learn.10,469–472 (2018).
Kapur, M. Productive failure in mathematical problem solving. Instr. Sci.38,523–550 (2010).
Tulis, M., Steuer, G. & Dresel, M. Learning from errors: A model of individual processes. Front. Learn. Res.4,12–26 (2016).
Elements of Engagement
We will lead the group through a course syllabi that has been re-framed in the context of productive failure, and will engage in a “failing forward” activity. We will also distribute materials and activities that we have developed for students to engage in failure.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Failing forward: How can we teach our students to embrace failure, and bounce back from it?
FNB 1200
Failure is a crucial component of science, however amongst undergraduate students, failure is often viewed in a negative light. How can we encourage our students to see the value of failure, and learn how to fail well? To answer this question, we began with a meta-analysis of productive failure in the literature, resulting in a scaffold of approaches for both teaching and assessing productive failure in different disciplines. Jumping off from what we learned from this meta-analysis, we have initiated a “re-framing” of a large introductory biology course to focus on teaching students about the value of failure in both science and everyday life, to model failure to the students, and to engage the students in “productive failure” through experimental design and science narratives. In this session, we will share the resources we have developed, as well as guiding the audience through some “failing forward” activities.
Diehl, B., Dy-Boarman, E. A., Bottenberg, M. M. & Mobley-Bukstein, W. Utilizing desirable difficulties for sterile compounding training in a skills-based laboratory course. Curr. Pharm. Teach. Learn.10,469–472 (2018).
Kapur, M. Productive failure in mathematical problem solving. Instr. Sci.38,523–550 (2010).
Tulis, M., Steuer, G. & Dresel, M. Learning from errors: A model of individual processes. Front. Learn. Res.4,12–26 (2016).