Erin Baumgartner is an award-winning teacher and biology education researcher.

I find writing to be very challenging. What you are reading is the sixth version of this introduction. Stories about former students, a narrative of teaching my kid to drive, and even recounting my dating history have all been contenders for opening a discussion on why building on failure is such a powerful teaching and learning tool. In writing this blog post, I have circled back to refine and shape this first paragraph more than once in each stage of the writing process. Each failed introduction has provided an opportunity to consider what I really want to convey and how to do so in a more effective way; I hope that at this point I’ve achieved that goal, and you are ready to find out what my writing struggles have to do with teaching and learning.  

In addition to revising my opening paragraph, I also set it down and avoided working on the task for a few days as I toured the continent of Hyrule with Link and Princess Zelda on Nintendo. For me, as for many people, the default response to a setback can also be counterproductive, preventing the completion of a challenging activity. When I asked a group of college instructors how their students responded to setbacks in their courses, the responses were familiar: increasing disengagement and absence, avoidance of assignments, cheating, and even anger. In all these cases, students are seeing mistakes/errors as off-ramps taking them away from the successful completion of a course of study. One of the most meaningful things an instructor can do is to flip that narrative, helping students see their mistakes/errors as on-ramps to more powerful and lasting learning.  

Help Students Reflect on Errors  
Incorporating activities early in the term to guide students in recognizing, addressing, and reflecting on errors is a great way to embark on their learning experiment. Just like mentoring students in a scientific experiment, we should support students when they encounter setbacks and encourage them to dig into what happened, ask questions about sources of error, and refine their ideas. I always ask my students to complete a short multiple-choice quiz relatively early in the term, which is followed immediately by a reflection activity. Students identify mistakes, but rather than simply making corrections and moving on, they analyze their experience.  

First, they explain why the answer they selected was inaccurate. The goal is to encourage them to explore the gaps in their understanding of the concept in the context of the question prompt and distractors. After identifying the nature of the error, students then explain what they think contributed to their mistake. In addition to describing how the distractor they chose drew them away from the correct answer, students often also comment on their study strategies. “I honestly only studied just before class” is a common response and relevant to the final part of the reflection, which is to describe what they can do differently in the future in approaching a similar quiz. This last question is essential, because it reinforces the iterative learning experiment they are engaged in and reminds them that the experience they’ve just had is itself a learning opportunity.  

To build on that learning opportunity, I follow up with a metacognitive activity that presents students with explicit practice identifying distractors in a multiple-choice question. I ask students to build their own multiple-choice questions and explain how they crafted each distractor as a plausible wrong answer by identifying the misconception or describing the inaccuracy. They then share their question with another student, who practices identifying the distractors in a think-pair-share format as they discuss the concept and the potential mistakes they could make around it.  

Normalize Asking Questions as Part of the Learning Process 
For many students, this explicit focus on learning through reflection on errors can be unsettling at first. It is hard to openly acknowledge being wrong; it is not a skill students often see modeled. Student experience with the privilege of second chances is variable, and some students’ experience with making errors is largely punitive. Scientific disciplinary practice provides us with a good model. Scientists continuously refine ideas with evidence and normalize having questions. A simple adjustment in language makes a big difference. Asking students, “What questions do you have?” instead of “Does anyone have any questions?” makes wondering and asking the standard, rather than making students feel they are missing some knowledge that everyone else seems to have. I like to normalize the value of questions during the first few class sessions by addressing (either during class or posted to a discussion forum, depending on class modality) a question that a student has asked over email or during office hours. By articulating how much I value the question and how helpful it is to the entire class, I also am emphasizing the value of not knowing something. If I haven’t gotten a student question, I go ahead and make one up myself but credit it to an anonymous student. After a few sessions of pretend student questions, the real ones begin to emerge more frequently.  

Reduce the Consequences of Failure 
Students always benefit from transparency, but especially when experiencing something new. A grading contract is one of the most effective tools I have found to provide transparency around how reflecting and improving benefits learning. This alternative grading strategy commits instructors and students to shared goals and requirements, including workload and timeline. Students understand the standards I’ve set as well as how they will get feedback and monitor their progress so they can work to improve without penalty. I also include some flexibility in the grading contract, giving students the option to drop a few assignments so they can choose where they want to improve. Some students will have the resources and experience to succeed early without many adjustments or revisions, while others need a little more time and support to reach the course objectives. My students have shared with me that their grading contract empowered them to make choices throughout the term to take care of themselves or others in illness, attend important family events, or respond to sudden disruptions like flat tires or work emergencies.  

Openly recognizing and embracing that we all experience setbacks empowers students to fail forward and learn from mistakes rather than giving up when life or a lack of experience gets in the way. Most importantly, students have shared with me shifts in their own perspectives in valuing their learning, persisting with a course and even with college after a setback when they might have given up. As with so much of what we teach in science, that perseverance is a meaningful life skill.  

MEET THE AUTHOR

Erin Baumgartner is an award-winning teacher and biology education researcher. She earned her PhD in zoology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, where she remained for an additional six years as a science curriculum developer and researcher. In 2008, she joined Western Oregon University, where she coordinated and taught nonmajors introductory biology. Erin has experience engaging learners at every level and is expert at making complex concepts approachable. She now works as a content development specialist for Norton, helping instructors find success each semester.