To be honest: Who really bursts into cheers when they make a mistake? Our ego can handle errors more or less, but they often leave a sour taste. In this article, we explain how you can use making mistakes as a motivating and effective learning method in online courses.

“Set - 6!”

Traditionally, failure is often viewed as something negative, something to be avoided. In the educational world, especially in schools, mistakes are mostly equated with bad grades and failure. Modern pedagogy, particularly in E-Learning, questions this mindset: mistakes are increasingly seen as valuable learning tools that can enrich and accelerate the learning process. The approach of “learning through failure,” or Failing Forward, provides the opportunity to use mistakes to deepen understanding and make learners better problem solvers.

Let’s take a look at the psychological and educational advantages that Failing Forward offers in the context of E-Learning, and how online courses can be structured and designed to fully leverage the potential of mistakes.

The Psychology of Making Mistakes

Mistakes are a natural part of learning and are neurologically crucial for the learning process. Every time we make a mistake, neural connections are made in the brain that help us improve and solidify what we’ve learned. The so-called "error correction loops" in the brain allow us to respond better to similar challenges in the future.

However, to truly use mistakes as a learning tool, the fear of failure must be reduced. Many learners, especially in traditional educational systems, fear making mistakes since they are seen as failures. In E-Learning, however, there are innovative ways to overcome this fear and establish a positive error culture.

Advantages of Failing Forward

1. Promoting Resilience and Adaptability

When learners understand and accept their mistakes as part of the learning process, it strengthens their resilience: they are empowered to overcome setbacks without lasting impairment. In the digital learning environment, where progress is often represented by completing learning units or chapters or by reaching course levels, learners can use their mistakes to adjust their problem-solving strategies and continuously improve.

2. Deeper Understanding through Problem Solving

Mistakes force learners to rethink their previous thinking patterns and find alternative solutions. This process of cognitive restructuring leads to a deeper understanding of the learning topic, as the learner not only knows the “right answer” but also understands why certain approaches do not work.

3. Self-Directed Learning and Personal Responsibility

One of the greatest advantages of online courses is that participants can learn at their own pace. This gives them the freedom to experiment with assigned tasks and recognize their mistakes without the pressure of being evaluated immediately. When they have the opportunity in the course to analyze their mistakes independently and learn from them, it strengthens their confidence in their own abilities.

How to Effectively Integrate Mistakes into Online Courses

For learning from mistakes to be effective, online courses need to be designed accordingly. Here are a few suggestions on how you can implement this using your blink.it learning platform:

1. Error-Friendly Tasks

To use mistakes as a learning tool, you should design tasks in such a way that learners are encouraged to make mistakes and learn from them. Instead of using tasks that only aim for the “right” answer, your participants could try out various approaches to the solution. This makes the learning process more flexible and gives learners the freedom to make mistakes without being negatively judged.

Suggestion: Incorporate frequent tasks in your blink.it learning platform via the “Quiz” and “Exam” options that serve your participants as practical applications of what they've learned. In the settings, make sure to give them as much freedom as possible in their answers and refrain from time limits for responding. This way, it is “not so bad” if their first answer is wrong or if they take a bit longer to solve the task.

2. Feedback on Incorrect Answers

Feedback plays a crucial role in learning from mistakes. Instead of just letting participants know that an answer is wrong, you could inform them of the reason, guiding them toward the correct solution. Through good, constructive error feedback, your participants can reflect on their mistakes and rethink the correct solution.

Suggestion: Set up multiple-choice tasks on your blink.it learning platform so that participants see a hint text for every incorrect answer. In the hint text, explain why that answer is incorrect, and you can even add a tip leading the participant toward the correct answer. Also, be sure to turn off answering time limits and allow them to revisit the task.

3. Iterative Learning Methods

Iterative learning methods encourage participants to repeatedly work on similar problems and learn from their previous mistakes. With each new iteration, understanding grows, and learners are encouraged to adjust their strategies and improve their skills. By gradually increasing the difficulty, learners are challenged to learn from their earlier mistakes.

Suggestion: Set up a series of practice tasks in your blink.it course that build on or revisit the potential mistakes from the previous task. This way, learners progress from task to task with increasing difficulty toward a specific “larger” task goal. Incorrect solution attempts appear repeatedly in altered forms so that the learner can eventually recognize and exclude them consciously.

4. Safe Learning Environment

A crucial condition for learners to understand their mistakes as learning opportunities is the feeling of safety. The structure of your course should aim to create a safe environment where mistakes do not have negative consequences for your participants, but instead, are recognized as part of the learning process.

Suggestion: In a Hybrid or Blended Learning course, deliberately incorporate course sections where each participant learns alone without time pressure. These course sections will then contain practice tasks that consider the above points 1 to 3. Making mistakes is much easier for many people to process when they are not under the pressure that the presence of others in a face-to-face event or online meeting can trigger as “witnesses of their failure.”

5. Promoting Self-Reflection

Self-reflection is an important part of learning through mistakes. By documenting and analyzing their progress and mistakes, participants in an online course can recognize their weaknesses and work on them.

Suggestion: Add a reflection prompt behind the task links in your blink.it learning platform. In the comment section of this prompt, participants can exchange views on their mistakes or errors with each other and with you as the course instructor.

This has three useful effects: On the one hand, participants find it easier to accept their mistakes when they realize they are not the only “dummies,” and on the other hand, the learning deepens through the mutual exchange on the assigned task. Additionally, as the course instructor, you gain useful insights into which tasks are easier or harder for your learners, which you can then use for designing future courses. It’s a win-win-win situation.

Failing Forward as a Valuable Learning Strategy

Although the concept of learning from mistakes offers many advantages, there are also challenges that you should consider when implementing it in your online courses:

• Motivation and Frustration
  Mistakes can be frustrating, especially when they occur repeatedly. Learners need to be motivated to keep going, even when they experience setbacks. Here, it’s important to provide positive reinforcement in the course at points where mistakes can occur (e.g., through hint texts for incorrect answers) and to present mistakes as natural and necessary steps to success (e.g., through a video where you explain Failing Forward to your participants).

• Time Commitment and Patience
  Learning through failure can be time-consuming, as it often requires several attempts to develop a deep understanding of the learning material. Therefore, learners must exhibit a certain level of patience and be aware that their progress may not always be immediately visible. You can also explain this to your participants, for example, through a video about your Failing Forward learning method at the beginning of your course.

E-Learning provides ideal conditions for effectively utilizing mistakes as a learning strategy. Through a mistake-friendly learning environment, iterative feedback, and the promotion of self-reflection, your participants can turn their mistakes into valuable learning moments.

The Failing Forward method not only strengthens your participants’ problem-solving skills but also their positive approach toward failure and their deeper understanding of the learning content. Ultimately, this approach contributes to your participants not only acquiring professional competence through the course content but also learning how to acquire new knowledge more confidently and responsibly.

We hope this article has given you a few useful insights, and we wish you much success with the Failing Forward learning method!