Honestly: Who really bursts into cheers when they make a mistake? Our ego can handle errors more or less well; however, they often leave a sour aftertaste. 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 usually equated with bad grades and failure. Modern pedagogy, particularly e-learning, questions this mindset: mistakes are increasingly seen as valuable learning tools that can enrich and accelerate the learning process. The concept of 'learning through failure' or Failing Forward offers the opportunity to use mistakes as a means to deepen understanding and make learners better problem solvers.
Let’s take a look at the psychological and pedagogical 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.
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The Psychology of Making Mistakes
Mistakes are a natural part of learning and are crucial for the learning process from a neurological perspective. Every time we make a mistake, neural connections in the brain are formed that help us improve and solidify what we've learned. The so-called 'error correction loops' in the brain enable 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 as they are viewed as failures. In e-learning, however, innovative ways exist to overcome this fear and establish a positive culture of mistakes.
Benefits of Failing Forward
1. Promotion of 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 a digital learning environment where progress is often represented by completed learning units or chapters, or by reaching course levels, learners can leverage their mistakes to adjust their solution strategies and continuously improve.
2. Deeper Understanding through Problem Solving
Mistakes compel learners to rethink their previous thought processes 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 “correct answer,” but also understands why certain approaches do not work.
3. Self-Directed Learning and Personal Responsibility
One of the greatest benefits 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 immediate evaluation. When they have the opportunity to analyze and learn from their mistakes independently, their confidence in their own abilities increases.
How to Effectively Integrate Mistakes into Online Courses
For learning through mistakes to work effectively, online courses must be designed accordingly. Here are some suggestions on how to implement this with the help of your blink.it learning platform:
1. Mistake-Friendly Tasks
To use mistakes as a learning instrument, you should design tasks in a way that encourages learners to make mistakes and learn from them. Instead of using tasks that only aim for the “correct” answer, your participants could experiment with different solutions. This makes the learning process more flexible, and learners have the freedom to make mistakes without it being negatively evaluated.
Suggestion: Incorporate frequent tasks in your blink.it learning platform via the “Quiz” and “Exam” options that serve as practical applications of what has been learned. In the settings, make sure to give them as much freedom as possible in their responses and eliminate time limits for answering. This way, it’s “not such a big deal” if their first answer is wrong or if they take a bit longer to solve the task.
2. Feedback on Wrong Answers
Feedback plays a crucial role in learning through mistakes. Instead of merely informing participants that an answer is wrong, you could explain the reason to guide them towards the correct solution. Through good, constructive error feedback, your participants can reflect on their mistakes and rethink the correct solution.
Suggestion: Set up your blink.it learning platform so that multiple-choice tasks display a hint text for each wrong answer. In the hint text, explain why this answer is wrong, and you can even insert a tip that guides the participant towards the correct answer. Also, ensure to disable time limits for responses and allow for the task to be repeated.
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 past mistakes.
Suggestion: Set up a series of practice tasks in your blink.it course that build on or revisit the possible errors from the previous task. This way, the learner progresses from task to task with increasing difficulty towards a specific “larger” task goal. Incorrect solution approaches reappear in modified forms multiple times so that the learner can eventually consciously recognize and exclude them.
4. Safe Learning Environment
A crucial prerequisite for learners to perceive their mistakes as learning opportunities is a sense of safety. Your course structure should aim to create a safe environment where mistakes do not have negative consequences for your participants but are recognized as part of the learning process.
Suggestion: In a hybrid or blended learning course, intentionally incorporate course sections in which each participant learns alone without time pressure. These sections would include practice tasks that take the above points 1 to 3 into account. Making mistakes is much easier for many people when they are not under the pressure that the presence of others in a face-to-face event or online meeting can create as “witnesses of their failure.”
5. Promote Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is an essential component of learning through mistakes. By documenting and analyzing their progress and mistakes, participants in an online course can identify their weaknesses and work on them.
Suggestion: Add a reflection link behind the task links in your blink.it platform. In the comment section of this link, participants can exchange their mistakes and errors with each other as well as with you as the course leader.
This has three useful effects: Firstly, participants find it easier to accept their mistakes when they realize that they are not the only “dummies,” and secondly, the learning is deepened through the mutual exchange about the assigned tasks. Additionally, you as the course leader gain useful insights into which tasks are easier or harder for your learners, which you can use for the design of future courses. It’s a win-win-win situation.
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Failing Forward as a Valuable Learning Strategy
Although the concept of learning through mistakes offers many advantages, there are also challenges that you should consider when implementing it in your online courses:
#### Motivation and Frustration
Errors can be frustrating, especially if they occur repeatedly. Learners need to be motivated to continue even when they experience setbacks. Here, it’s essential that you provide positive reinforcement at points in the course where errors can occur (e.g., through hint texts for incorrect answers) and present mistakes as natural and necessary steps to success (e.g., through a video explaining Failing Forward to your participants).#### Time Investment and Patience
Learning through failure can be time-consuming, as it often requires several attempts to develop a deep understanding of the learning content. Learners must therefore exhibit a certain level of patience and be aware that their progress is not always immediately visible. You can also explain this to your participants, for example, through a video about your Failing Forward learning method at the start 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 turn their mistakes into valuable learning moments.
The Failing Forward method not only strengthens your participants’ problem-solving skills but also their positive approach to failure and their deeper understanding of your learning content. In the long term, this approach helps your participants not only to gain professional competence from the content of your course but also to learn how to acquire new knowledge with more confidence and self-responsibility.
