Teach Your Students to Fail

One of the biggest challenges I faced when I was an undergraduate student was the need to be perfect. I put so much pressure on myself to never be less than perfect. The irony is that I almost failed out of my undergraduate program because of this intrinsic pressure. The details of that experience are a story for another time. Since then, I have worked hard to find ways to break the need for perfection.

As a professor, I am able to quickly identify the students that remind me of my younger self. In my data analytics class, the pursuit of perfection can hinder the learning process. With data coding or data visualization, the best way to improve is to get the first version done. Putting pressure on yourself to have a perfect first draft will cause you a lot of pain, and ruin the learning experience.

Student Need to Embrace Failure

According to this Harvard Business article, we need to teach our students how to bounce back from failure, but our rigid academic environment doesn't provide the flexibility needed to incorporate these lessons into our classes. Teaching students how to recover from setbacks requires us to teach them about FLEX- Failure Happens, Lean in, Elect a positive response, and X-ray (be transparent).

To help my students embrace failure, I am borrowing a lesson plan from Entrepreneurship Professor of Practice and Director of The Zembrodt Center for Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation at Thomas More, Jeni Al Bahrani. On the first day of class we will be designing the worst cereal.

The World’s Worst Cereal

We often put pressure on students to find the best, but this assignment requires them to design the worst. I have watched Jeni do this lesson several times, and I am amazed at how students’ put their guard down. How they quickly embrace their creativity and express their excitement. The assignment grants them permission to be as wild with their thoughts as they can be, it removes any boundaries on creativity and any pressure to be “right”.

We need more innovation in the classroom, and we need more opportunities to fail (both for students and instructors). To innovate we will have to fail, might as well embrace it and teach our students how to bounce back from it.