Start your learning with an effective failure!

Should we make the starting of a learning process as simple as possible? From sports to arts, science to crafts, schools to post-graduate programs, there is an overemphasis on simplifying the learning journey. Arguments? To avoid early disincentives, to establish a smooth warm up, and to engage the not-yet-fully-engaged participants. It seems an appealing argument, especially in today’s life, when all answers are expected to be found by a simple query command (with no respect to ChatGPT or alike!).?

But the science of learning shows the problematic consequences of making the starting point too easy. In fact, designing some serious challenges and making learners fail early on in their learning journey are helpful for creating a deeper layer of learning capabilities. In their study (Sinha et al. 2021) showed that when learners had limited instruction on how to solve a data-science problem, they initially failed and were lost. However, in their subsequent attempts, they developed a stronger “constructive reasoning” capability, compared with their peers who were provided with clear instructions early-on in their learning.?

As learning designers, sometimes it is easy to make it all simple, yet our challenge is to design effective failures and complexities. The question is: what qualifies as an “effective failure” for learning?