Introducing Failure as a Deliberate Instructional Strategy to Enhance Learning and Academic Outcomes

Abstract

Students often dread to fail in an academic course and are worried about the consequence that follows. Failure seems to have a negative connotation among students at large. While the literature on organizational learning, innovation, and entrepreneurship often focus on failure as a critical ingredient to learning. What makes academic failure less acceptable to that of corporate? In this paper, we explore the importance of failure in the learning process and how the frequency of failure impacts learning and academic outcome. We conducted an experiment with sixty management students who played a business simulation game. We measured their academic response to failure, their perception about their performance, and the perceived importance & relevance of the task. We found that in a situated learning environment, students tend to persist in the event of encountering failure and not relent.