Learnlets

Secondary

Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Failing to Learn

28 December 2011 by Clark 12 Comments

My colleague Harold Jarche pointed me to a post by Dave Snowden about deliberative practice, which I found interesting for a facet not part of the key article (which makes worthwhile points).  Among a list of important requirements for meaningful activity that is part of effective learning (i.e. it’s not just 10K hours of practice that makes an expert, but what sort of practice has an effect), Dave cites that “at least half of … experiments should fail”.  Think about that for a minute.

What that’s saying is that at least half of the money you invest in new things could be conceived of as being wasted.  You might be considered a very ineffective manager if 50% of your investments don’t yield returns!  Now, first of all, I’m sure you recognize that failed experiments aren’t a complete waste, as long as you learning something (“when you lose, don’t lose the lesson” as the saying goes).  Still, 50%  might still seem like a high failure rate.  But is low risk really good?

I remember hearing a talk by a Canadian AI researcher (who’s name escapes me after all these years) who had studied the optimal ratio of success to failures in helping a system learn. Now this was particular to the learning algorithm he’d chosen, but his result was roughly that you learned fastest if you failed two-thirds of the time, or around 67% failure.  Now that’d be pretty disheartening, but if you could take emotion out of the equation, e.g. made it safe to fail, would learning faster be a big enough argument to support bigger failure?

It depends on a lot: on how well you discern the lessons from failure, how well you tolerate failure, how much social scrutiny and how tolerant that public viewpoint is, but it’s interesting to contemplate what might be an optimal context for failure, and given that, what would be the fastest way to learn, and capitalize on that learning.  You want your experiments to be designed in the first place to yield maximum information, but if they do, what would a valuable success rate be?

I do believe that they who adapt fastest will be the survivors.  That adaptation may be subconscious, but I think conscious reflection is a valuable component.  Certainly for sharing the learning, so no one else has to make the same mistakes.  So are you learning just as fast as you can?

Comments

  1. Bill Anderson says

    29 December 2011 at 6:49 AM

    Generative points about learning requiring a tolerance, if not a yen, for failure. But something about ” … they who adapt fastest will be the survivors” seems too narrow. Successful adaptation is sometimes defined as survival of the fitter, where fitter can have many dimensions. But survival of the faster is a one-dimensional measure. This seems counter to the earlier statement about effective learning depending on total time *and* the quality of practice. And what about those who learn slowly and whose learning is deep? Some urgency is needed, but If I get anxious about being fast I might not learn very much at all.

  2. Clark says

    29 December 2011 at 7:21 AM

    Bill, good point. I suppose failing fastest within the constraints of systematic experimentation and effective reflection, perhaps. Still, there are competitive pressures to keep up with, so it’s a balancing act. I do want deep learning, but also continual. Just looking to optimize. And frankly, I wouldn’t mind us slowing the pace so all are brought along, but that’s a different topic…:).

  3. Bill Anderson says

    30 December 2011 at 11:20 AM

    Clark, yes, unhappily, we cannot ignore competition and the pace of life. And that is a different topic. However, I ran across two recent articles related to this conversation. First, a Salon article by Alice Karekezi on why kids need solitude to learn: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/why_kids_need_solitude/singleton/. Diana Senechal, interviewed in this article, makes a case for how students need time to wrestle with material in order to learn it. The awkward experiences of not knowing the answer are conducive to deep learning. “Not knowing” is not the same as failure, but I see them as related in terms of learning. And second is an article on how the Finnish education system is explicitly not about competition, but cooperation. This is a stretch regarding your post, but your mention of “competition” created an association for me. That article is here: http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ .

    It would be good if you can find a citation to the talk you heard about a 67% failure rate as optimal. This number has already been stated on Twitter citing your blog post as a source. It would terrific to have something more than a hearsay reference.

  4. "Tim" Johnson says

    6 January 2012 at 2:25 AM

    A couple of thoughts occurred to me whilst reading both Bill’s and Clark’s comments. For me there is some difference between planning for failure, which I write into my teaching, learning from my own failure (which I suppose I also plan for) and public failure.

    If I want students to learn then I need to create situations in which they can be “tested”, that is a time when they can learn to experience knowing that they do not know. This chance to “fail” teaches them not just the subject knowledge they need but also how to tolerate failure and how to deal with failure.

    Every time I try to improve my teaching it is because of some sort of perceived failure. This is non-competative failure. In this 50-75% failure rate you mention do we include the failures we have identified for ourselves or only those failures others have identified for us?

    Thanks for the two articles Bill.

  5. Clark says

    25 January 2012 at 8:25 AM

    BTW, I’ve received the name of the researcher I heard speak on this, Brian Gaines, but despite contacting him I haven’t got a pointer to a paper, at least not yet.

  6. Cyanne Smith says

    11 October 2012 at 2:00 PM

    If you take the adrenalin–or emotion–out of failing, making it “safe to fail,” you lose the value of the failure.
    What is learned from failure is the ability to adapt, redirect, redesign, examine from a different perspective to effect change, progress, perhaps even survival. As I see it, the risk of failure needs to be there to both motivate the individual toward a successful resolution and to realize the benefit of the win.
    Just how fast do we learn from failure? Well, that’s a tough question. If the repercussions from a lost sale by your action/inaction caused you to lose your job, you would probably learn quickly. If a failed action caused few or no consequences, you may not learn at all. In my view, there are too many variables to adequately consider it.

Trackbacks

  1. Internet Time Alliance | Failing to Learn says:
    6 January 2012 at 12:16 PM

    […] http://blog.learnlets.com/?p=2371 Tweet Tags: Learning Related PostsDid you like this entry? Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.Related Posts Insights from DevLearn 2011 Working Smarter Glossary Not Without Purpose Mapping metrics ‘Real Learning’: The Role of Context Sight Mammals The Purpose of Education Seminal Documents A New Word for Learning top Leave a ReplyWant to join the discussion? Feel free to contribute! […]

  2. Internet Time Alliance | Sharing Failure says:
    26 January 2012 at 6:59 AM

    […] earlier talked about the importance of failure in learning, and now it’s revealed that Apple’s leadership […]

  3. eLearning Technology | | ITEC LansingITEC Lansing says:
    21 April 2012 at 1:25 AM

    […] Failing to Learn […]

  4. » Blog Archive » eLearning Learning Adds Personalized Subscriptions » Education Is Everything says:
    30 April 2012 at 2:54 AM

    […] Failing to Learn […]

  5. eLearning Learning Adds Personalized Subscriptions | Moodle LMS Hosting Solutions says:
    18 July 2012 at 7:25 PM

    […] Failing to Learn […]

  6. Be Competent - Whitney Johnson says:
    28 August 2017 at 11:48 AM

    […] you need some encouragement, check out this article suggesting we learn fastest when we fail 2/3 of the […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Clark Quinn

The Company

Search

Feedblitz (email) signup

Never miss a post
Your email address:*
Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

Pages

  • About Learnlets and Quinnovation

The Serious eLearning Manifesto

Manifesto badge

Categories

  • design
  • games
  • meta-learning
  • mindmap
  • mobile
  • social
  • strategy
  • technology
  • Uncategorized
  • virtual worlds

Blogroll

  • Charles Jennings
  • Christy Tucker
  • Connie Malamed
  • Dave's Whiteboard
  • Donald Clark's Plan B
  • Donald Taylor
  • Harold Jarche
  • Julie Dirksen
  • Kevin Thorn
  • Mark Britz
  • Mirjam Neelen & Paul Kirschner
  • Stephen Downes' Half an Hour

License

Previous Posts

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006

Amazon Affiliate

Required to announce that, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Mostly book links. Full disclosure.