Over 300 attendees joined us for three days of inspiring presentations and engaging discussions at the 2024 Emerging Pedagogies Summit, which explored the theme of Designing and Scaling Transformative Learning For All. Through their work with lifelong learners, LILE staff regularly engage with both the challenges and opportunities these emerging pedagogies present. In this series of Summit reflections, they share with you their major takeaways from each session.
On the second day of the Emerging Pedagogies Summit, I had the pleasure of listening to Sharmla Chetty, CEO of Duke Corporate Education, Richard Freishtat, Associate Dean of Executive Education at Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and moderator Adam Klein, Associate Vice President for Economic Development at Duke University, offer their views during the session “Perspectives on Workforce Development and Lifetime Learning.” A key insight that they shared focused on the critical importance of failure as an intrinsic part of learning and growth, rather than an unacceptable outcome to be avoided at all costs. Learning from failure, they argued, should be integrated into curriculum design.
This is an essential point that also presents critical challenges for educators moving forward. Failure is an inescapable part of life, both in and out of the workplace, and to help our learners succeed, we need to equip them with the ability to deal with failure. The big question, in my view, is what failure, presented as part of the learning experience, looks like. For example, if we provide a safe space for learners to fail—with a tacit understanding that the failure has little to no consequence in the grand scheme of things (since they will be “safe”)—then how fully immersed and invested can learners be in that experience? How close to the real thing should the simulation be? The scariest part of failure is that there is no guarantee that you will succeed. Rather than being a roadblock, however, this question invites educators to be creative and thoughtful. As a Learning Experience Designer, I am especially curious about this question in the context of the online learning space, where so much of the learning depends on the learner’s will. I am excited to ponder this question with my team as we continue to work on creating learning experiences that are potentially life-changing.
Microsoft Copilot was used to copyedit the final-stage draft of this blog post.