How hard is too hard? Is there an optimal failure rate for learning? Robert Wilson, Amitai Shenhav, Mark Straccia, and Jonathan Cohen would say yes.  In their 2018 study, The Eighty Five Percent Rule for Optimal Learning, the researchers set out to discover the “sweet spot” for difficulty in academia. They found that the spot where the most learning occurs –one that is not too hard so as to create frustration, but not so easy so as to not warrant doing– is a 15% failure rate.  What does this mean for students?  At its most simplistic level, it means that if you get 15% of the answers on an assessment wrong the test is at the optimal difficulty. 15% wrong? Wait that is only an 85% (or a B+), won’t that mess with my GPA (and perhaps my self-esteem)!? 

While I don’t think we can go so far as to say that an 85% is the ideal grade, I do think that we can do more to design classes that both encourage and reward failure.

Many of the most successful and innovative companies encourage and or reward failure. For example, Google is known for the way it applauds failure. In a February 2016, Astro Teller, head of X (formerly Google X), talks about the secret of the “moonshot factory.” The Moonshot Factory, by their own credo, is “creating radical new technologies to solve the world’s problems.” The kind of problems they’re trying to solve require more than just ingenuity, they requite trail, failure, iteration, and perseverance. Teller describes the Moonshot Factory as a messy place where failure is rewarded. One of their mantras is “sometimes shifting your perspective is more important than being smart.” Watch Astro Teller’s TedTalk here.

But, wait! Isn’t school all about showing that you are smart? Perhaps, but being the smartest one in the room doesn’t necessarily mean that you have learned anything. At the end of the day we don’t just want smart students, we want innovative students who will be able to thrive in today’s workforce.  In a 2017 study, “Learning from Errors,” Janet Metcalfe found that “errorful learning followed by corrective feedback is beneficial to learning.”

Failure, however, does take an emotional toll on the individual (hence the 85% rule). But situational failure also matters.  It is easier for people to fail on less meaningful tasks than on meaningful ones – weekly quizzes vs the mid-term or final for example. The key is balance. When designing assessments for your students think about scaffolding them so that failure is part of the process. Encourage experimentation by:

• Allowing multiple attempts on weekly quizzes
• Rewarding efforts that show improvement
• Scaffolding assignments so that drafting is encouraged and rewarded
• Providing less instruction on early assignments to encourage innovation and creativity

At the end of the day we want our students to leave our campus having learned that sometimes failure is a good thing.