Share Paper: Embracing Failure as a Stepping Stone in the Learning Process
Abstract: Formative assessment that focuses on ill-defined problems enables students to build skills and processes to tackle challenging summative assessments. Students should be given class time to collaboratively develop their designs and recognize their own failure. When class time focuses on ill-defined problems teachers are able to give feedback on the process students took to arrive at their end product. Through describing and analyzing the pedagogical choices behind three eleventh and twelfth grade engineering projects, this paper provides an overview of how ill-defined problems can be addressed by developing student autonomy, growth mindset, and use of iterative design process.