Workshop:
Designing for Productive Failure
Much of the appeal of educational games stems from the notion that players are persistent despite frequent failure and the possibility of re-producing that persistence in education. Our symposium brings together researchers in the humanities, cognitive science, and educational psychology as well as industry producers to discuss what makes failure appealing, why failure relates to learning, and how to design for productive failure. We explain the paradox of why we seek out failure in video games when it makes us feel bad. Confusion, in particular, was found to facilitate learning when experimentally induced via the presentation of system breakdowns, contradictory information, and false feedback in a learning task with computer agents. In another study, we illustrate how individual differences in motivation affect responses to failure. We hope to generate discussions on how research can inform design and provide an example of a math program strategically designed to foster productive failure.
Cathy Tran, Blair Lehman, David Dockterman, Jesper Juul, Sidney D'Mello, Art Graesser
