Re: Failure, Learning, and Achievement

steveehrmann — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:00:06 -0000

As a doctoral student, I co-taught a course called "Failure in Human Systems" at MIT (1974). One lesson is that failure and learning are closely related: each usually involves a mismatch between expectation and reality. If it's failure, that mismatch is so threatening that the person turns away for protection and perhaps in shame. If it's treated as 'learning,' the person has the means and courage to turn toward it, to try figuring out the cause of the mismatch.

One of our students, Lew Erwin, wrote a fascinating case study about the warranty system in consumer durables. In those days, TVs had tubes. Manufacturers created warranties in order to get data on which tubes were failing, and paid repairmen to replace defective parts, so the consumer would get a free call. Lew found that many consumers called in repairs for problems not actually caused by defective parts (e.g., set not plugged in). To avoid billing the consumer, the repairman would pull out a perfectly good component. The TV company was getting false data (that the tubes that were easiest to reach were also the most likely to fail.)

I know this isn't the kind of moral you were asking for, but it says a lot to me about the complexity of both failure and learning.

Re: the "distributed" in distributed learning environments

steveehrmann — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:14:11 -0000

If your OTH piece is going to have footnotes, I can suggest one. As a credit-grubbing academic type, I hesitantly claim the credit for coining the term "distributed learning" in Stephen C. Ehrmann, "Improving a Distributed Learning Environment with Computers and Telecommunications," in Mindweave: Communication, Computers and Distance Education, Robin Mason and Anthony Kaye (eds.), Oxford and NY: Pergamon, 1988, 255-259.

I mention it because of my definition of distributed learning. I coined the term to point out that most people acted as though education were purely local: the only things that matter to the quality of my course on my campus: my students, my classroom, my institution's library, etc. But technologies such as the printing press and, more recently, distributed computing have resulted in educational environments that are increasingly distributed, in other words where students, relevant experts, tools, and resources can sometimes be physically separated from one another (and where the resources might not be in any one geographic place). Asynchronicity also began playing a bigger role in distributed nature of learning with the printing press.

So I wasn't defining 'distributed learning' as 'distance learning' as many readers assumed. Nor was I saying that the characteristic of being distributed only began with the Internet. When you look at the distributed character of a learning environment, across space and time, you're looking at many of its possibilities.

I hope at least a bit of this is helpful as you write your article.

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Re: Failure, Learning, and Achievement

Re: the "distributed" in distributed learning environments