This is the fifth semester that I have used the quality of failure essay as an end-of-semester exercise in meta-cognitive reflection, after Amanda* first posted about the concept almost three years ago.
Even though the essay is only two to three pages, I make it worth the equivalent of half of a letter grade because it forces students to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own learning. Or so I thought.
Out of my forty-five students this semester, sixteen failed to submit the assignment on time or at all. This occurred despite an eight-day window in which students could upload their work to the course website and my continuing effort to prevent them from engaging in learned helplessness. Those who did not meet the deadline ranged from freshmen to seniors and most of them had performed at a mediocre (or worse) level throughout the semester. Some approached me after the final to ask if they could turn in this and other unsubmitted assignments to salvage their grades (no). Conversely and as usual, the best students submitted their essays the earliest.
To avoid the stream of “Uh, I forgot” emails next semester, I’m creating a “failure to learn from failure” assignment, worth half as much as the quality of failure essay. This second essay will be only for those students who do not meet the deadline of the first one, and I’ll set the window of availability for forty-eight hours. Students will have to specify why they failed to take advantage of the first essay in addition to following the same instructions on the essay’s content.
Although my perceptions might be getting clouded by age, I believe that my experience this semester is part of an increasingly stark bimodal distribution among students at my employer. Some come in already possessing the motivation and skills necessary to succeed in college. A nearly equal portion arrive assuming that they will never be held accountable for their willed ignorance. Unfortunately some in the latter category apparently never discover in four years of college that this assumption is false.