Learning From and About Failure in a Hybrid Collaborative Game Environment

Traditional classroom culture and social norms might stigmatize failure and hurt learners' self-esteem. Consequently, learners might miss learning opportunities by avoiding failure to cope with the negativity. Scholars argue the importance of creating learning environments that allow learners to reframe failure as learning opportunities through iteration. This paper re-examines an instructional failure session in a hybrid collaborative game environment to understand how failure and learning processes emerged. We adopt a micro-ecological approach to analyze video format data collected in an afterschool design club. The analysis shows that failure and learning might begin as individual actions but can ripple across the small group and the community to create learning opportunities, especially when the environment supports playfulness and improvisation. Findings suggest that allowing the learning design and enactment to interact can support expansive learning.