Embrace “Productive Failure”

Time magazine has an interesting article this month explaining that students learn better when left to figure out solutions to problems on their own (as opposed to being told the answers by instructors).   This is interesting news for any students, not just students of medical billing and coding at the Allen School Online.  If you’re struggling with the complexities of the subject matter, take heart.  According to National Institute of Education research, it is this express frustration, struggling to solve the challenges posed by any lesson, that helps the human mind to better understand the solution to said challenge.  In fact, in studies they performed, the students who were showed the solutions during the lesson were outperformed by the students who were simply left to ponder the answer before being guided by instruction.  So the lesson here is simple: embrace productive failure.  It is okay to try and solve a problem and fail in the process.  It is that failure which promotes the ability to achieve and maintain success.  Read the whole article from Time magazine for all the interesting details.