I Gained Confidence and Courage — by Failing
I gained confidence and courage by failing— that's what two college students recently shared with me after playing a GoVenture business simulation game.
Confidence and courage are two things I strive for my children to have (kindness is another). I suspect that most instructors would love for their students to gain this mindset as well.
How can we facilitate confidence and courage in our students?
The answer is — through experience.
We are a collection of the experiences we've had in our lives — both good and bad. So, if we want to influence behavior, then the best way to do this is by facilitating targeted experiences.
But delivering live experiences in the real world can be costly and expensive. That's where simulation comes in.
Here's what one student shared with me:
[The simulation] was a different experience from general learning. I did not feel as much stress and gained more confidence in what I was doing. Being able to fail and learn from failures without having my ego judged was a huge confidence booster.
Learning through failure is not a common topic in school. School teaches us to fear failure. That's a problem because life is full of failure.
Simulations and games help us learn to expect failure and how to use failure to achieve success — I describe how in this video.
Here's what another student shared with me:
As a conservative person, I found myself playing "safely" from my point of view during the trial part. But I could not get the profit I desired or the customer satisfaction levels that I wanted.
Only when I played the version after the trial I had the *courage*to risk more, and my profit margin increased a lot.
It is an amazing tool for business learning purposes, developing different skills to get bolder and think differently through the game and in real life.
These students gained confidence and courage by failing.
How often do you hear that in education?
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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com