Perfection vs. Learning: "Perfection and learning simply are incompatible goals...Mistakes can be the most instructive, most impactful teachers."
Comment: Most of my learning (both intellectual and emotional) comes from what is commonly define as mistakes or errors. Our philosophy in education should focus on encouraging students to demonstrate effort...not ability. Ability is the by-product of effort, so I'm not suggesting that we ignore targeted competencies. I'm suggesting that we encourage learners to view themselves as "in-transition". A learner can easily lose motivation when seeing him/herself through lack of ability. A learner that clearly sees effort as the pathway to ability can begin to activate the cycle of reward in incremental improvements in competence/ability. With my children, I find the greatest deterrent to learning is the assumption that competence is more important than effort. "I can't do it" leads to "I won't try". On the other side, "Let's try it" leads to "I can do it!". It's an obvious concept. Unfortunately, it's not reflected in the design of many online learning initiatives.