When Did You Last Fail?

Posted on: 27 March 2025 by Rob Lindsay in Conference & Event Reports

Personally speaking, a recent attempt to get my three-year-old swimming springs to mind. Bags packed, elusive locker change gripped, I was at the door with time to spare.

This was getting easy. Inevitably - true to my all-too-frequent paternal overconfidence - my beloved child had other plans. After a polite request, a negotiated plea, and a desperate bluff of cancellation, this was a lost battle. Swimming was off. The global fight against toddlerism continues.

Reflecting on that question - "when did you last fail?" - within our academic practice is seemingly much harder, both individually and as a team. We all fail. But how do we answer that transparently without undermining ourselves or the collective efforts of those we work with? It takes accountability - and perhaps a willingness to set aside a little pride. It might even require sharing some collaborative hard truths.

Projects can fail for all sorts of reasons, often simple and avoidable. But most of our failed experiences don’t make it into our blogs, glowing reports, or "haven’t-we-done-well" presentations.

Not so for Paul Iske, Chief Failure Officer at Briljante Mislukkingen (Brilliant Failures). In an engaging and highly entertaining opening keynote at DigiFest 2025, Paul reframed the idea of failure entirely - shifting from the cost of failure to the value of failure.

Celebrating and exploring all types of failure has enabled the Instituut voor Briljante Mislukkingen (IvBM – Institute for Brilliant Failures) to identify recurring patterns. Think of them as creatively titled archetypes. Examples include "The Wrong Wallet" (what works for one doesn’t for another), or "The Empty Chair" (not all the relevant people are included). These patterns form universal lessons, “moments that transcend a specific experience and apply to many other innovation projects as well.”

So, back to the question. A recent professional failure for me was a research project that struggled to recruit student participants. Despite strong support from colleagues in the relevant academic department, the initial survey distribution was met with total silence. A targeted Canvas Impact campaign (an excellent direct communication tool within the VLE, supported by IT Services) brought little improvement. Even outreach via student reps led nowhere. I’d hit a brick wall - repeatedly.

What went wrong then? The survey wasn’t incentivised. The scheduling was too short and poorly timed. The supporting material was too detailed for a topic already wrapped in student apprehension. Had I taken more time to design the recruitment process with these factors in mind, I’d likely have seen better results.

After a regroup, I took a second shot - with incentivised participation, a more flexible and inclusive timeline, and clearer support materials. The difference? I now have engaged student participants. The wonderful clarity of hindsight.

Back to DigiFest - and the unmistakable evidence that Generative AI has firmly gripped the sector. From keynotes and panels to presentations and the exhibition stands, the theme was clear: we’ve moved from hype to evolving impact. As GenAI exponentially shifts from speculation to use, there is a requirement for ongoing CIE support around the strategic practical and inclusive implementation. This technology simply cannot be ignored.

A recurring and pertinent theme across DigiFest was also: "at what cost?" This includes complex considerations - digital equity, criticality, pedagogy, sustainability, and literacy. And that’s just for starters. One standout session in this area was the panel on "Generative AI in education: from hype to impact – staff voices and real-world lessons". Among the many important conversations, one often-overlooked theme emerged - wellbeing. Many of us know the creeping pressure, the endless stream of tools to master, the quiet urgency to keep up. The panel’s key takeaway - we must be mindful of student and staff cognitive load. Our aim should be to ease it, not add to it - especially during a time of increasing pressure on resources.

As Generative AI drives this paradigm shift, continuing to offer direct and tailored support to both colleagues and learners is an essential path forward for our department. There will, of course, be failures along the way (hopefully with lots of success too). But rest assured, we’ll learn from them.

Ongoing support

In the spirit of easing the workload, the Centre for Innovation in Education are currently working on several exciting projects:

• A SEDA project producing an Educators' Guide to Multimodal learning and Generative AI, with the intention of offering practical learning designs for integrating present and future freely available GenAI tools for multimodal learning. You can find out more about this collaborative project on the XJTLU AI and Multimodal Learning website.
• This month, we’d recommend trying out Napkin AI, an AI-powered platform that automatically transforms text into visuals like diagrams, charts, and flowcharts. This is currently free to access in its beta-testing phase, though a sign-up is required.
• Are your students undertaking group work and encountering peer conflict? Point them to this interactive activity to navigate common group project challenges and enhance their conflict resolution and teamwork skills.

For information on any of the above or Generative AI at the University of Liverpool, please consider our dedicated GenAI website or contact us via cie@liverpool.ac.uk.