It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (Hindsight is 2020)

Charles Kettering reportedly quipped: “99% of success is built on failure”. Yet, those failures rarely see the light of day, as publications naturally focus on successful innovations rather than the many failures that preceded them. The academic community is poorer as a result, as we are all left to re-create the same failures independently, rather than learning from one another. In this panel, we offer an opportunity to “celebrate failure”, by presenting four separate case studies of computing education initiatives that “seemed like a good idea at the time”, but ended up being spectacular failures. The presenters will discuss their “good ideas”, the disappointing results, and (most importantly) the lessons learned! Our goal is to foster a supportive community where failure is celebrated rather than criticized. We hope to laugh and learn together from these experience reports.