 So I'm Gabriel. This is John Paul. First, I'd like to thank TypeCon for the invitation to present this year's conference, and obviously to all of you for coming and listening to our talk, which we hope is going to be informative and insightful. So yeah, the benefit of working in education is the opportunity to gather with like-minded folk like yourselves, exchange ideas, be inspired, and develop some new friendships, which that's already happening, which is great, because this is my first time here. And John Paul was here when he was in New Orleans in 2012. Is it 11? Oh, 11. The benefit also of presenting early in a forum like this is we get to use some quotes for the first time, which is great before anyone else does. If you see these quotes, you saw it here first. We're the first ones that used it. So our talk today is entitled, if at first you don't succeed, then we'll explore the notion of trial and error, success and failure as it relates to the student experience vis-a-vis the referral or retake stage of a university degree course. But before looking at the referral stage and the reasons that we believe it is of huge benefit to both students and staff, it's important to explore the subject of failure and our different perceptions of it, which can often dictate the ways in which we respond to it. And I think it was good to follow the previous presentation, which was talking about that notion of trial and error and failing in things as an educator. Because I think we all experience that as educators. We sometimes come up with these great projects, and then we question them sometimes midway through. And then you obviously get to that reflective stage at the end where you think about, OK, how can I change this? How can I modify it? So it's an ongoing process for us as much as it is for the students. So the first thing to look at is what is failure? And there's the obvious definitions and all the italicized texts looking at things like not achieving failure of an experiment. And again, that notion of experiment is really important. And I think that came up, I think in the Q&A session, that all of these things are experiments. And I think as a student, you have to embrace this notion of failure, trial and error, and understanding that this process is an ongoing one for three, four years. Over the long, you stay in education. So you've got other words like insufficient, falling short, cessation of proper functioning, or performance, non-performance, the notion of expectation, and a strength through effectiveness. And sometimes how these things occur and how you balance them up as students. So there's a very complex notion of the idea of failure. But really from the outside world, then from society as a whole, I think the notion of failure is just something that people see and they say, well, we've got to strive for success. And kind of avoid failure at all costs. Great quote by good old Oprah says, no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction, which I think is a very apt quote. And this came out of her talk to Harvard students, I think, in 2013. And I think this is something that continues throughout our lives. It happens as children. When we develop this ability, you learn a bike, or you learn how to ride a bike, you learn how to swim. It's all through the notion of failing, failing again, failing better, and this is a quote that we were going to use later on. But I think this idea that it is a constant process. It never ends. So looking at why students fail, and I think there's an important notion here. And I think this was really the backbone of our presentation. Because when you look at referral or retake stages, I think it's really important to look at this idea that failure isn't a simple thing. And when you're dealing with students, as many students as you might deal with, and we have quite a few students on our course, is you can't address absolutely everything for every individual. But I think putting yourself in the shoes of students and understanding that we've all been there before, we've all had difficulties. We've had the ups and downs of education and prior to that situation as well. And I think understanding those things a little bit better as an educator towards the students I think makes for a much more kind of organic processes going through education. So just looking at some of the key aspects and some of the things that drive for what we consider of how people fail or how students fail or how these things are determined. Lack of motivation is the first. And a student who does not realize where they need to succeed will not succeed. So motivation is linked very much to identifiable goals. So what is the driving force for students? Is it marks? Is it approval from others around them? Is it job prospects? It's all these different things. There's the idea of peer relationships, especially at university, and choosing friends that fill a void tends to lead to either very good or very bad behavior. Developing healthy rivalries in competitive environments often results in more ambition and confidence. Likewise, poorly chosen peer groups often reinforce bad habits and attitudes. And I'm sure all of you like us, we've seen that with students that they tend to reinforce each other's directions, their ambitions, sometimes they can slide as much and they look for that reinforcement with the peer groups around them. I had to put this one in. Not saying that this is us, because I don't think we do, but I think the notion of bad teaching and bad teachers, I think that does sometimes come into play, but it's not as obvious as just you are bad at what you do. But as mentioned above a little bit earlier, the teacher bears a level of responsibility for the student's progress. They often act as mentor, surrogate, parent, therapist, and so need to find a way of understanding each student's needs. And the routine nature of teaching can often breed complacency and this is something to be resisted and combated. I think we all maybe might experience this as well and I've been teaching for about seven or eight years, but sometimes you do get into this stage of, you know, you're going through the routine. Again, it's fresh to the students, but sometimes it isn't to you and I think reinvigorating the process I think is really important. And effective teachers acknowledge their own shortfalls and pursue their own development. Not asking questions is another one. Many students who fail are those who are not ready to admit that they need help. Questions are an aspect of our curiosity and is the single most important habit of innovative thinkers. It is a sign of strength and intelligence, not of weakness, ignorance, and uncertainty. And this again, another quote by Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, we run this company on questions, not answers. And again, we could probably apply that to our courses as well. You know, those that ask tend to be the ones that do the best. Poor attendance, an obvious one, but if you don't show up, you cannot learn. A lack of attendance is often bound up in a cycle of poor self-confidence. The students sometimes say, I don't have enough good work to show, so I won't attend, I don't attend, so I fall behind, I fall behind, so I'm scared to come in. So it's the cyclical process. At the very least, if you attend, you know what is expected of you and you can always ask for help. Organization, a messy desk at home, cluttered backpack, no assignment log, and no agenda of daily activities, assigns that students are not active in their education. I think that notion of active is really, really important. It's not a passive process. So organization is a life skill without it students are being set up to fail. The notion of feeling helpless, support systems are key to success. The student needs to have strong adults who they trust to guide them through their education. If they do not have this, the feeling of helplessness can cause a student to give up and students need to be empowered to be in control of their education. And this idea of falling behind. So many students who have a bad experience at one level end up like Swiss cheese. They have educational holes that need to be filled. If this is not recognized early, the student will fall even further behind to the point that failure is inevitable. Go back a bit. So the difficulty students face in relation to achievement and success can be traced back to a number of factors early on. And I think this is again key to our presentation, which is this understanding where these things occur. You know, we see the students when they come into university at level one and we expect them to be independent learners and to be mature. But at the same time, if there's something that hasn't been fostered a little bit early on, if there's some holes in a sense of how they approach the notion of learning, these things will come out and they end up manifesting themselves as what we deem as failure, whether they fall behind in a project or in a module. So lack of good organized study habits that lead to solid independent learning have a knock on effect in later life and can trigger a negative cycle of procrastination, lack of engagement, fear of failure, and lack of accountability. So teachers like parents or even psychiatrists need to have an understanding of these issues in order to help support students ideally before, but certainly at the point of failure. So just as parents need to be aware of the school and teacher expectations, which is to enforce solid work habits at home in order for the student to be successful, so too does the teacher need to be aware of the students' expectations. This isn't moving, sorry. I was saying before how everything seems to be going so smoothly. Hey, we're back, problem solving, you see? Teamwork. So with the introduction of increased tuition fees and currently in the UK, it's as much as 9,000 pounds a year, which probably to most Americans seems like peanuts, I'd imagine. There are now greater expectations of success and employability from both students and parents in a culture of greater culpability in developing throughout the university sector, which is developing. So the common misconception that failure is primarily due to laziness, disregards the fact that all learners, like all children, for those parents out there, are different. Some seemingly know what they want and how to express it from an early age, while others have great difficulty articulating what they want or need. So motivations differ too for each student, so attempting to understand these motivations can help to steer them away from disaster towards self-awareness. And this notion of self-awareness is linked very strongly to strength of character, which many in education believe is a greater key to success than intelligence. So again, it's this driving force, this idea of they come to us, but there's all this baggage that comes beforehand. So a study carried out by Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, who are co-authors of the book, Character Strengths and Virtues, a handbook in classification, explored in depth the importance of cultivating character strengths that could lead to a meaningful, fulfilling and successful life, which we're all looking for. So consulting a wide range of sources, from Aristotle to Confucius, from the Upanishads to the Torah, from the Boy Scout handbooks to profiles of Pokemon characters, they settled on 24 character strengths common to all cultures and eras. Although they dealt with morality and overlapped with religious laws and strictures, their true importance came from their practical benefit. So some headmasters and school system governors in the US have attempted to adopt elements of this research into their curriculum and core teaching strategies, such as David Levin, who's the co-founder of the Knowledge is Power program, which is the KIP for short network of charter schools in New York, who focused on these seven key strengths of zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity. So evidence revealed, particularly from the KIP schools that recruit from primarily low income families that the students who persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically prior and during high school. They were the ones with exceptional character strengths like optimism, persistence and social intelligence. They were the ones who were able to recover from a bad grade and resolve to do better next time to bounce back from failure, either personally or in their studies. So in our own experience, and we're guessing that of many of you in the audience, teaching at university level brings us into contact with a new cohort of students each year for whom the transition to higher education is loaded with anxiety. A new city often far from parents, family, friends and the familiarities of home. A new learning environment and experience that can seem alien and challenging. And we've all been there and we can all remember what the experience was like. Add to this the pressure to succeed in the eyes of our parents, friends, teachers. And it's no wonder that some students come unstuck at various points and very often early on, quickly descending into a cycle of failing habits, which we've outlined a little bit earlier. It's at these points, what Oprah Winfrey describes as the whole, that the referral process becomes important. Not simply to bail out students, but to offer them an essential second chance of improving work and an opportunity to reflect on possible character weaknesses. Staff also have the opportunity to re-engage with these failing students and to offer corrective instruction that can lead to greater achievement later on. So failed project, module or even year can be a major turning point in terms of self-realization and a renewed sense of purpose, either acting as a shock to the system or a spurring them on to prove their worth to themselves and others. And again, very long quote, but worthwhile kind of reading through. A mistake can be the beginning of learning. Some assessment experts agree that students learn nothing from a successful performance. Rather, students learn best when their initial performance is less than successful. For them, they gain direction on how to improve. So I'm gonna hand over to Paul now, he's gonna show you more visual slides in terms of some of the work. But I think it was really important to, you know, bring up to this stage the notion of how we're gonna show a few case studies from students, but this idea of the leading into the process and how even our relationships to the students and these three are examples has kind of manifested itself through this idea of moving ahead, moving forward. And the notion of self-realization, especially being linked into those character strengths as opposed to talent or intellect really helps to guide the process and makes myself speaking personally. And I think maybe John Paul agrees as well, better educators. So yeah, I'll just pass on to Paul. Hello. Okay, so just the referral process because the term itself may not mean a lot to everyone, but in the UK and our institution in the UK when a student fails a module or a class, they get what's called referral brief or referral opportunity, which means they don't resit the class but have to resubmit the work for assessment. So this we've found has led to in the past because the referral work that they resubmit gets capped at 40%. So even if they failed and then they resubmit the work and they get 98%, it gets capped by the university at 40%. So this has led to students really not putting in as much effort to the referral process or we certainly acknowledge that. And what we were trying to do and what we're in the process of doing is really looking at the referral stage and how we can really use that and get students to embrace failure to really progress throughout their education. We have a large number of students on our course. We've got about 300 students across three years and a bachelor's degree. So the opportunity to engage with students once they've failed a module and then they're resubmitting while you're teaching other classes is relatively minimal, but we do acknowledge that that engagement with students and staff at that point can really push those students on to be very, very successful. So when we were putting together this presentation over the last couple of weeks, we got in touch with three students that, well a couple of students, but three got back to us with some really good content that had, you know, we'd singled them out to people who had faced a lot of adversity or had failed for whatever particular reasons, but had gone on to become very, very successful. So we wanted to talk with them and discuss with them and find out what they taught about that time when they failed looking back now and where they're at now. So I'm gonna just go through some of these students and the work they've done as students and some of the quotes from the questions that we asked them. So the first student, Jake Gunn, said that probably the most important lesson I learned is that failing isn't ever the end. I failed an entire year and that was tough, especially on my ego, but once I got over that and decided to try again but put everything into it, I didn't fail. I guess I learned that failing can be a good thing. Failing that year was one of the best things that ever happened to me. And this particular student at that time suffered from mental health issues and when he failed an entire year and then came back and retook that entire year, but a real new sense of vigor and just he really, really pushed himself. And what we found actually when I go through this work, I'll just say it now at the start is that when we actually started looking at all the students' work and putting it together for this presentation, we realized that all the work that they were producing, the subject matters that they were tackling were all quite personal and dealt a lot in the majority of what we show here with the adversity they faced and for the reason that they failed. And in a sense that kind of reinforces what we're saying earlier, that if you look at yourself and you're looking at why you fail and really assessing things properly, that you can really drive on forward and really produce work of a very high standard while also there's a kind of self-healing that takes place. This was a project that Jake did for the Royal Society of Art in the UK that holds competition briefs each year. And this was to deal with mental health and how people can approach mental health in a sensible way. So Jake's project was a relatively simple interpretation of it, but it was just about opening up and talking to people and talking to people about mental health issues you may have and the different kinds of mental health and trying to make people feel more comfortable or paved the way to talk about mental health issues, which Jake suffered from himself, which with him it was anxiety issues that he suffered from. So he used and come into presentations would end up failing those parts of the modules because he was so anxious about speaking in front of people. And he found as he engaged with staff more when he retook that year is the first thing he did was he came and he talked to staff a lot more and he engaged with us a lot more. And that simple process of just talking to the tutors is what made things a lot easier. And when Gabriel was talking about almost a cycle of where things kind of go wrong, it reversed that cycle and things started coming better. So he started coming in. So the tutors knew who he was. His work started getting better. Other students got to know him more. He started getting more peer assessment from his colleagues. So again, just tackling the issue within himself. But then that you see this, he tackles that within the work he produces. Another book that he produced on the second year and typography and print module that myself and Gabriel run was about the seventh samurai day, Akira Kura, wow, Kurosawa movie. And again, you're talking about samurai is dealing with discipline, teamwork, all these kind of things that he needed as a student to progress himself and also manifested in some really strong typographic work for someone that's only two years into their design education. I'll just flick through some of these because I know we're caught on time. This was quite a nice little bit in the center. He did the intermission inside the book which opened out which shows the set. Just flick through. So Jake went on, he's gone on to be really successful. That book he did, the seventh samurai, won the student award at the Best British Book Design and Production Awards last year in 2013. And this year he was awarded a merit in the ISCD, the International Society of Typographic Designers Student Assessment Scheme. So he's gone on to produce really good work. And most of the work we're gonna show here is typographic, not just because we're at typecom, but I think there's, I've found in the past that students who tend to struggle often gravitate towards typography because at least at the initial stages in typography there's a coherent set of rules and structures that they can feel a little bit safer inside rather than being told go be creative and it's very, very open. So I think sometimes students who struggle a little will gravitate towards typography because of that system that's already inherent and that's there that they can find themselves within or work within. And the next student is Chris Knott. When Chris's quotes, when we were speaking to him was I learned to take things a bit more seriously. I don't know whether it was a lack of skill or effort, maybe a bit of both, that first typo today that led me to my low score and the early stage of my studies, but this pushed me to want to do better. This created a monster and the last stages of the third year I wouldn't leave my room zoned in. I think I learned a lot about myself, how I work and how much you can get done if you put your mind to it. You have to make mistakes to grow. I think you learn what you are capable of, how you can expect to, how can you expect to get better if you don't know what it is you need to do to get there. So really insightful stuff from these guys when they're looking back. And this was a book that Chris did on the second year module again. Chris had mainly just lack of ambition maybe and motivation at the start when he started graphic design, why he struggled and why he was getting such low marks. But when he came onto the typography and print module, he came with a real sense of just really wanting to do better and push himself as far as he could. And again, it comes back to this idea of engaging with staff. When we're looking at the worker, we're looking back on it again, but he did a whole book on hand signals and how we introduced ourselves to people. So again, I'm gonna flick through these relatively quickly because of the time when he's looking at Rapé for scissors, all these things we do with our hands to communicate to people. Quite a nice little touch here, the Boung Chair Sensei where they meet in the spine of the book, so when it closes. Fist bump from Obama, which I just read recently, if we all fist bumped, we would cut the amount of disease in the world by about 20%. Stop shaking hands. Crossing your fingers for luck. So again, it was just nice looking back again. None of this was planned when the workers came in. We just started realizing all the work that we were gonna show and that the students, the topics they were tackling was relatable to the subject matter. He started looking at himself. He's first, he's Norwegian. He grew up in Norway until he was about 12, so he spoke Norwegian as his first language. So he done a project looking at Norwegian and English and his own skillset. He went on to study at the Royal College of Arts. This is just some of his work from there. This was a project where he looked at terms and conditions and what we kind of sign up to every day. By the time we click, you know, agree on emails or on websites manifested in an exhibition where they printed out the kind of average amount of terms and conditions you would agree to each day. Just a little bit on Google. There was a website, digital presence for all of this as well. Just kind of making people aware of what you're signing up to. And then this was his kind of final project at the Royal College of Art, which again, he found himself, I was talking with him actually at his show, and he found himself almost in the same position as he found himself when he was doing his BA, was that he was, when he was at the Royal College, he's from the East End of London. He speaks almost like in cockney slang. He uses a lot of slang when he speaks. So he found himself, he felt like the underdog again. He said it was like when he started back in his BA and there was a lack of confidence. He felt, you know, people couldn't even understand his English on the course, the foreign students. So instead of maybe falling back into maybe some of the character traits that he'd done in his first year on his BA, he decided to embrace this and did his whole project as an investigative study into the language used in the East End of London and how that language is developing and how that language is added to each day just by slang terminology. So it was really good to see him really put into play what he'd learned through his failure at the initial stages in his BA and let that manifest in a really strong final year show for his MA. So Chris, you know, at his time with us, he was awarded a commendation at the ISTD. Again, the student assessment scheme, the highest awards that they give, only maybe two, three students internationally each year would get a commendation. He graduated from the Royal College of Art last year and he now works with Neville Brody at Research Studios in London. This is a guy who was like failing, you know, in his first year in a kind of four or five year stretch, he now works with Neville. So, you know, a great testament to his own character as well. And then the final student we're gonna talk about is Liam Roberts. Liam's kind of main quote we got was, it might sound a little bit stupid, but I think that going through university in this way, talking about, you know, when you fail there, has really helped me to become a better designer and a better person. I think if I was to have attended more in level one, I may have passed with a slightly higher grade and been middle of the road in level two and level three, never having that slap in the face and attitude change. And for me, this is a really important quote because I think sometimes as educators, we try and nudge someone over the line just to get them to pass and possibly think that's helping them out or doing them a favor when actually when you look at it, it's got a more negative impact because unless someone fails and understands that what they're doing isn't good enough, how can you expect them to be that great designer you want them to be? So as educators, I think we possibly need to fail people a little bit more and then use that failure as a positive, you know, kickstart to their design education into their progress as a designer. And Liam was great, he was, so Gabriel had a lot of discussions with Liam about when he failed that first time and he almost made it, well, he did make it his mission to prove to Gabriel that he was gonna show him that he could be a really good designer. And in some of the projects that Liam did like this one and he's final year, he worked from Bristol in the UK, we worked there. He challenged the entire city of Bristol. He wanted to battle everyone he could to win, to never be a failure again. So he did all sorts of crazy things. He was looking, I think that was his grandfather who was in the war, but he did like X's and O competitions. He would battle people. He was doing pool, he was doing running. Everything you could kind of think of, these were some of the contenders that he took on and he documented the whole process. He was doing penalty kick competitions. He went down, he had loads of other projects. He went down to try and break world records. He was like for blowing a grape in the air. All sorts. It's just fantastic. And actually his website, Liamrobertsdesign.com has got loads of short movies, which are really funny. We're gonna show one. Yeah, I think we have enough time to show one. Another project he did, and this was for one of the ISTD briefs, which I suppose I should say disclaimer, I'm now education director of ISTD, so all my students do the competition briefs each year and we do very well. This project was about it happened on this day students were asked to investigate one day at any point within time that they would do an investigation into. And again, Liam been so kind of heavily looking at sports and success and failure and challenge. He looked at when Boris Becker won the Wimbledon title when he was the underdog on the 7th of July in 1985. So he did a publication based on that. He looked at kind of Becker's roads to the Wimbledon final. He looked at all the press that was happening, the people he was playing along the way, using typographic interpretation experiment or expressive typography to reinforce. Some of the words like the boom, if anyone watches tennis, you see it how the ball hits and moves when they do it on the, is it eagle eye it's called or? Anyway, gone too much into tennis. Here's some of the, all the shots that were played within that final. And then some kind of inspirational quotes coming from Boris Becker as well. But most of all, I love to play, which is a nice term for designers as well. He did a series of posters on people who cheated as well within sports. So not just people who failed to be successful. In a sense, they used, well, personal failure by cheating to become a success and then getting cut out. So this was the Black Sox in the World Series. I can't even remember what this one was. I'm going here because of the time. Lance Armstrong. And then we've got a little movie we're gonna show you because the one thing about Lee, and while he learned to embrace failure and use it as a positive thing, he also learned how to celebrate success. So we're gonna show you a little movie he made. It for post World Cup. So sorry, we've gone a little bit over, but just to go back, just this last thing, just to kind of close on what we see as the next stage really. So what we're looking at is changing the model of referral briefings so that new work is required of the students based on bespoke briefs. Staff input is therefore more crucial in order to explain the brief and support student progress before resubmission. So as mentioned earlier, the reasons that students fall behind on failed modules are varied and not simply due to laziness, lack of effort or poor engagement. The referral stage therefore offers both students and teachers the opportunity for renewed creative dialogue. So by adjusting the course curriculum and respect to the referral process, we're aiming to foster a learning environment that embraces the notions of trial and error and learning from mistakes, both for students and staff. Just to finish on this one, failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker, failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Thank you.