Ready to teach failure
without the lecture?
Step-by-step guides for bringing Dr. Dinin's Learning to Fail curriculum to your classroom or community.
Why this exists
Almost as soon as I posted
the first video, the messages started.
Teachers, professors, coaches, and business leaders — everyone wanted to know the same thing: How do I do this with my students?
These are the activity guides for Dr. Dinin's Learning to Fail course — the same challenges he runs at Duke, written up so anyone can use them. Each guide is a complete, classroom-ready package for a single failure challenge: everything he's learned from running it dozens of times, written down so you don't have to figure it out yourself.
Pick one, six, or twelve. Each guide stands on its own or can be combined to form an entire course.
- Materials list and room setup: what you need, how much of it, and how to arrange the space before students walk in
- Step-by-step facilitation instructions: the exact opening line, what to say at each stage, and how to time the whole thing
- Debrief questions with facilitation notes: what to ask when it ends, what to listen for, and how to push the conversation deeper
- Variations to adapt the challenge: for grade school, university, and business settings, plus options for different class sizes and time constraints
- Instructor watch-outs with answers for each: the specific things that go wrong and exactly what to do about them
- A Failure Log to assign afterward: structured reflection prompts, timing options, and assessment guidance for school settings
Choose your challenge guides
Pick how many guides you want, then choose them below.
Pick your education level and we'll suggest guides to start with:
Checkout step (mockup)
FAQ
Common questions.
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Think of it as a field guide for that one challenge. You get the full activity instructions, timing and pacing, debrief questions for the conversation afterward, notes on how students typically react and what to do about it, variations for different class sizes, and observations from running it in real classrooms. It's a run sheet, not a reading assignment. If you want the theory and the full story behind the class, you can pre-order the book here.
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Not really. They've shown up in entrepreneurship classes, general ed, leadership programs, workshops, and team trainings. If your goal is to get students to experience productive failure and actually reflect on it afterward, you're in the right place.
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All guides include variations for different age levels, though some challenges are better suited to certain settings than others. Check out our guide suggestion tool — choose your education level and it'll suggest which guides to start with. You can also hover over any card to flip it: the back shows what the challenge involves, whether it stays in the classroom or sends students outside, whether they work alone or in groups, and what (if anything) you need to bring.
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Yes! Download the Failure Ballads challenge guide for free and give it a try. If you like it, come back for more.
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Dr. Dinin usually doesn't tell students what's coming, so there's nothing to look up beforehand. And if someone googles it during the challenge? It doesn't really help. These are designed so that knowing the rules doesn't mean you can execute them. The hard part is doing it, not figuring it out.
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Absolutely. Start with one and see how it lands — you can always come back for more. If you already know you want several, the semester and year packages bring the per-guide price down, but there's no pressure to buy in bulk upfront.
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These are digital downloads, so we can't offer refunds. But if a guide turns out not to be a good fit for your class, just reach out at [email protected] and we'll swap it out for a different one, no questions asked.
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We made a template for that. It's a short email you can send to your department chair, program director, or whoever holds the budget. Download it here. If your organization needs anything else to sign off on it, email us at [email protected] and we'll put together whatever you need.