Learning from failure

What did not work—and what can be learned

Published cases, critical analyses, and practice reports that make failure, unintended harm, and difficult lessons visible in community-engaged engineering.

7 initial recordsPeer-reviewed scholarship and credible practice reports

2023

Peer-reviewed reflective articleCollaborations: A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice, 6(1), Article 11

Learning From Failure: Reinvention of a Service-Learning Praxis in a Community-Engaged Engineering Design Course

Devin R. Berg

Names shortcomings in an environmental engineering service-learning course and uses them to reconstruct a more critical practice.

Critical reflectionCourse redesignCommunity partnership

Open source

2020

Peer-reviewed articleJournal of International Humanitarian Action, 5, Article 7

Engineering and humanitarian intervention: learning from failure

Adeela Arshad-Ayaz; M. Ayaz Naseem; Dania Mohamad

Examines why technical audits alone can miss local knowledge, power, and context in humanitarian engineering interventions.

Humanitarian interventionEpistemic humilityTechno-social literacy

Open source

2020

Peer-reviewed articleJournal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 20(11)

From Charity to Solidarity: A Model for Shifting Service Learning in Engineering

Rachel Koh

Responds to student-centered and colonial patterns in engineering service-learning by reframing the work around solidarity.

Charity mindsetCommunity harmSolidarity

Open source

2014

Peer-reviewed conference paperASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Community Engagement Division

Learning from Failure: Developing a Typology to Enhance Global Service-Learning Engineering Projects

Andrea Mazzurco; Brent K. Jesiek

Synthesizes failure cases to help educators recognize recurring technical, cultural, organizational, and partnership problems.

Failure typologyGlobal service-learningSociocultural context

Open source

2014

Practice reportOrganizational failure report

Engineers Without Borders Canada: 2014 Failure Report

Engineers Without Borders Canada

First-person accounts make mistakes visible so teams can test assumptions, change practice, and avoid presenting development work as a string of uncomplicated successes.

Organizational learningTransparencyInternational development

Open source

2013

Practice guideFail Forward practice guide

Failure reports: a how-to guide

Fail Forward

Turns the EWB Canada reporting practice into a reusable process for documenting failure and converting it into organizational learning.

Failure reportingOrganizational changeReflection

Open source

2017

Peer-reviewed case studyInternational Social Work, 60(6)

Social work and engineering: Lessons from a water filtration project in Guatemala

Lenore E. Matthew; Lissette M. Piedra; Chi-Fang Wu; Anne Kramer Diaz; Hanting Wang; Anthony P. Straub; Thanh H. Nguyen

Documents how weak community inclusion in technical projects can undermine local leadership, create mistrust, and produce resistance to proposed technologies.

Community trustLocal leadershipInterdisciplinary practice

Open source