“There’s Nothing Wrong with Being Wrong”

Professor Calvin Rans wants people to learn how to engineer success out of failure – in aircraft and in life. Discover how through his online course he uses aircraft and spacecraft design to illustrate the benefits of experimenting and making mistakes.

After teaching thousands of undergraduate students at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Professor Rans and his fellow instructors became acutely aware of how unprepared most people are to learn from failure, especially young adults.
"Failure is an essential component of the scientific method, but when they teach you about it in school, they don't really discuss that part,” he says. “They don't explain the magic that can happen when your hypotheses get disproven.”
Rans and his colleagues’ astute observations about their students compelled them to transform one of the university’s most popular on-campus courses into a massive open online course (MOOC) - Introduction to Aerospace Structures and Materials. The course was nominated as top finalist in the edX Prize 2021 for its innovative and exceptional contribution to online education.

Read the full interview with Calvin Rans.