This new generation of students are entrepreneurial, inquisitive and strong-willed. They have never known a world without the Internet, and they don’t know what it’s like to not have instant access to information. These students want more flexibility, more hands-on, interactive training and fewer textbooks — and this requires a new outlook on failure.

In STEM, many problems often have more than one solution. You can reach the same answer with multiple different formulas, or program a robot in many different ways; this lack of rigidity fuels creativity, but it also opens the door to more failures — and that’s OK. Experimentation is key to innovation, so students should be taught to embrace failure — not fear it.