Imagine watching a child learn to ride a bicycle. There are wobbles, missed turns, and more than a few moments when both the rider and the person running alongside wonder if this was really a good idea. Yet with each attempt, the child becomes a little more balanced, a little more confident, and a little more capable. If an adult simply carried the bicycle to the finish line every time it became difficult, the child would certainly avoid frustration, but they would also miss the opportunity to develop the skills needed to ride independently.
Learning works much the same way. Many educators understandably want to reduce learner frustration, clarify difficult concepts, and provide support whenever students struggle. Those are important responsibilities. However, there is a difference between removing unnecessary barriers and removing every challenge. Some struggle is not only unavoidable but also beneficial. Educational researchers often refer to this as productive struggle, the kind of challenge that encourages learners to think more deeply, make meaningful connections, and ultimately develop stronger understanding.
For instructional designers, the challenge is finding the right balance. Courses should not overwhelm learners with unnecessary complexity, but they also should not make every task so easy that meaningful thinking never occurs. Productive struggle happens in the space between confusion and confidence, where learners are challenged enough to grow while still receiving the support they need to succeed. This article explores what productive struggle is, why it matters, and how instructional designers can intentionally design learning experiences that help learners grow through challenge rather than avoid it.
What Is Productive Struggle?
Productive struggle occurs when learners encounter challenges that require genuine effort but remain achievable with persistence, guidance, and appropriate support. Instead of immediately providing answers, instruction encourages learners to think through problems, test ideas, make mistakes, and gradually construct understanding for themselves.
This type of struggle differs from simple frustration. When learners face impossible tasks, unclear instructions, or unnecessary obstacles, the experience quickly becomes discouraging rather than educational. Productive struggle, by contrast, keeps learners working toward success because they believe the challenge can be overcome.
The distinction is important. Effective instructional design does not aim to make learning difficult simply for the sake of difficulty. Instead, it creates opportunities where learners actively engage with ideas rather than passively receiving them. The effort becomes meaningful because it contributes directly to understanding.
Learning Requires Mental Effort
One of the most common misconceptions about learning is that if instruction is effective, learning should always feel easy. While clear explanations certainly help, deep learning often requires learners to wrestle with ideas, reconsider assumptions, and solve problems they have never encountered before.
Think about the last time you learned a complex skill. Perhaps it was learning to play an instrument, mastering a new software application, or understanding a challenging research method. The process probably included moments of uncertainty and mistakes. Those moments were not evidence that learning had failed. They were often evidence that genuine learning was taking place.
Instructional designers should therefore avoid assuming that every sign of difficulty indicates poor course design. Sometimes learners are struggling because they are actively building new knowledge. The goal is not eliminating that effort. The goal is ensuring that the effort leads somewhere meaningful.
Productive Struggle Builds Stronger Memory
Research in learning science consistently shows that information becomes more durable when learners actively retrieve, organize, and apply it. Simply reading or hearing information may create a feeling of familiarity, but familiarity alone does not produce lasting understanding.
When learners work through a challenging problem before receiving the solution, they engage more deeply with the material. They compare possibilities, recognize gaps in their understanding, and create stronger mental connections once the correct explanation becomes available. The solution often carries greater meaning because learners understand why it works rather than simply seeing the answer.
This is one reason instructional strategies such as retrieval practice, problem-based learning, and scenario-based activities are so effective. They require learners to think before they receive confirmation, making learning more memorable in the process.
Struggle Should Never Mean Confusion Without Support
Although productive struggle is valuable, instructional designers should never confuse it with abandoning learners.
Courses should provide enough guidance for learners to believe success is possible. Clear instructions, examples, feedback, scaffolding, and opportunities to ask questions all contribute to productive learning experiences. Without those supports, learners may simply become frustrated and disengage.
Imagine giving someone a thousand-piece puzzle without showing them the picture on the box. The puzzle itself is challenging enough. Removing all guidance does not make the learning experience richer. It simply makes it harder to know whether progress is being made.
Instructional designers should therefore think carefully about where guidance belongs. Sometimes support comes before an activity, sometimes during the activity, and sometimes afterward through feedback and reflection. The important point is that learners never feel completely alone in the process.
Mistakes Are Part of Learning
Many learners have been conditioned to view mistakes as something to avoid rather than something to learn from. As a result, they may become anxious whenever they encounter a difficult task or answer a question incorrectly.
Human-centered instructional design takes a different approach. Mistakes become opportunities to examine thinking, identify misconceptions, and strengthen understanding. Instead of asking, "Why did you get this wrong?" instructors might ask, "What led you to this answer?" That shift encourages learners to reflect on their reasoning rather than simply memorizing corrections.
Low-stakes practice activities are especially valuable because they create safe spaces for experimentation. Learners become more willing to take intellectual risks when they know mistakes are expected and will be used to support learning rather than simply reduce a grade.
Design Challenges That Matter
Not every challenge produces productive struggle. Busy work, unnecessary complexity, and confusing instructions often create frustration without improving learning.
Effective instructional designers instead create challenges that directly support the learning outcomes. Learners might analyze a realistic case study, solve a workplace problem, evaluate competing solutions, or design something meaningful. These activities require sustained thinking because they resemble authentic situations learners are likely to encounter beyond the classroom.
Authentic challenges also help learners understand why the effort matters. Working through a realistic problem feels more purposeful than completing an abstract exercise with no obvious connection to future practice.
Feedback Helps Learners Move Forward
Feedback plays a central role in productive struggle because it helps learners understand how their thinking is developing.
Rather than simply identifying right and wrong answers, effective feedback explains why a particular approach worked, where misconceptions appeared, and what learners should consider next. This type of guidance encourages learners to revise their thinking rather than abandon the task altogether.
Timing also matters. Feedback should arrive while learners still have opportunities to apply it. If comments appear only after the course has moved on to entirely different topics, much of their instructional value is lost. Productive struggle becomes far more meaningful when learners can immediately use feedback to strengthen their understanding.
Balance Challenge With Confidence
One of the greatest instructional design challenges is finding the balance between making learning too easy and making it overwhelmingly difficult.
If every activity is effortless, learners may become bored and fail to develop deeper understanding. If every activity feels impossible, motivation quickly declines. Productive struggle exists between those two extremes.
Instructional designers often support this balance through scaffolding. Early activities provide more guidance, examples, and structure. As learners gain confidence and competence, that support gradually decreases, allowing learners to solve increasingly complex problems independently. This progression helps learners develop both skill and confidence over time.
Productive Struggle Looks Different for Every Learner
Not every learner experiences challenge in the same way. Adult learners bring different backgrounds, prior knowledge, professional experiences, and confidence levels into every course. An activity that feels appropriately challenging for one learner may feel trivial or overwhelming for another.
This variability reinforces the importance of flexible instructional design. Optional review materials, enrichment opportunities, varied examples, and multiple pathways through learning can help meet learners where they are without lowering expectations.
The goal is not designing one perfectly challenging activity for everyone. It is creating learning experiences that allow different learners to experience meaningful growth from their own starting points.
Final Thoughts
Productive struggle reminds us that learning is not always comfortable, and that is perfectly normal. Growth often happens during the moments when learners pause, rethink an idea, test a new approach, and gradually develop understanding through effort.
Instructional designers play an important role in shaping those experiences. By creating authentic challenges, providing appropriate support, encouraging reflection, and designing meaningful feedback, we help learners experience the kind of struggle that strengthens learning rather than discourages it.
The goal is not making learning harder.
The goal is making learning deeper.
Sometimes the most valuable thing an instructional designer can do is resist the temptation to provide the answer too quickly and instead create the conditions where learners discover it for themselves.
References
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Hiebert, J., & Grouws, D. A. (2007). The effects of classroom mathematics teaching on students' learning. In F. K. Lester Jr. (Ed.), Second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 371–404). Information Age Publishing.
Kirschner, P. A., & Hendrick, C. (2020). How learning happens: Seminal works in educational psychology and what they mean in practice. Routledge.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.