Alice,
Your prompt reminds me of a presentation given by Rita Smilkstein who wrote "We are born to learn" about brain-based learning (early 2000s). She totally changed how I teach students. She used a very similar prompt to get students to start thinking about how they were already successful learners. I have done this activity in my F2F classes with a lot of input from the students. Thank you for reminding me to start doing it again.
The fact that students do not have to respond to someone's personal story allows for the acceptance of the story without judging anything about it. Following this up with a group activity to collect the successful learning strategies helps to bring the success or failure stories together in a positive way.
Out of confusion comes clarity.
Leonne