- Create measurable learning objectives
- Identify some tenants of adult learning theory
- Describe some types of checks on learning
- Identify some common teaching techniques
- Identify the benefits of discrete planning within a workshop
- Create timings for a workshop or class
- Identify the importance of preparation with regard to the delivery of a workshop or class
disclaimer Some of the thoughts and techniques ahead are things that I've found personal success in. Though much of the content will be sourced with links, It should be noted that some the things written here are my own opinions on what I've found success with.
Workshops are meant to engage our audience.
Because we, as instructors, are taking valuable parts of people's schedule, we want to optimize the amount of impact we have in a given amount of time.
How do we do that? Well there are lots of schools of thought surrounding this.
To start us formulating our own opinions let's take a look at some wikipedia points of interest on andragogy
Andragogy is the science of understanding and supporting lifelong education of adults. It became much more popularized by educator Malcolm Knowles where he wanted to promote a larger distinction between pedagogy(child learning) and andragogy(adult learning)
Read over the following 6 bullet points for the next 2 minutes.
Knowles' theory can be stated with six assumptions related to the motivation of adult learning:
- Need to know: Adults need to know the reason for learning something.
- Foundation: Experience (including error) provides the basis for learning activities.
- Self-concept: Adults need to be responsible for their decisions on education; involvement in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.
- Readiness: Adults are most interested in learning subjects having immediate relevance to their work and/or personal lives.
- Orientation: Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.
- Motivation: Adults respond better to internal versus external motivators.
This is stripped directly from wikipedia here.
Then with your table answer the following:
- Is there anything that we've read that isn't clear about adult motivation to learn?
- Why might it be important to consider these factors when building out a lesson or workshop?
As a group, pick a topic for a workshop or class your group would like to teach.(dont worry, we wont actually teach in this class.. or will we!?) Perhaps it's a class you've been wanting to teach or a fun subject like baking 101. Try to pick something the group has a relative domain knowledge on.
Knowing what you know about learning objectives... which is whatever you came with before this class started, write some learning objectives.
As a group, keep in mind the bullet points above, write 3 learning objectives for the topic your group has chosen. As the class continues, you can modify these however your group wishes to modify these. In fact, it's highly encouraged! However, for fun, let's maintain the original learning objective written in this exercise pure for comparison later.
Now that we have some learning objectives. Workshops need to be able to measure against those learning objectives.
In education there are at least two types of assessment, formative assessments and summative assessments.
In workshops and one off classes, instructors generally only need formative learning assessments.
Formative assessments allow students "to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning." quoted here
The end goal is already there. To teach a specific thing or set of specific things accurately. Formative assessments allow the instructor to gauge the feedback and adjust scope should they want to.
Summative assessments through feedback is good if time permits. But really only helps the instructor for the next iteration of the class. However, it is extremely effective to get iterative feedback for a specific workshop.
here's some examples of formative checks on learning I personally have found effective
As a side note Checks on learning should be viewed as an educational tool not simply a diagnostic one for the instructor.
This was actually the first check on learning we did. It allows students to guide discussion. There's an alternate version where you can write answers down. These can be nice on the opposite side of a lecture heavy activity to reinforce learnings from the lecture.
Instructor does or explains something then allows the student to mirror the activity. The flipped version can be effective as well. Where some initial path can be carved out for the student to attempt an activity. Then the instructor solves by showing methodology and approach.
This is a tool where we can gauge anecdotal levels of understanding of a subject. Where we let the students know holding a fist up represents a "0" level of knowledge and 5 fingers for "5" representing an expert level of knowledge. We could pivot into a lower barrier to entry if we see more 1's then we should. Or if we see more middle of the road we can give a bit more exposition and detail.
These can vary greatly depending on the type of workshop we'd like to conduct. It's almost always beneficial for our students to execute against learning objectives during the workshop.
There's a wide variety of ways for students to interact with an instructor and fellow students. Ultimately that's one of our responsibilities as instructors. Finding the most effective ways for students to consume the information we're presenting. In some cases, we might not want to use a check on learning at all.
As a group come up with at least 1 check on learning you could conduct against any of your current learning objectives. Write 2-3 sentences on how you would execute this check on learning.
This list could get quite expansive. As instructors, we have a myriad of techniques at our disposal to help with engagement and variety.
Some techniques lend themselves better toward more student to student interaction. Where the instructor really just facilitates conversation.
There are others that require more rigorous procedural instructions and follow through.
Here's a couple of examples I've found useful
Sometimes we need to sit there and explain something for 5 minutes. Be cognizant of student engagement here, it's easy to lose students during particularly long and dull portions of lectures.
Useful as a check on learning, also useful here. It can act as both an assessment for us as instructors but also a helpful teaching technique
Organize students into groups and discuss topics. Congregate students at the end to consolidate key points.
A nice infographic or sick chart will surely wow the audience. Maybe not, but it may facilitate learning in other ways.
Instructor codes and students follow along.
Keeping workshops dynamic helps with student engagement. Combine 1 or more of these techniques into 1. Or just come up with a new technique. These are just some common ones to get started.
With your group, write 2-3 sentences for 2 different teaching techniques that the group could use to teach towards the group's current learning objectives. It certainly doesn't have to be the ones mentioned above, but can be an example of them.
When we start to put pen to paper, the task seems fairly daunting fairly quickly. We're not writing a script for a lesson plan in today's class, however, we do want to drive the importance of clear learning objectives.
With clear and concise learning objectives, the lesson plan becomes much easier to assemble. With a learning objective, we can associate that to a specific technique or check on learning and piecemeal the class together.
Before we move into learning objectives though, let's not gloss over an important piece here. We do in fact want to write every bit of what we as instructors want to say during delivery. A script for our workshop. This isn't something we necessarily need to share with the students, but it can be. The act of writing and proofreading a lesson plan will allow us as instructors to get better familiarity with the workshops content.
This lesson uses markdown. I hate decks as much as the next person, and I think a github link works as a great "paper handout" in 2018. But you can use anything you want, keynote, power point, sketch, etc. My lesson plans are my scripts.
"Winging" a lesson is generally discouraged unless the instructor is extremely well versed in the subject matter and has familiarity with teaching the subject matter. Even then, a little planning probably wouldn't hurt these instructors either.
This script is helpful in many ways. It allows us to deliver accurate timings.
Notice the parentheses with the numbers in the headers? These are the timings for this lesson.
Not to mention it removes doubt and bolsters confidence for the instructor. It helps to know what we're going to say when we write down exactly what we want to say when we want to say it.
If we take anything away from this workshop. Let it be the importance of learning objectives. A good article from the university of toronto outlines some of the characteristics of good learning outcomes. According to them, good learning outcomes(objectives in our case) should be SMART(TT)
- speak to the learner - learning outcomes should address what the learner will know or be able to do at the completion of the course
Anything an instructor expects the students to know after attending their workshop should be consolidated within 1 or more learning objectives. Anything outside of these learning objectives are outside of scope and should not be included in the workshop.
- measurable - learning outcomes must indicate how learning will be assessed
quantitatively or qualitatively measurable. Verbs like 'understand' and 'know' are hard to measure. Instead use more active verbs like implement, create, describe. Checkout this word doc for a pretty good list
- applicable - learning outcomes should emphasize ways in which the learner is likely to use the knowledge or skills gained
learning objectives stays in scope and emphasizes student use cases.
- realistic - all learners who complete the activity or course satisfactorily should be able to demonstrate the knowledge or skills addressed in the outcome
Achievable goals based on background and instruction
- time-bound - the learning outcome should set a deadline by which the knowledge or skills should be acquired;
- transparent - should be easily understood by the learner; and
- transferable - should address knowledge and skills that will be used by the learner in a wide variety of contexts
Characteristics of Good Learning Outcomes - Article Here
If we were to make some learning objectives for a workshop on how to bake a pizza.
Here's an example of a bad learning objective:
Understand how to bake a pizza
Here's an example of a good learning objective:
bake a pizza
It's hard to measure someones ability to understand something. Where as you can definitely measure if someone has correctly baked a pizza or not.
"Understand" is unclear to the student as well. Should they be understanding things about baking temperature and dough making?
A better set of learning objectives for this workshop might be
- create dough from scratch
- apply pizza sauce and toppings
- bake pizza in oven
If a student sees these learning objectives, they immediately know what to expect. If they wanted to know how to make a pizza, they'd probably be pretty happy.
These bullet points above establish an extremely high level of importance in learning objectives to the workshops and lessons we prepare.
In fact, they are so important that anything in the lesson that doesn't teach towards those learning objectives should be thrown out, or warrants rewriting of some of the learning objectives.
In my own personal experience, I always start with learning objectives. Once I've established what those are, I piecemeal the class with a variance of teaching techniques helping guide each learning objective.
As a group, use the next 4 minutes to modify any learning objectives you'd like or any other parts of your answers. Prepare the following content to be easily slacked:
Each group presents the high level overview of their class. Slack the following information before presenting:
- workshop topic
- original 3 learning Objectives
- current 3 learning objectives if changed
- any interesting teaching technique or check on learning? or just a regular one of either?
- estimate number of additional learning objectives needed to effectively teach this workshop
- Create strong concise learning objectives leading to the workshop's structure.
- Fill in the gaps with exercises and activities that contribute towards all learning objectives.
- Write, read and proofread your script thoroughly
- Deliver workshop
Steps 1-3 take the longest.
There's some content perhaps worth mentioning but doesn't really fit in the general context of the workshop above. Anyways here it is:
Why teach anything at all? There are lots of reasons to teach.
Teaching others is one of the best forms of personal learning growth. Nothing quite makes sure we know something then by teaching it effectively to someone else. Additionally it allows us to be involved with the direction of our own eduction as well as at the organizational level.
In all of my lesson plans I've written, I've tried my best to stay away from pronouns like "I", "you", "me", "my", "your", and instead opt for pronouns like "we", "us", "our" in situations where I can. My opinion is that learning is a group goal, and my experience has shown me that most students resonate towards that sentiment as well. Learning things is challenging enough, I like to embrace that group growth mentality in those small places where I can in my lessons.
Albeit this particular lesson has some purely anecdotal knowledge. It's important to base your workshop on credible and accurate information. I mean, I'm certainly not following any crazy APA/MLA/chicago type guidelines, but simple links to references and documentation can make your lesson plan documentation in and of it self. Additionally it helps students looking for those outside resources.
It's important for the instructor to be engaging. Even during discussion exercises and practical exercises, it's important for instructors to walk around and actively guage student sentiment and progress. It allows instructors to get an awareness of current scope and promotes collaboration with our students.
If we write any amount of code into our lesson plans. It must be accurate. We already tested it? Test it again. Nothing is more embarrassing then writing code off a lesson plan that doesn't work and we can't figure out why.
Make sure the code looks pretty. This is something small, but make it look presentable. Additionally make it accessible. (ie. copy pastable)
Additionally if we have an exercise associated with the workshop we're creating, it's usually very helpful to have a git repository containing the exercises with solutions branches for any solutions.
Finally, if we're doing a software or "code" oriented workshop. Coding exercises with solutions are extremely beneficial. With a coding exercise, Students now have metrics against the learning objectives. They can know, innately, whether they have learned what they needed to from the lesson. Not only that, but it also allows the instructor to leverage different parts of the exercises as checks on learning.