Planning a Course Session


You need to offer some structure to your class session, or else a typical student will not be able to learn much from it. A novice learner doesn’t yet have the skills needed to organize a large amount of information, so you should offer some of that organization yourself. Consider segmenting your course session, using some of the suggested segments below:

Hook and Objective

Grab your students’ attention right away. Surely there is something interesting or important about the content of the session, or else you wouldn’t be teaching it. Bring one of the most interesting or important bits right up to the front. You could try any of these hooks:

  • Start with a story. This could be a story from within the content (maybe there is a fascinating anecdote about the person who developed the theory you are talking about today), or adjacent to the content (maybe you have a funny story about the struggles you faced when learning the content for the first time). Humans naturally learn from stories [cite Made to Stick], so capitalize on that natural fact.
  • Start with a puzzle. People like mysteries. People like solving problems if they are set up well. Start your lesson with puzzle that the rest of your lesson helps solve.
  • Start with an example. Ken Bain [cite] found that the best college teachers tended to begin explanations with a simple generalized example, so start with something concrete and easy-to-grasp to get students thinking.
  • Start with a question. Something your students really want to know. Frame your lesson as an answer to that question.

Also be sure to specify the learning objective for your session. Read elsewhere on how to craft good learning objectives [link]

Content

This would be the information delivery portion of your lesson. An overwhelming amount of evidence suggests you should not lecture for your entire class session [cite]. But it’s still OK to lecture some. Keep it clear, keep it direct, and keep it short. If you have a lot to deliver, break up the delivery with activities and knowledge checks. Also consider these ideas:

  • Flip a portion of your class. If a great explanation of the content already exists on video, assign the video to be watched before class and use the time you save in class to do an activity or knowledge check.
  • Use specific, concrete examples to help students understand concepts.
  • Connect new information to what students already know.

Activity

The evidence in favor of active learning is overwhelming. It also makes intuitive sense. You, the teacher, do not need more practice with the material. Your students, as novices, could really benefit from practice. So make sure your students are practicing with the material in class. There are lots of ways to incorporate active learning in your session:

  • Use any of the strategies found on our active learning page [link].
  • Incorporate direct practice into class. If students need to do a big writing assignment, do some practice writing in class. If students need to take a big exam, do some practice exam questions in class. If students need to do a big group project, incorporate some smaller-scale group work in class.
  • Have students solve problems in class, while you are right there to help them.

Knowledge Check

Don’t wait until a major assignment or exam to find out if your students are learning. Don’t make your students wait until a major assignment or exam for them to find out if they are learning. Offer opportunities during class for them to check on their knowledge:

  • Give in-class quizzes. Make sure they have little or no impact on a student’s grade. You can incorporate higher-stakes quizzes later on as an assessment, but these quizzes are primarily to help students learn.
  • Ask lots of questions. Ideally, have them be the same level and type of questions you might ask on an exam or other assessment.
  • Implement Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) [link] to check on student learning.

Summary

A little bit of structure in your lesson can go a long way. Consider using a lesson plan template [link] to help you keep your lesson well-structured. If you want to have a little fun with it, consider experimenting with a 5-room dungeon approach to lesson planning [link].

Citations I’m thinking about:

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S.L., McDonough, M., Smith, M.K., Okorafor, N., Jordt, H., and Wenderoth, M.P., (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 111 (23), 8410-8415

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die. New York, Random House.

Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93 (3), 1-9