Lesson Design

Overview

Questions

• What are the recommended steps to take when developing a new lesson?
• What lesson do you want to develop during and after this workshop?

Objectives

After completing this episode, participants should be able to…

• Explain the lesson design process we will be adopting for this course.
• Summarise the lessons that participants will be working on.

A Lesson Design Process

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In order to design an effective lesson, we need a structured approach with the learner in mind and clearly identified goals. Throughout this training, we will use a modified version of Nicholl’s five phase paradigm for curriculum design¹. Nicholl’s paradigm describes a process, commonly referred to as backward design, where those who wish to develop a new curriculum first begin by defining exactly what their learners will be able to do after they have completed the lesson/training/course. The subsequent stages of the curriculum design process involve designing content to directly meet those stated outcomes.

1. Select learning outcomes
2. Choose learning experiences to help learners achieve these outcomes
3. Develop content to support these experiences
4. Assess learner progress towards desired outcomes
5. Evaluate chosen outcomes, experiences, and content based on this assessment

Nicholl’s five phases of curriculum design², presented as a cycle to reflect that all aspects of the design should be revisited in response to the results of the evaluation that takes place at step 5.

The last two phases of Nicholl’s paradigm involve assessing learner progress towards the desired learning outcomes and evaluating the stated objectives and current content in light of the results of that assessment. In The Carpentries, most workshops are relatively short-format, without room for an extensive assessment after the teaching has finished (a summative assessment). To account for this, our lessons place an emphasis on formative assessment: assessment of learner progress that takes place while the teaching is still going on, to give instructors opportunities to evaluate the teaching and lesson content before the end of the workshop.

To account for this, we have adapted Nicholl’s five phases in this training, to place an emphasis on assessing learning during a workshop:

1. Define desired learning outcomes
2. Design assessments to determine progress towards desired outcomes
3. Write content to lead learners from one of these assessments to the next
4. Assess learner progress towards outcomes during teaching
5. (After the break) evaluate how closely the outcomes meet the objectives

An overview of the iterative process of lesson design and development , adapted from Nicholl’s five phases, that will be presented in this training.

Your Lessons

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This training will provide many opportunities for discussion of your lessons. Providing some context now for the lessons that you will be creating will help the Trainers and other participants get involved in those discussions and give you feedback as you follow the process.

Discussion (10 minutes)

Take a few minutes to think about your answers to the following questions:

1. What is the topic of the lesson that you plan to develop based on this training?
2. Have you created training material on this topic before?
3. What is motivating you to create this lesson?

Make some notes, then share a single-sentence answer to each question with the other participants.

Keypoints

• We will learn to develop lessons based on the (slightly adapted) Nicholl’s backward lesson design process.
• There can be many reasons to create a new lesson.
• This training will give you a process to follow to ensure your lesson is effective.

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1. Nicholls (2002)↩︎

2. Nicholls (2002)↩︎