Make teaching more effective

"[Students] come to formal education with a range of prior knowledge, skills, beliefs, and concepts that significantly influence what they notice about the environment and how they organize and interpret it. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, solve problems, and acquire new knowledge."
– Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, How People Learn (2000, p. 10)

New knowledge is built on existing knowledge. Thus, when you are planning a class it is important to determine what your students are likely to know coming into your course and (later in the planning process) how well they know it.

Retrieved from http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/yourstudents.html

New learning spaces are designed to encourage groupwork and collaboration. They are also designed to easily connect with the world outside the classroom using technology.

Active learning of students in new learning spaces enables them to think deeply and to transfer their knowledge to new contexts. Active learning also engages students in original thinking. Preparing students for active learning requires teachers to carefully assess what knowledge students need in order to be able to work effectively in groups or on individual assignments. This can be done through whole class discussion, preparatory reading followed by discussion, skill training and smaller, scaffolded tasks. These may be done in class or online.

Curriculum design is crucial in new learning spaces because the onus is on the students to build their learning and you as a teacher using your expertise both in the discipline area and in teaching to interact appropriately.

At university, students not only need to learn disciplinary knowledge and skills but also need to develop their 'soft skills' including those involving teamwork and collaboration so they can develop their thinking and become creative and effective problem-solvers in the workplace. Group work exposes students to different cultures, different points of view and a diversity of learners. However, groups must have something substantial to do - otherwise it lacks authenticity.

As in any other course, you will need to work out how you will chunk the learning for each class and create a teaching schedule for the course/unit which will satisfy the learning outcomes. Designing activities carefully will support students' learning and help them to be able to complete the assessment. This planning is not about what you will do but what your students will do in the time allocated ie. the activities you will get them to do.

Backward design is one way to approach unit/course/lesson planning, “promoted by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their book, Understanding by Design (1998). Teachers who create curriculum materials using this approach begin with the end in mind. They thus plan their curriculum units around these types of questions: What enduring understandings do I want my students to develop? How will I know if my students have learned what I want them to learn? To quote Wiggins and McTighe:

Why do we describe the most effective curriculum design as “backward”? We do so because many teachers begin with textbooks, favored lessons, and time-honored activities rather than deriving those tools from target goals or standards. We are advocating the reverse: One starts with the end—the desired results (goals or standards)—and then derives the curriculum from the evidence of learning (performances) called for by the standard and the teaching needed to equip students to perform. (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998, p.8)” 

Retrieved from: http://www.innovateonline.info/extra/definition2157.htm

The backward design lesson plan template below also includes an example of how one teacher, Dr Anthony Bedford, taught an introductory class to Statistics and Epidemiology.