Ideal Design Qualities
Warm-up
For this course, it can be beneficial to keep a digital journal for your thoughts and reflections. You may choose a Word doc, a Google doc, or even paper and pen.
Our students can play video games for hours, but many often only focus in class for only a few minutes. Why do you think that is?
Introduction
In this unit, we investigate why design matters in a lesson. The primary task of an instructor is to design engaging activities for students to learn and then to lead students to successful completion of these tasks. From pacing to the organization of knowledge to why involving learners is crucial, these qualities can work in tandem to create an ideal learning environment or impede learning altogether.
Outcomes
- Recognize common obstacles to learner engagement, such as distractions, disinterest, and external pressures, and develop strategies to overcome these barriers and rekindle engagement.
Design Qualities
Instructors can enhance learner engagement by attending carefully and even catering to the qualities that most likely appeal to students involved such as their needs, values, and interests. These Design Qualities are Design Qualities of Context and Design Qualities of Choice. The former, Design Qualities of Context, involves aspects of tasks or activities that will impact student engagement even when the instructor does not intentionally take those qualities into account. The latter, Design Qualities of Choice, are qualities that an instructor can either choose to include or omit, contingent upon the instructor’s judgment regarding the interests and needs of their learners.
Design Qualities of Context:
- Content and substance: what is to be learned and the level of student interest in the topic
- Organization of Knowledge: the way classroom activities are organized
- Clear and Compelling Product Standards: the extent to which students are clear about their objectives, what the project they produce should look like, what will be used to evaluate these products and performances, and how much value will learners attach to the projects/assignments.
- Protection from Adverse Consequences for Initial Failures: the extent to which students can feel free to attempt without fear that initial failures will bring them some form of punishment and/or humiliation
Design Qualities of Choice
- Product Focus: Structuring tasks/activities so that what students are to learn is linked to a performance, product, or exhibition to which the student attaches personal value
- Affirmation of Performance: Designing tasks/activities in a way that makes students feel their performance/work is meaningful and valuable to peers and others whose opinions the student cares about
- Affiliation: designing tasks so that students have the opportunity to work with peers as well as other experts, adults, and parents, and not limited to the instructor
- Novelty and Variety: providing students with the opportunity to utilize a wide range of media and/or other approaches during an activity/task
- Choice: Designing tasks/activities so that students can exercise autonomy and choice in what they are to learn or how they go about learning
- Authenticity: linking tasks to aspects of genuine interest to learners
Improving Pacing: The Rhythm of the Classroom
What is Pacing and Why Should Instructors Care?
It is simply the speed one moves through a lesson or the rate of delivery for various parts of a lesson. Pacing is the skill of creating a perception that a class is moving at an optimal speed for students and generally, this will mean that a lesson “feels” like it is moving quickly. That is why it is important for instructors to set a good pace in the classroom so that students feel like they are progressing. In addition, effective pacing helps an instructor hold students’ attention as students who pay attention often learn and students who do not pay attention are not learning.
One way to create an illusion of speed is to use a variety of activities to accomplish a lesson objective. By moving from one activity/task to another or employing a different method of presentation, you are “changing the pace,” which increases interest in students since they are not focused on a singular task for too long. However, be cautious as changing topics too often can be confusing and distracting to students so try to stay within a topic, but change instructional strategies often.
An example of optimally varying the format of your activities would be: an instructor focusing on a single topic such as Islamic Art might organize activities where students first define key terms, then they might find examples from a text or online, followed by identifying key characteristics of a specific work of art, then concluding by responding to a description taken from a novel.
The short video below offers a more in-depth view on pacing along with additional strategies.
Best Practices of Pacing:
1. Attention Spans
There is plenty of conflicting research about the length of a student’s attention span and others assert that there is no such thing as an attention span. However, some examples that might be worth trying include:
- The “age + 2” rule: a student’s optimal attention span is determined by using their age plus 2 minutes. In other words, a 13-year-old can pay attention for about 15 minutes at a time.
- Teaching with three activities per hour
- Switching between activities every 15 minutes
2. Staying Away from Lengthy Lectures
Lengthy lectures tend to have students disengaged and falling asleep. Of course, some things must be taught through lectures, so utilizing interactive lectures can provide a more effective learning experience. Interactive lectures are where an instructor inserts student-centered activities throughout. These activities can provide students with opportunities to work directly with the material the instructor has presented and apply what they have learned.
In addition, instructors can use micro-lectures where they provide “tiny bursts” of information that occur in mere minutes or even less, followed by student-focused activities. With these methods, the class feels brisk rather than slow.
For example, in a lesson on the different layers of the earth, an instructor might give a micro lecture on the characteristics and composition of the crust, then navigate to having students work in small groups to find and outline the other layers of the earth such as the mantle, outer core, etc. This could then be followed by an activity in which students use a graphic image to check their answers or construct further questions.
3. Primacy-Recency Effect
- In a lesson or meeting, we tend to remember best what we heard or learned about first and towards the end. The information in the middle is what we often remember least and should be used as “downtime” or brain breaks. During these breaks, instructors can have students practice and apply what they have just learned through an activity or task.
4. Brightening Lines
- Aside from breaking up classroom instruction, making clear distinctive breaks between activities rather than having activities meld together can have a positive effect on pacing or “brightening lines.”
- An instructor can brighten lines by reminding students of what just has been learned, what is about to be learned, and by providing clear timelines (telling students they have 3 minutes left to complete an assignment/activity). This helps learners focus on what they are learning and remain cognizant of their pace.
Reflection
In your journals, please write about a lesson that you have recently taught in class that you felt was too lengthy and could have been delivered using some of the techniques you just learned about.
Unit 1: Understanding the Concept of Learner Engagement
Unit 2: Ideal Design Qualities