Summary

Identifying a Course Structure

Instructional planning is comprised of the planning of all course learning activities both in and out of class.

When planning any aspect of a course, you should first consider the context of the specific lesson in the entire course, and how it relates to the course goals and learning outcomes. As you plan instruction, you will need to dissect the broad learning outcomes for major concepts or complex skills into supporting outcomes.

These supporting outcomes then become the basis of instructional planning.

Planning an Instructional Unit

The four phases of instruction is a scalable model and should be integrated into your instruction, whether you are planning a single class or a series of classes to cover an entire concept/chapter. You can use either the CTL’s Lesson Planning Template or Unit Planning Template to guide you through the planning process of each phase of instruction.

It is important to plan ways to assess students informally and provide them with feedback at each of the four phases.

Introduction

This phase of instruction serves as an introduction to the topic.

Guiding questions and principles

• What do they already know about the topic? How can you get students to remember an experience they can build on?
• What’s the hook? Emotions affect learning and retention, so how can you draw on feelings?
• Set expectations (i.e., share learning outcomes)

Example activities

• Stories
• Videos
• Polls
• Objects
• Diagnostic quizzes

Presentation

This phase of instruction is where students engage with the content needed to achieve the learning objective.

Guiding questions and principles

• What content is need-to-know versus nice-to-know for achieving the objectives?
• What resources currently exist (i.e., videos, books, articles, simulations, etc.)
• Are there ways students can “discover” the content? For example, jigsaw or inductive reasoning activities.
• If not, how will you involve learning in actively learning the content?
• How will you make the content accessible to all learning? (i.e., multiple means of representation)
• How will you ensure content is presented from diverse perspectives?
• How will you ensure students understand moving onto the practice phase?

Example activities

• Interactive lecture
• Readings
• Peer teaching
• Videos
• Inductive reasoning activities

Practice

This phase of instruction is where students do practice activities, targeting understanding of the specific content and performance skills.

Guiding questions and principles

• How will you model and scaffold skills? (i.e., cues and prompts)
• What kinds of support mechanisms can be used? (i.e., cues, hints and prompts)
• How will you design for multiple means of expression of learning?
• How will you build in feedback?

Example activities

• Ungraded quizzes
• Discussion forums
• Problem-solving questions
• Student-generated questions
• Reading summaries
• Clicker questions

Application

In this stage of instruction, students are applying new content and skills to authentic situations and integrating this with previous knowledge.

Guiding questions and principles

• What activities can you design that mimc real-world tasks in the field? For example, case studies or authentic tasks.
• How can you design activities that provide students opportunities to draw from their own diverse backgrounds and experiences?
• How will you build in feedback?

Example activities

• Case studies
• Scenarios
• Projects
• Community work
• Role-plays
• Applications tasks specific to the discipline