Title: How to design a class. Ah, summer. That time when teachers… | by Amy J. Ko | Bits and Behavior | Medium
Headings: How to design a class
How to design a class
Seven steps to designing a class
1. Devise and sequence learning objectives
2. Ideate instruction, practice, and feedback for objectives
3. Iteratively sketch, evaluate and refine a syllabus
4. Layer on extrinsic motivation (grades)
5. Extract action items
6. Teach the course
7. Synthesize reflections into revisions
How long does this take?
What if you’re inheriting course materials?
Can’t I just do lectures, homeworks, and exams?

Content: Ask students to enumerate the mechanics they already know on a piece of paper. For students who knew anything, give each student feedback on which ones they got right, which they got close to right, and which were wrong. If they got them all right, enlist them in your army of students to give feedback. For each mechanic a student didn’t know, have them watch a short video illustrating and describing the mechanic. Return to step 1), unless all students got all of the mechanics right. This pedagogy adapts to students’ prior knowledge, it offers practice enumerating mechanics, it gives personalized feedback, and it repeats. It probably is also more engaging! If you can devise activities like the above for every one of your learning objectives, and that also fits within the time and space constraints of your course, you’re well on your way to having a design. 3. Iteratively sketch, evaluate and refine a syllabus
As I generate ideas for how to teach each of your learning objectives, I like to capture them in a syllabus outline.