Week 3 - Session Planning

What is important when planning a teaching session?

When we studied English and creative writing at school, everything had to have a beginning, middle and end. In essays, paragraph structure was designed to ask a question, present a number of points of view, then summarise and share a conclusion. In a way, I think lesson structure can start from these principles.

The level of experience and time allocated should also affect how we plan a session – I’ve written briefs for BA students and graduate interns that have worked well, but I had to completely change my approach when writing one for 15yo work experience students. This audience has less knowledge of graphic design so we had to start with something more basic, introducing the simple ideas of creating a moodboard and how to ideate.

The time of the session is important too – do you expect to carry on the project after the session (i.e. is it a brief and kick off session) or is it a workshop where you will be sharing the final outcome at the end of the day? If it is the latter, it would be a good idea to have a wrap-up at the end of the session, where the students can share their learnings and you can summarise. If it is a shorter session, like a lecture, the arc mentioned in my first paragraph would probably be a good place to start.

In an online capacity, it might not always be possible to make the session interactive, but where possible that would be something I would attempt, as in the creative field, most learners learn best by doing, rather than passive learning. There is no one right way to do something creative, so it is important for the students to take part, try, fail, try again. If it isn’t possible, maybe suggest some follow up exercises or references to explore? And create the session to fit in with the other themes of the course so that they can use the knowledge shared in the session in the not too distant future, meaning it should sink in faster.