Name: Design for How People Learn
Rating: 4.5 (120 reviews)
Author: Julie Dirksen

What’s in it for me? Discover how to design your lesson plans around how people learn.

Contrary to popular belief, education doesn't just end once you leave the classroom. Technology, innovation, and knowledge are all progressing at an exponential rate – and in order to keep up and stay competitive, we all need to be lifelong learners. But if you’ve ever dozed off over the pages of a tedious textbook or found yourself scrolling Twitter when you’re supposed to be completing an online module, you’ll know that not all learning experiences are exactly well-designed.

Luckily, when you’re called upon to lead a workshop at your office or given the opportunity to teach a course in your field, you won’t fall into the trap of teaching dull, ineffective lessons. Why? Because by the end of this Blink to Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen, you’ll understand how students learn, how memory works, and how good lesson design can turn a dull course into a memorable learning experience.

So, let the teaching begin.

In this Blink, you’ll learn

how to motivate even the most apathetic students;
how to ensure your material penetrates through to students’ long-term memory; and
how to design effective lessons and assessment tools.

Chapter 1 – Great teachers know their students as well as their topic.

Meet Sven. He’s head of graphic design at a fancy start-up and he’s about to lead a group of new hires in a typography workshop. He’s done a lot of preparation – if anything, Sven’s overprepared – and he’s excited to share what he knows. So when he gets started, he doesn’t even bother with introductions. Instead, he decides to launch right into the exciting stuff – the difference between a typeface and a font, the merits of serif vs sans serif, and exactly what kerning is.

But therein lies the problem: Sven knows a lot about typography. However, he doesn’t know anything about his students.

Before Sven even began teaching, he should have gauged how much his students already knew. That way, he might have found out that Juanita in the front row is a typesetting nerd with strong feelings about Helvetica – and that Liam, in the back, doesn’t know anything past the fact that he used Times New Roman for his college essays.

Learning about your students allows you to pitch your course content to their skill levels and tailor it to their motivations. So, before you start teaching, here are a few initial steps to get to know your audience a bit better.

First, try to establish whether you’re dealing with a skills gap or a knowledge gap – or both! Let’s say your class is on hiking the Appalachian trail. A practiced hiker already has the skills to tackle the trail. They lack knowledge: What’s the best route? What weather conditions should they prepare for? But a novice hiker will lack skills as well as knowledge. You’ll need to teach them the basics – like how to lace up their hiking boots – before you move on to anything specific. And you should lead them through a few basic short hikes, then multi-day hikes, before you let them attempt a 2,000-mile-plus route.

Next, check in on the learners’ motivation. A motivated learner is more likely to excel than an unmotivated one. Teaching French to a Francophile? They’re already excited and engaged! But what if you’re teaching French to someone with a passion for bassoon? Well, you can always direct them to the nearest bassoon class. Then again, they might have to learn French – say, for dealing with French clients at work. Sometimes that’s motivation enough – but in case it’s not, tying your course material to your learner’s interests is a useful strategy. Sure, it might mean you stay up all night preparing a lesson about the eighteenth-century French bassoonist Adolphe Blaise – yes, he is a real person – but you’ll probably see a pay-off in the classroom.

The point is, keep learning about your students long after the initial round of introductions. In particular, aim for a two-way flow of information throughout the course. Ask them to explain concepts and demonstrate skills – you’ll easily be able to see who’s grasped the material, who needs some more help, and who’s misunderstood and needs correction quickly!

Finally, give your students input into the course wherever possible. Ask them to vote on how the course is paced or structured – this creates a sense of ownership. And if you have a range of experts and beginners, allow experienced students to opt out of sessions where you’ll be teaching something they already know. The best teachers aren’t the ones that know their topic inside out – they’re the ones who know their students inside out, too.

Chapter 2 – Creating memorable lessons is simple.

Let’s try out a test. Try and remember as much as you can from the following. Ready? OK.

The inventor Nikola Tesla was born in 1856, in Smiljan, Croatia. After he moved to the US, he collaborated frequently with Thomas Edison, before the two men fell out. Tesla’s inventions include the Tesla Coil and the alternating current, or AC, motor.

Chapter 3 – Apply new information to the proper context.

Think of your long-term memory as a huge closet. Some shelves are beautifully labeled and organized – while others are stuffed with all kinds of random bits and pieces. As a teacher, your goal is to make sure your information lands on one of those beautifully labeled shelves. Ideally, the same piece of information would land on multiple shelves, so it’s even more accessible. But, with so many options, how do we make sure the information goes where we want?

This comes back to knowing your students. Leverage and work with the shelves they already have. An English speaker learning Spanish already has a good set of shelves because the two languages have similar roots and grammatical structures. So, in your lessons, help your students make those connections. If you’re teaching Finnish, which has very little in common with English, you’ll have to build those shelves from scratch. But repetition will help ensure new information sticks in long-term memory.

Chapter 4 – Good design is the foundation of great teaching.

Incorporating a few principles of good lesson design will engage your learners and elevate your material. So, to help you implement these, this chapter will run through five of the most effective strategies for lesson design. Grab a pen – you’ll want to take notes!

One: Design your lessons to be action-oriented. Create opportunities for learners to apply new knowledge and practice new skills. They’ll retain much more that way. For example, if you’re teaching a course on nutrition, rather than simply telling students that a balanced daily diet should comprise roughly 2,000 calories, ask them to create a meal plan that hits that caloric target.

Chapter 5 – Evaluate learners effectively with well-designed assessments.

A stomach full of butterflies. Sweaty palms. A racing mind. Pretty typical stuff for a student about to sit a big exam. Funnily enough, designing an evaluation for your students can feel just as stressful as taking tests used to feel. Creating an evaluation tool that accurately assesses your learners’ competence can seem challenging – but it doesn’t have to be.

The best tip for designing an effective evaluation also happens to be the simplest: write your evaluation at the start of the course, not the end. That way you can make sure you’re actually teaching the skills and concepts you’re planning to test.

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