How we Facilitate Learning

Before we dive into leading the learning experience, we need to make sure there’s a clear plan in place for how the lesson will run. Designing an effective lesson plan is about defining 3 clear components.

1. Learning Outcomes – Covering the necessary content and giving the lesson a clear purpose.
2. Engaging Activities – Bringing learning to life with a focus on student engagement.
3. Evaluation & Feedback – Measuring the quality of the learning and giving the students feedback.

With these components in place, you can ensure students will have an engaging experience and finish the lesson having learned what is required to move ahead. Our lesson plans can also give a point to reflect on after the lesson for our own development. The plans also help to keep the overall class structure on track during changes to the normal schedule.

Here is an example of what a lesson plan could look like and the important elements to include.

---> 🔵 CLICK to access the Lesson Plan template document.

It’s also important to make sure you have established your BOD for the lesson and are prepared to deliver it at the start of the lesson. The BOD is all about providing a clear sense of direction to the students and making sure they understand why the lesson is relevant for them.

• B-Buy in: What is the value for the learner? Make sure to connect the content being covered to the industry or to the students development. Why is this content important to them?
• O-Outline: What course/topic is currently being covered? You will often be covering content that is all connected under one course or module of the programme. Defining what course is being covered can help students connect separate days of learning together. It can also help bridge content for an assessment.
• D-Detail: What are we doing today? This is the specifics for todays lesson. What’s be presented, what activities are planned, when are the breaks? Make sure to include todays learning outcomes as written in the TR.

Remember to include your BOD in your planning so you know what needs to be displayed for the class. If possible it can be a good idea to have this already up before the class arrives.

Learning Outcomes

The lessons learning outcomes will define the overall purpose and goals for the class. Therefore, it’s important we make these clear and appropriate from the start. To begin with in your role as a tutor you should be taking your lessons learning outcomes from the established course content. This could be from the Tutor Resource, Delivery Plan, or the next course assessment. Using these will ensure your lesson content stays aligned to the programme structure and works towards the course assessment.

An effective learning outcome is made of two key components. These are the Thinking Skill and the Demonstrated Learning. The thinking skill defines the behaviour or action being performed and is often written at the beginning of a learning outcome. The demonstrated learning establishes the context for the learning to be performed. In the example below we can see the thinking skill as “Review and Update” and the demonstrated learning as “Exercise plans or programmes”.

Making sure your lesson requires students to perform the Thinking Skill in a context that replicates the Demonstrated Learning will mean your students are practicing the skills they need to achieve the qualification.

Engaging Activities

Facilitation is all about putting the learners first. When we focus on student engagement, we are asking ourselves “how is the student engaging?” instead of “what am I delivering?”. This shift in mindset helps us to design learning opportunities that cater to a wide range of learners and introduce enough variety to keep things interesting. A good question to reflect on is “What was the value for the learner in today’s activities?” Later in this topic we will explore how to construct engaging activities for your class.

Evaluation & Feedback

Even though we may have a strong purpose in place and have constructed a list of engaging activities, our lesson isn’t complete until we’ve measured the learning. It’s important that we have in our plan the activity or tool we will use to evaluate whether each of the learners has achieved the learning outcome. These tools can vary from more formal assessments to casual activities with a strong feedback loop.

When defining your evaluation make sure to consider the following points.

• Number of Assessments – Does every activity need to be measured? Over assessing can lead learners to believe the goal of the lesson is to pass a test and therefore avoid taking opportunities that allow them to learn.
• Format and Standards – How will the learning be measured? In a formal assessment we might need to look at an established matrix to keep the measurement fair. We may also need to set the assessment in an environment that gives every learner the chance to succeed. For more casual activities peer feedback may be all we need.
• Feedback – The most critical part of any evaluation is establishing the feedback loop for the learners, and what this will look like. This could be thorough analysis captured by the tutor or a peer or self-reflection the student has performed. It’s important this is captured and saved for future reflections later in the learning. Remember learning only happens through feedback.

We will explore further tools for evaluating learning when we cover concept checking.

The Learner Engagement Cards are a great tool we can use to ensure our lessons have a variety of engagement options. At times we can believe our lessons are fresh and exciting because the delivery of the content is changing, however learners will disengage from the learning quickly if the delivery is all that is changing. We need to make sure the student’s interaction with the content is also varied.

The cards are a list of engagement types students will apply when navigating a learning opportunity. They give examples of activity types that can be used to introduce different engagement opportunities to the lesson.

When putting together a plan of activities for a lesson a tutor may choose to start with a presentation (Receive), run a design challenge (Create), and then capture the learning evaluation in a quiz (Practice). This structure offers variety in the types of interactions students are performing with 3 different engagement methods. For the next lesson you could choose to start with Receive but then move into an Experiment and an Imitate to close. This will ensure that variety is being introduced in the way students are interacting with the class content.

The Learner Engagement Cards are a great resource to refer to when putting together a lesson plan. Click the arrow under the Learner Engagement Cards to better understand how they can support your facilitation.

Our goal as tutors is to create engaging lessons as this creates meaningful learning opportunities for students. We’ve explored the need for a clear lesson plan and variety in engagement method as two ways of ensuring an engaging lesson. Below are some further tips and tools to drive learner engagement.

Energisers and Icebreakers can be a great way to add something unique to a lesson. They can add energy to a lesson especially to start things off or to have a fun break in between heavier pieces of content. Both types of activities can be connected to the lesson topic but don’t have to be if the goal is to change up the pace.

Icebreakers are typically used to “Break the Ice” and help learners to build connections within the learning group. Generally, the activities revolve around getting to know each other and share interests through a creative or kinesthetic approach. Icebreakers are great for new classes or for any late enrolments to feel included. Having a couple of Icebreakers across a week where students who don’t normally connect are required to work together can help establish a sense of whānau in the space. It can also mean the class is less likely to form cliques.

Energisers are best used when you need to introduce a bit of energy to the class. This could be at the start of a session, after a break, or following a long period of receiving content. Most Energisers don’t need to have a clear objective connected to the lesson content and instead are more about play and simply having fun. Much like Icebreakers the Energisers are another good opportunity to have the students working in groups and connecting with others. Because of the purpose of Energisers, aim to keep them short and sweet, normally within the 10–20-minute range.

---> 🔵 CLICK to check out the Hyper Island Toolbox for ideas on activities and Energisers

The learning environment can have an impact on the overall learning experience and therefore the student’s engagement. Much like our learning outcomes and activities it’s also important to consider how classrooms are setup and how the students might use them.

BOD

It’s a good idea to have somewhere in the class the outline for the days BOD - Buy-in, Outline, and Detail. This could be on the whiteboard, through a presentation slide or somewhere else visible for students. This information can help students connect their learning back to the lesson purpose. Buy-in refers to the value for the learner and will often match the learning outcomes. Outline is the bigger picture details of the course, such as the course name, assessment details and other important programme information. Detail is the schedule for the day and in what order things will occur (this can also be helpful structure for neurodiverse learners).

Whiteboard

Using your whiteboard can add another level of detailed information for the students. Think about how which of the following ideas could benefit your class.

• Campus Details – Important campus contacts, break times/holiday dates, Pathways Awarua codes. This would like be more permanent information for the class that might take a corner of the whiteboard
• BOD – Setting out a space for BOD can help students get use to using this information to add value to their learning
• SDL – Adding the day or weeks SDL activity as an element to connect to the days learning, can help introduce further value and meaning to the SDL.
• Parking Lot – If students have tricky questions that might take some research or if they ask a question that isn’t relevant to the current conversation then these questions can go in the parking lot. Students can add any questions here with the safe knowledge that at some point in the lesson we will take the time to answer them.

Music

Music can add even more to the overall learning atmosphere though we need to be mindful of how this is run. Music should always be controlled by the tutor and you hold the decision for what is and isn’t played. It’s important to also gather student voice for when music is appropriate in the class. For example, music during an assessment may be distracting to some learners, though music during an energiser will add even more energy for the class. One idea is to have a class playlist that students can request songs be added to. This means you have the chance to listen to the song first and decide if it’s appropriate.

Theming and Layout

Lastly you can consider how the classroom is laid out and if there are any opportunities for appropriate and safe theming. For different lesson types you may like to move furniture around to better support the learning. For example, you could split the room for a debate, move the furniture away to get people on their feet or create pods of desks to encourage group work. Keep in mind who you are sharing a room with as well and return things to how you found them.

Theming means adding some special visual elements to your room to connect the space to the topic. Think about what elements you could add that bring the room to life or even replicate a real-world context to add more meaning for the learners. Theming can be a great way to lift the energy and create even more engagement.

It’s important throughout the learning experience that students and tutors are receiving feedback on how the learning is progressing. Much of what we’ve looked at above covers methods for students to receive feedback. It’s critical though as tutors we are also capturing feedback to let us know if the learning has happened. Much of the time this will happen from students presenting work or from dialogue between the class on a certain topic. This is where the method of concept checking comes in.

Concept checking is about having robust methods to measure whether the concepts in the learning are understood by the learners. We might find in class we ask the students “Does everyone understand?” or “Are there any questions?” This type of enquiry may get a response from learners but gives little insight into the actual understanding the students have. Instead, we want to introduce questions that require the student to parrot back an in-depth answer or to show they have understood the content. Questions like “Can you tell me what your favourite idea we covered today was?” and “In your own words how would you define the idea I just introduced?” require students to share their ideas in greater detail and with an element of their own opinion. Through this you can gain a richer idea of their overall understanding. This is especially important for any learners who you know have learning barriers. For these students saying “yes I understand” is safer than acknowledging they need help.

Concept checking can also take a more visual form when asking students to create something like a poster or presentation that represents their knowledge. Avoid moving on from a topic until you have concept checked with the class.

Across the NZMA brand we have 3 different delivery platforms we use with classes. The platforms used for certain programmes can change between campus and depending on when the intake is run. We have this variety to make sure we can cater to students different learning needs given the other parts of their life they might be balancing. The delivery platform is something the students enrol into from the start of the programme and is not something we can change once the intake is underway.

Our 3 delivery platforms are:

• Campus-based – This encompasses most of our programmes as lessons are delivered fully on campus in person with a tutor leading the content delivery. Classes will run to a set timetable with students attending classes on campus.
• Blended – This method makes the most of a flipped classroom model where students will receive the course content through the learning management system away from campus. They will then have some set days on campus where they get to bring what they have explored to life as lead by the tutor. This allows for flexible learning while still having regular tutor support.
• Distance - A fully asynchronous learning experience, perfect for students unable to attend a campus or in an area of Aotearoa where we don’t have a site. Content is self-led through the learning management system with assessments being the point of contact the students have with tutors to gain feedback on their learning.

Depending on the method of delivery, the learning experience and therefore the planning from the tutor needs to be different. Our learning and development team will work with tutors to make sure they have the right resources and support to get the most from each delivery platform.

---> 🔵 CLICK – Check out the NZMA Courses to see what delivery methods are available for each programme.