MedEdPORTAL (Feb 2012)
Designing and Delivering an Effective Lesson
Abstract
Abstract This goal of this workshop to increase attendees' versatility as teachers, highlighting ways to move beyond PowerPoint slides and deliver content more effectively by incorporating activities that engage the learners. The workshop is designed to last for 90 minutes. We suggest opening with introductions (5 minutes) and a short (10 minutes) didactic about goals and objectives. Participants will then individually choose a topic for a talk and work in pairs to write a goal and 2–3 objectives for their topics using the GO ACES model outlined on the worksheet (15 minutes). Then, an overview of assessment techniques can be presented that are appropriate for one-hour talks. The participants will then work in small groups to devise assessments for their talks and continue to complete the worksheet. (20 minutes) The workshop leader will then review the important components of deciding on the lesson content. Participants will then brainstorm with their partner ways to be concise. (10 minutes) The workshop leader will then guide the group to discuss ways to energize their learners in a large group. (5 min) Then, using a list of possible teaching strategies, participants will return to pairs to choose teaching strategies (15 minutes). By the end of the workshop, each attendee will have completed a worksheet with topic, goal, objectives, assessment and energizing teaching strategy: an effective lesson plan for their topic. Wrap-up and participant evaluations of the workshop will include brief reflective exercise for the participants in implementing this model. (10 minutes) Literature on faculty development provides evidence that experiential learning, feedback, learning with peers and multiple instructional strategies are all important to effective learning. (Steinert et al. A Systematic Review of Faculty Development Initiatives Designed to Improve Teaching Effectiveness in Medical Education: BEME Guide no. 8). This workshop will implement these principles as well as equip participants to apply them when developing their own teaching sessions. We have delivered this workshop on four separate occasions. After the first delivery, at Council of Medical Student Educators (COMSEP) Conference in 2009, we obtained a peer feedback form from 18 participants. The form was designed as a retrospective pre and post assessment. Both T-tests and Wilcoxon signed rank tests were done on all seven questions (since the sample size was small) and the post-test score was significantly higher (p <0.001) for both types of statistical analyses.
Keywords
