How to design the perfect lesson

At some point, a professional has a point when he already knows a lot of things and knows how to and wants to share this with others. Begins to teach. However, it turns out that teaching is not so simple: to make a good lesson, you need some knowledge and skills. Our company has a special document that contains a lot of tips on how to begin a fairly high-quality lesson for a beginner in teaching. We thought, why not share this document with the whole community. After all, it won’t get worse for anyone who will teach better and more interesting in different places.

Below is the document itself.

Plan

1. Why is all this necessary?
2. Lesson structure
   
   
   1. Class start
   2. Main part
   3. End of class
3. Conducting a lesson
   
   
   1. Popular bugs
   2. Good chips
4. Parting words
5. Check list

1. Why is all this necessary?

Hello! My name is Artyom Pichugin. I am developing a line of data programs in Newprolab. Having been doing this for 5 years, I came to the conclusion that I have accumulated certain knowledge in the theory of instruction and experience that can be useful to you. For this, I prepared this small document, in which there is almost no water, and many useful things that will be useful during preparation for the lesson.

You are a good expert in what you do (we don’t invite others as teachers). However, in order to prepare a truly awesome lesson, sometimes this is not enough. I'm going to help you with this. As a result: during the lesson you will see eyes full of interest, and not a bored look staring at the phone.

2. Class structure

Let's start with the structure of the lesson. You might think: "Everything was normal, what you suddenly climb with your structure." A structure is not something that limits your freedom or holds you in a frame, preventing you from creating. Structure is your friend. This is the form that will allow your content to penetrate the student’s brain in the best way: you can also bring water in a glass, for example, and not in your palm. This is an example of the very form that allows you to better convey the content.

We will use the classical structure of three parts, which we all have encountered more than once: introduction, main part, conclusion. Only some parts will be called a little differently.

2.1. Class start

Suppose you are speaking for the first time to this audience. It is very important that people begin to trust you from the first minutes. The sooner they begin to do this, the less they will be distracted by thoughts: "What kind of guy is that? Why am I listening to you? Can you be trusted at all? Looks younger than me, what did you come to teach me here?"

Acquaintance

You urgently need to introduce yourself. Otherwise, these issues will act as a permanent filter that will not let knowledge into their heads (as you understand, through the whole lesson we will constantly fight for this goal - the most effective protocol for transferring data from one head to another without packet loss and with high speed ).

Feel free to talk about your achievements and experience. We know that you are an expert, but they do not know. It’s cool that you can do a lot of things, do a lot of things with your own hands, see problems and masterfully solve them. Share this. You won’t believe it, but it’s in their own interests! They need to trust you in order to perceive information normally.

How to do it? It's up to you to decide. You can take a stupidly bulletin slide. You can come up creatively. I saw how one teacher designed this slide as JSON. All sorts of game things come in cool: on the slide there are 3 facts about the teacher, but only 2 of them are true, the 3rd is fake. In general, there is space for creativity and creativity. I do not seek to limit it, but fully support it.

Motivation

Please explain to them why they should listen to you for 1.5 or 3 hours. Otherwise, the question will constantly hang in your head: “What the hell are you telling us this? What are you getting at? You have already introduced so many new terms here that your head is swollen, and why should I know that, I don’t understand!”

There are usually two options for motivation: either through possible achievements, or through possible threats. In the first version, you share cases: “Guys, look what you can do with this and what results can be achieved. Fire, then ?!” In the second version, you scare: “How I would like to be told what I’ll tell now, 3 years ago. I would have saved myself from a dozen hours of pain, reputational risks, thousands of unsatisfied customers, hundreds of thousands of money wasted " You can do combos of two options. You can’t spoil the butter porridge, in general.

On this, the initial part of the lesson ends. Do not consider it a block standing in the way in front of you. It is really important to spend a sufficient amount of time on this. It is important for you to connect to them, and only then transfer the data. Otherwise, packet loss is inevitable.

2.2. Main part

Ok, connection is. You can send data. But let’s not throw them either with a shovel, but pack and deliver normally.

Plan

Yes, I'm here again with boring things: structure, plan. But that’s how people work. Nevertheless, I propose not to fight this and to be indignant about this, but simply to accept and use it at home. What am I talking about? People love to know where they are being led. People do not like uncertainty. People want to understand their progress. People want to understand at what point they are now. People want to understand the big picture, otherwise it will be just a stream of consciousness. People better remember material if there are shelves on which it can be laid out.

All these desires can be fulfilled with just one click of your fingers. Write a lesson plan and show them to them. Again, this could just be a numbered list with different levels on one slide. You can do something more creative. Usually I just make this out as a route with some points along the road. Once, I held individual lessons for the deputy vice president of Sberbank and designed all the material in the form of a mindmap, along which we went all the way. Another time, I somehow got over and designed the material in the form of a map of the city with different neighborhoods, streets, and sights. I want to recreate - please. If you don’t feel like it, just make a minimum with a numbered list, it will be cool!

Format

In any incomprehensible situation, we grab onto the experience that once happened to us. We do this unknowingly. Having become parents, we begin to repeat the role models of our parents. Having become teachers, we begin to repeat the role models of our teachers. This is if we act unconsciously. If you turn on mindfulness, then there is a chance to break out of this trap.

So, what does this trap look like in the case of the role model of our teachers. It looks like this: let's plow some pairs of lectures, then make a couple of seminars. Often it does not work. During lectures, a person does not understand what is happening at all, where we are rushing and why. At the seminar, it becomes clear why, but I didn’t understand at the lecture, so now I can’t understand how to solve all this.

Is there an alternative? Yes! Make a mix. Well, more precisely ... a sandwich.

You already have a plan. Make it a level lower: to atomic concepts that you want to convey to people. For each concept, you will have a layer of theory, a layer of demo and, if desired, a layer of independent practice.

Not very clear? Come on with examples.

Let's say we teach machine learning. We have a lesson on various algorithms. I take logistic regression. I explain how it works at a theoretical level. Then I open the Jupyter Notebook, download the real data and apply this logistic regression in practice. Students repeat after you. They can try to play around with the parameters that you mentioned earlier, and see how this affects the result. It turned out a normal, tasty sandwich instead of just a piece of bread that would be eaten at the beginning, and pieces of ham and cheese, which would then be eaten simply without bread.

This mix of theory and practice is still good for another reason. Studies show that there is a human attention cycle, and it is limited. Often talk about 15-20 minutes. After this period of time, attention is squandered. The way out is to change the format of activity. Thanks to the alternation of theory and practice, we achieve this.

2.3. End of class

We figured out the main part: we need a plan and a sandwich.

Now what to do with the end of the lesson. Just a “Thank you” slide is not enough. We need to complete the protocol connection correctly.

A person listened to you for 1.5 or 3 hours. He no longer remembers what happened at the beginning of the lesson, and even in the middle, however. Remind him of that. Show me the path that he has traveled during this time: what he learned, what he learned to do, what he can do now in the future. This may overlap with the motivation that we asked at the beginning of the lesson.

By the way, look at the text that I wrote so far. I used all the principles that I spoke about to write it. Try to find where I set the structure of the text, where I introduced myself, where I demonstrated my expertise, where I created the motivation to read this text, where I mixed theoretical things with demos (examples). And by the way, in this paragraph I just took it and implicitly reminded you of those concepts that I talked about all the way, and helped you once again draw attention to them by making a summary of this part of the material.

I would recommend you not to continue to read the next part immediately, but to pause and try to shift what you read to your lesson.

3. Conducting classes

After reading the second part, you still have a good detailed plan and understanding how to build a lesson. This is already cool. Such a lesson will go well enough already, but there are moments that can ruin everything or vice versa will help bring this lesson to an excellent level. (As you see, I continue to work with your motivation further). This is directly a lesson. In this section, we will talk about approaches to preparing and conducting the lesson, including slides.

3.1. Antipatterns

Now let's talk about how to ruin a lesson.

Lots of text on the slide

This is directly the biggest pain, and at the same time, perhaps the most common one.

A person can read the text himself. Long. Since childhood. He does not need help with this and voice acting in class. Moreover, the speed of reading with eyes is higher than the speed of reading aloud. In general, if you have a bunch of text, then leave that bunch of text and don't shove it into the presentation. Make a post, an article - let them read. And you came to the lesson to explain something, to convey some information. Use the presentation as an assistant for this purpose.

Does a ton of text accurately help you get your message across? Maybe it's better to put some kind of circuit on the slide? Can show a demo? Can draw on a flipchart? Can a short video be included?

Cram in

This is a timing issue. It often happens that a person decided to cover a very large amount of material. And there are two options. In the first - closer to the end, he realizes that he doesn’t seem to have time and decides to drown, raise the pace and rush through the remaining material with great speed. In the second - he just finishes half an hour later.

Both options are unfavorable. Better to avoid it.

Firstly, it is worth initially assessing the volume of material in hours and minutes. Try rehearsing some piece of material and detect how much it took. Next it is extrapolated to the remaining material.

Secondly, even if the assessment was carried out, there are things that can affect the lesson during the play. It could be a practice. Practice always takes more time than you lay on it. These may be questions. Many questions, and you have +30 minutes to class. It is important during the lesson to classify questions into material important for understanding and unimportant, additional. Important ones must be answered immediately. It is better to take the unimportant to the sidelines, to slack, or to the end of the lesson if time is left.

Unpreparedness

We are engaged in technological education. This often means that in the classroom we interact with some kind of infrastructure. And with her there is always a chance that something will take and go wrong.

There is nothing more pathetic than watching how a person who was just an expert in your eyes suddenly cannot fix some kind of problem that has arisen with the infrastructure: pick up a docker, install some kind of library, get permission to edit or write files and etc.

Most of these things can be caught at the testing stage. Take upload your Jupyter Notebook to the cluster and run it, or run Hive and execute your request there, connect to Kafka and read the data from there. Everyone knows the importance of testing in programming and engineering. Teaching on big data is the same story: no need to test on prod, on real people.

Chat with the coordinator of the program you teach in advance and ask for all the access you need to test the lesson.

3.2. Good chips

Now let's talk about what can pull an activity not to just an excellent level, but to an awesome one. These are some good chips.

Explain complex things with simple words

There is again a standard role model for a teacher. We have all seen this: the professor comes and begins, it would seem, simple things to explain in such a way that nothing is clear. And you need the exact opposite: explain complex things in simple terms.

Your role is not limited only to the transfer of knowledge and skills. Moreover, most likely, you will not have time to transfer all the knowledge and skills in this area. Your role is to spark interest in the subject in another person. Then he will still dig a lot of things. But the initial push was yours, and it can be very important.

Interest in an object arises when a person sees beauty and logic in him that he is able to know. Therefore, creating additional barriers in this process is absolutely not worth it.

We dig a little deeper: what are the techniques and approaches to explain things in simple language. The first approach is living analogies, metaphors, comparisons. For example, in the text above, I used the metaphor of the data transfer protocol to describe the process of knowledge transfer, the metaphor of the circle as a form that allows you to better convey the content. Testing in prod and testing infrastructure before class. I try to make the text more lively, I try to appeal to those things that you are already familiar with. Agree, this is a pleasant inner sensation when new knowledge very easily joins existing knowledge, when we see the same old pattern in a new one.

The second approach is visualization, diagrams, graphs. I still have before my eyes this visualization of the SVM algorithm , after viewing which I immediately understood the principle of its operation. Because before that I could hear as much as I like: "well, he just takes and does a non-linear transformation, moves to a new space and builds a linear dividing surface there." So, of course, yes. It's like that. But it becomes much more clear after visualization.

Now you can take your detailed lesson plan and, going through each item, think about how you can beautifully explain this item: are there any similar things in our life? can I somehow at least visualize it?

Interactivity

Another feature that takes the lesson to an awesome level is interactivity. By interactivity, I mean the constant involvement of participants in the process. This is not a monologue 1.5 or 3 hours long. Rather, it is a dialogue.

What does this dialogue allow to support? These are mainly questions. But the questions are not only from the audience to you, but also from you to the audience. Examples of questions: "What do you think will happen if I do it like this now?" or "What conclusions can be drawn by looking at this graph?" or "Where can I apply it?"

Always leave some understatement. For this understatement, make a question. Listen to the answer. And then say the correct answer. It will be more interesting than if you just expose the material: in fact, pour in answers to questions that have not yet been asked.

Think about your occupation: in what places and what questions would be appropriate to ask.

Informality

And the last is informality. This is a cherry on the cake. This is what then makes people think that you are just a cool person, and not just a good teacher. Your role model should be - senior comrade.

Imagine that you are a sophomore who has come to talk with eleventh graders. You’re kind of a little older, you have more experience, you have seen a different life, but still there’s absolutely no gulf between you. You will communicate almost on equal terms, but they will relate to you as a person from that world into which they themselves aspire. We have on programs, if you think about it, a similar role model. You are already an expert in the world of working with big data, and they only go there. You have already seen that world, but they are not yet. However, this does not make you better and does not allow you to put yourself higher, look down upon them. They know a lot and understand things in other areas that you don’t understand.

What makes you feel like you're a senior comrade, and not a boring person from another planet? This is the tone, this is the slang. As an example, I try to create this feeling in the text: I speak to you "you", I am not shy about the spoken language, using, for example, the word "awesome", I use fairly simple sentences and strive to make it look like as if I were telling you this somewhere in the kitchen: easy and lively.

Feel that these are your younger comrades who will soon fall into your world. While you are a guide in it, but soon they will become part of the community and are on a par with you. There are times when they can later become your leaders. Life is interestingly arranged, so a simple human contact is always good. Just be a living person.

4. Parting words

And now the hardest part for me. Honestly, I don’t even know how to approach this.

I wrote a lot of text here. Spent the time. You too, having read it. Maybe you even liked it, and some things for you were new and interesting, useful. Nevertheless, I understand that this is most likely not enough for you to have the intention and motivation, for example, to remake your occupation. You have your own life: a lot of work, maybe a wife, children, necessarily friends, and indeed a lot of interesting things around, for which there is always no time. I don’t understand how I can integrate into this with my corral: let’s make your occupation really fucked up. I do not understand how I can win this competition with other matters.

Perhaps the only thing I'm counting on is what you and I look like. We like to do something of the highest quality, so that it shines straight, so that people are pleasantly surprised at what happens, it turns out. We like not to stand still, but to develop. Every time I try something new. We like to receive positive feedback and thanks from those with whom we work. We just like to grow and invest in our own development. We like to see the excellent results of our work, to see our contribution to the world around us. Teaching is another great opportunity for this. And as you can see, it is not necessary to have an innate talent for teaching, there are just certain techniques and approaches that will allow you to do a great job: good structure, good format, avoid popular mistakes and use cool chips. Just :)

5. Checklist

1. add part to yourself
2. add a part that motivates listening to me further
3. add lesson plan
4. make each learning point a sandwich
5. add at the end a subtotal of what they learned and did
6. replace slides where there is a lot of text on the visualization
7. drive away part of the material and measure the timing
8. test infrastructure and code performance
9. replace complex explanations with analogies and metaphors
10. think over places where there will be questions to the audience
11. add a little slang and feelings of explanation of the material "in the kitchen"