Learning Environment Design

In this read, I will be sharing particularly the process I went through to assist myself for my micro-teaching. The first part of the micro-teaching is to focus on the micro-learning environment design; in short, this is known as MicroLED. This activity was our learning task as well as an assessment to be carried out for the course I am coordinating. For this purpose, I looked at a second year Bachelor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering course, EE211 (Electrical Machines). For this task, I chose a topic a on “Fundamentals of Power and the Power Triangle”. Considering the course learning outcomes for this course, I designed first the lesson learning outcomes and then developed the presentation by keeping in mind the following key design attributes:

Audience – it is important to know your audience so that tone of the lecture and level of language/content is adjusted to ensure the content is delivered well. While some of the fundamentals may have been taught earlier, it is still important to refresh the student’s memory by going into important basic concepts first (briefly). Following this, appropriate nomenclatures must be introduced to avoid any confusions when the content gets deeper. I have also incorporated some visual aids to ensure students digest the content well.

Objectives/Learning Outcomes – this has to be made very clear to assist the students in understanding that the lesson taught is well aligned with the course learning outcomes. This keeps them in track of how the learning/concepts taught are evolving.

Delivery method – they way the lecture is conveyed to the students is of utmost importance. This is because delivery of the content is what initiates the learning process. In this regard, one must ask the following questions to ensure the lecture is delivered well:

- Are you using correct visual aids to deliver the content to the students?

- Can the students track you well while you are teaching (do they follow your pace)?

- Is the current technology you are using to deliver the lecture is also accessible at the student’s end?

- Pictures or Animations speak a thousand words, are they meaningful enough to enhance the student engagement factor?

- Are there any activities within the class that would really drive up the students and bring out their best during lectures?

Content – this is the main component of a lecture and one should look at the relevancy of the lecture materials with respect to the course learning outcomes. Creating real life analogies upon explaining newer concepts, using diagrams to explain and annotating on the board or on the lecture slides is what makes a session interesting.

Assessment Strategy – this is simply to understand the level of understanding a student has after end of the lecture. This is usually achieved by holding a formative assessment (not necessarily assessed) towards the end of the class.

Student Engagement factor – this factor looks at how inquisitive students are during or after the lecture session and how much questions they have raised in relation to the topic being taught.  One can observe the creativeness and critical thinking under this aspect when students tend to query things related to real life application and inquiring on the possibilities of their own ideas with the instructor.

Time Factor – this is an important factor that must be considered at all times since students usually have a short attention span when introducing new concepts. It is better to continuously monitor students and their body language to understand how much concentrated they are during the classes. It is advisable that one should teach in blocks and take short breaks during the lectures and communicate with students individually to address any issues they are facing.

Following the above attributes, I moved onto the planning of the lecture and setting up the correct visuals and ice-breaker activities to enhance my teaching.

The link/video below shows how I planned my lecture at the introductory stages of the EE211 (Electrical Machines) course: