DIGITAL LIBRARY
HOW TO PREPARE A LESSON PLAN AT UNIVERSITY TEACHING
Universidad Complutense de Madrid (SPAIN)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2012 Proceedings
Publication year: 2012
Page: 4833 (abstract only)
ISBN: 978-84-616-0763-1
ISSN: 2340-1095
Conference name: 5th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 19-21 November, 2012
Location: Madrid, Spain
Abstract:
Up to now the common lectures were the unique way of communication between professors and students, also there were very few sources of information available for students about a subject: lectures and books specially. Nowadays, there is an effort to give a new turn in university teaching. In our opinion, common lectures must not be excluded as a way of teaching but there must not be an exclusive way to teach. In traditional lectures the information is transferred only passively to the students and it is known that only a very low percentage of information of the lecture content they are capable to retain.
In the university area, learning process must develop the student critical capacity and the management and analysis of information. New technologies make capable to give several information to students what cause unease in students about the great amount of information they have to study for a lesson. This is the reason why professors have to give them clearly what are the objectives, needs and specific competences of the subject. Therefore it is the professor who has to be clear about all these points; this is the only way to start planning a good lesson. We have to wonder what we want the students to learn from this lesson.
Students are exposed to a lot of information during the course. Sometimes, they find difficulties to distinguish major themes, ideas, or concepts from those of less importance. Through a lecture, the teacher can emphasize those concepts that are really valuable, help students put their knowledge in perspective, and through example and explanation, clarify concepts.
A lesson plan is the instructor’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time. Before you plan your lesson, it will first need to identify the learning objectives for the class meeting. Then, design appropriate learning activities and develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. A successful lesson plan addresses and integrates these three key components: Objectives for student learning, teaching/learning activities and strategies to check student understanding. Specifying concrete objectives for student learning will help professor to determine the kinds of teaching and learning activities which they will use in class, while those activities will define how you will check whether the learning objectives have been accomplished. Once you outline the learning objectives for the class meeting, rank them in terms of their importance. This step will prepare you for managing class time and accomplishing the more important learning objectives in case you are pressed for time. When you have your learning objectives in order of their importance, design the specific activities which will be used to get students to understand and apply what they have learned.
Moreover, we must decide the method we will use to teach the content of our lesson. We can choose traditional lectures, group discussion, tutorial lectures or independent readings. Ideally we must use a combination of all of these.