Abstract:

Contemporary education is (at least has to be) student centered (taking into consideration students’ interests and background knowledge, participation of students in selecting activities and materials under study, self- and mutual assessment, a lot of pair and group work in order to increase student-talking time, etc.). However, this is in controversy with standardization and rigorous curriculum, syllabus and lecture planning dealing with the Bologna Process. This kind of planning often removes any creativity, any student-centeredness from the teaching/learning process. On the other hand, planning in education is what really guarantees its quality – systemic approach, thorough study, effective teaching and learning methods, adequate educational materials, objective assessment, etc.
Today you cannot have a university program accredited unless you do a very detailed planning. It means you cannot open it (no students will risk to register for a non-accredited yet program, as no grants will be offered for it and probably their diploma will not be recognized). We are interested in the ways to remove this controversy.
In student-centered education students’ needs have to be studied to write a curriculum or syllabus, but until you open a program you can study only potential students’ needs, which is not the same. So, in reality, syllabi are written only with potential students in mind. Then they are approved and then – even if the real students do not approve of them, you cannot do much to improve them.
Thus, we suggest very flexible planning, containing a lot of options further made by students. Lecture topics have to be planned beforehand, but various sub-topics may be offered – this is where students can choose. Various task formats may be offered from which students will be able to choose the one they feel most confident or most interested in. Lecturer can offer possible assessment formats – students choose the ones they find adequate for their purposes, more than that, part or even whole of the formative assessment tasks may be made up by students (then checked and if necessary improved by the lecturer, best tasks chosen for practical application). The idea looks to be a good compromise, but it has one serious disadvantage – it increases a lot the lecturer’s load, besides, it depends a lot on his/her qualification. If we want this approach not only to be an experiment (which we are planning), but also to become a widely spread practice, we need either to have lecturers additionally paid for working out such plans and educational materials or to have totally new course books based on this kind of planning.

Keywords:

planning in education, curriculum, syllabus, student-centered teaching