In education, there are so many hot topics and great ideas buzzing around all the time that as
teachers and trainers it is really hard to keep track alongside our existing work schedule. Let’s look
at the really impactful ideas and choose a shortlist of 5. If you decide to go for one of these, you will
be making a difference to your learners and looking at your planning from a new angle to refresh
things for the new year – this can only be a good thing!
1. Gamification – can you use more games and challenges in your sessions? Can you introduce
more of a healthy competitive element? Perhaps a quiz might work in your introduction, or
as an initial assessment – perhaps a mock TV quiz show format might work at the end of the
session to recap knowledge. It might be that you can incorporate a card or dice game
somewhere in the session. All of these things get learners up and moving, encourage their
brains to be fired up and engaged. You might even be able to use some VR or video gaming.
2. Use of AI – this will really help with your planning, but also when used well, it will engage
your learners. It might be that you use it to create flashcards, interactive
quizzes/worksheets or that you are using a fully adaptive platform and investigating this
more thoroughly to see its full potential. Use it to generate questions and vocabulary for
learners, topics for discussion and so on. Perhaps this has been something that you have
avoided – time to get stuck in!
3. Sustainability – this is a good time to review the environmental practices of you, your setting
and your learners. Are there processes in place for embedding these practices into the
curriculum? If everyone can play their part in the fight against climate change, this can only
be a positive thing.
4. Blended learning – this is something that may still be under-used in training courses and its
impact is still being debated. It may be that not all courses need to be delivered in person,
but often learners enjoy the face-to-face contact of in-person learning. A hybrid model can
be ideal, with some in-person classes and some online. This gives an excellent model in
developing a chat community, setting work and uploading documents also. This will not be
appropriate for all courses and settings but may be worth exploring.
5. Micro-teaching – the idea of teaching concepts in tiny bitesize pieces is worth investigating.
This is often something that we ask a group to do to their peers – to explain a concept within
15 minutes – to grasp the key points. It can also be the teacher delivering in short bursts,
repeating content until the concepts have been understood. At this point, they may wish to
go into more depth. It is worth exploring the many resources online.
Hopefully, there is something in here that makes you think – even if it’s something you have tried
before. Start with one lesson that feels a little stale and change one thing. Reflect on it and review
the impact – were the learners more engaged? Was the learning clearer? Take a risk and have fun
with it – that’s what we would all want our learners to do.
Photo by
Tim Mossholder on
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