8.6 Course Elements - Lectures, Labs, Tutorials...

In most cases, a course is scheduled in a rigid fashion. There are lecture slots and possibly tutorials and labs. The times, durations, and locations are usually spelled out and this provides a tableau of slots to fill with primary material delivery and supporting activities. In some cases, the tutorials and labs are at the discretion of the instructor, but there are times that the slots are defined by the program structure or department decision making (e.g., for accreditation).



In very rare cases, such as a design or studio type course, all of the allotted hours in the schedule are mushed together and the instructor can decide in the moment or in a fluid plan, when primary material will be delivered, when a tutorial activity is necessary, or when a lab-like activity will take place. These are very rare. It is perhaps the best pedagogical situation though; doing what is needed, when it is needed and not having to fit into an artificial structure of time and sequence.

Within all of these elements, the lecture, tutorial, and lab, it is possible to use many of the methods discussed on this website: Socratic Method, constructive failure, think-pair-share, flipping, blending, narratives, etc. The methods should be used wisely and when appropriate. It is unlikely that every element should be flipped, blended, etc. The content and outcomes for an element in the syllabus should dictate what method is used. Separate notes exist on each of these methods.

There are also secondary aspects to consider: assignments, projects, and perhaps specific design or problem solving activities. And, office hours.

In programs where there is a cohort concept where most of the students in any class are taking other courses together as a group, it is important to discuss the term design with the other instructors. Of course, this will not work with open electives where the students in the class potentially never see each other in another course, but there are many times where students take many of the same courses together in a term. In these cases, the instructors should meet and discuss the general strategy for the term and this can include the overall loading (heavy courses) and assignment/project timing. For example, course instructors might decide to have assignments due every two weeks. It is not a good plan to have almost all of the courses on the same pattern; it makes it hard for the students to level load their activities during the term. The problem occurs when the knowledge and skills needed to do the assignments or projects does not occur till the same time period in all of the courses; creating severe peaks and valleys in course activity.

General thoughts...

• You might be expected to give, say twelve hours of lectures, but a 'lecture' is a fuzzy concept and has room for interpretation. It is essentially a time for you to facilitate the student's learning, it is not restricted to textbook recitals.
• Lectures
• The lecture is the most important and primary element. It is where the topics are introduced, examples given with the hope of having the students remember and start their journey of knowledge, comprehension, applying, analysing, synthesizing, and evaluating.
• From the instructor's perspective, the lecture and sequence of lectures should be reasonably planned out for concept scaffolding, reinforcement, etc. with conscious thought about the order and complexity to provide the best opportunity for learning. If the lecture is using ill-structured problems, constructive failure, etc., the lecture might not look like it was planned or structured from the student perspective, but that is actually part of the plan; intended chaos, uncertainty.

• It is our normal practice and belief that for parts of the course which are purely information transmission (e.g., reading something, making summary notes), this can be done through pre-recorded lectures or assigned (e.g., flipped) activities; avoiding the live lecture time being used for writing out the note material on the board, to be copied by the students. We consider this an ineffective and inefficient process. If the lecture is dominated by copying what is in the notes, there is little time left for the higher levels of Bloom's.
• It is important to remember the necessary and sufficient conditions for certain methods to work. For example, when using constructive failure, it is important to have the no-risk engagement where failure will not cost the student, a good debrief and sharing of lessons learned, and the opportunity to try again (perhaps with an actual assessment). All of the methods have assumptions and criteria that contribute to their success. If you do not agree with them or wish to take a short cut, it is your choice; but, do not blame the method if things do not turn out well.
• For lectures, we like to have one main concept or idea per lecture and if necessary, play it out over multiple lectures. We definitely believe in threshold concepts, teaching less, teaching better. It is not really possible for people to learn two new things at the same time efficiently or effectively. A rare individual can pull it off, but most people cannot. Something will suffer. Consciously consider the material in the lecture and have ONE main learning outcome focused upon.
• It is recommended that you should horizontally thread the concepts through the lectures, identifying where the material will be used in the future and reminding students of where it came from. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
• We also do not recommend using primary lecture time reviewing material from previous courses that the students are expected to have some mastery in. We use tutorials for that.
• Tutorials
• Compared to the primary lecture situation (even if the lecture uses flipping, think-pair-share), the tutorial is focused on the student.
• We do not recommend prescriptive style tutorials where the TAs simply put up questions and copy question solutions to the board, even if they have more detail than that shared in the lecture.
• The tutorial should provide some opportunity for the students to work out the solution themselves, individually and then perhaps in a think-pair-share style.
• Tutorials can be used to review material from previous courses where the mastery of the material is expected to carry forward into your course.
• The tutorial should go into the process of understanding the problem, parsing out the problem, knowing how to start, where to start, what are the key words, clues. Many students cannot see or understand a path forward and just flail. The tutorial is a great place to explain the how, as well as the what.

• The tutorial should provide some guidance, let the students work, provide more guidance, more work, etc. taking up partial solutions along the line to ensure that most students have a chance to get to the end understanding the process and understanding what they do not understand.
• Labs
• Labs are very specific and intentional. Not all courses need labs in the traditional sense.
• Students are gaining hands on experience with equipment, tools, methods, processes, and specific aspects of the subject matter.
• In certain subjects, the lab is more of a "cook-book" opportunity for student; the chance to do the hands-on activity, get the hands dirty, experience things. In others, the lab can be more abstract in a sense with teamwork tackling small, controlled challenges or problems with uncertain, ill-structure. These latter types of labs are still labs in the sense of the students gaining experience with the concepts and ideas taught in the primary lectures and are good for introducing approaches to problem solving, thinking through a problem type.
• The labs should focus on the threshold concepts and be controlled so that whatever learning occurs is done at a high quality level - teach less, teach it better.
• Labs can also provide an opportunity for students to try a technique that would be neccessary to have some expertise in to be considered competent in the discipline.
• One aspect of the lab experience is that a lab can have a normalizing impact on the course and students; ensuring that all of the students have the same experience. This experience can then be leveraged in the primary lectures and tutorials. Without a common foundation or experience, examples and context can be hard to provide and many assumptions might be implicit or explicit when it comes to thinking about what students may or may not relate to.
• Assignments
• Assignments are often at the one or two week level; size and effort. Projects are larger deliverables.
• Assignments are usually at the individual level.
• Assignments need to be scoped so that an average student can get an average mark with an average effort, appropriate to the grade contribution of the assignment.
• Assignments need to fit into the overall loading and balance for the course.
• Assignments can be part of a flipped approach that precede the primary lecture, or follow the lecture. There are different purposes and objectives between the two styles.
• Pre-assignments or activities can assist with having students engaging to a certain level of the material before the primary lecture. They can discover issues, challenges, motivation via the assignments. The primary lecture can then discuss what the students discovered, and lead the students to the main learning outcomes during the lecture. It should not be assumed that the students will learn the primary content through the pre-assignments! The primary lectures can also provide extra practice and examples, but independent learning of anything except memorization of facts should not be taken as a given.

• Assignments should be carefully designed to expose gaps in basic knowledge accuracy and awareness, comprehension, ability to apply, analyse, synthesize, and evaluate the results.
• Assignments should expose the students' process of problem solving so that feedback can be given on the how and the what.
• Projects
• Most of the points from assignments apply.
• They can be design, problem solving activities (see below), framed as a multi-week lab, or as separate activities.
• Projects can be individual or team. If team, it should be clear in the team deliverables who did what. Team projects also need mechanisms to deal with conflict and variance in work contribution between the members. This might not matter on small projects, but if the project is a significant portion of the grade, the project needs to be 'fair' to the students.
• Projects should focus equally on the how and the what. It is important to understand how the mental tools are used to get to a point, as well as the end deliverable. If any level of cognitive skill is expected, the how must be viewed by the student as important as the what.
• We like projects with a certain degree of uncertainty and ambiguity suitable for the level of student, as well as controlled scope. The topics need to be picked by the instructor or student that will best demonstrate the mastery of the students with respect to the how and the what. Students are often not good at picking suitable topics and until they learn how, they need to be guided by the instructor.
• It is not wise to have projects where the students are learning two major topics at the same time. If the learning outcome is methods oriented, the methods should be applied to something that the students are familar with. If the learning outcome is focused on looking at new things, the methods should be something that the students are familar with. Having the students look at something new with new methods they are learning will result in activity, but very low quality learning.
• Design, Problem Solving Activities
• There is a separate note on things like case days, design days; activities which are not a term (or part of a term) long activity.
• The goal is to for a student to complete or participate in a design or problem solving activity.
• In the wild, this is the 'there is an opportunity or problem here', 'is it a real problem', 'is it a big enough task to address', 'what is the impact if not addressed', 'analysis of the problem', 'possible solutions', 'choosing the best solution to proceed with', 'detail design of the solution', 'build the solution', etc. This general pattern holds for doing any general deep dive into something, even doing a literature review or looking at a social situation!
• Doing each of these subtasks well implies the development of appropriate cognitive skills for each subtask and someone good at one need not be good at others. It should also not be assumed that the students have learned these skills above the naive level in high school (or in junior years). They will not learn them without conscious reflection, teaching, and deliberate practice. They will get through the tasks for sure without learning and practice, but there is no mastery and no quality. It will be ad hoc and accidental planning and execution without baselines for comparison or quality control.
• It is not realistic to do all of these steps in one single academic exercise; well or in depth.
• You have choose where the students start from (we suggest at the beginning) and then work from there. You might have to point out the task for the students, and perhaps even spell out what a good solution looks like (e.g,. first, do a literature review, and here is what a good literature looks like, or here are the physical tools and materials you should use and here are several designs to consider, evaluate and critique, and here is what a good critique should cover).

• The first exercise might take them on a simple journey start to finish, but it will be so trivial and superficial that one should not expect any skill development along the journey, just the awareness that there is a journey and there are things to think about during the journey.
• There should be uncertainty and open-endedness in the project. However, this does not mean that everything is on the table. When students are starting off, learning how to design, problem-solve, think, it is important to learn the basics, how to solve and deal with structured problems and then learn how to crawl, walk, and run. It is also important, and we are repeating here, to focus on the how as much as the final solution or deliverable. Else, there will be no clear cause and effect between what they do and the outcome, deliberate practice will not occur, and no real learning will occur.
• You need clear learning outcomes and they should reflect student cognitive development and the threshold concepts you want them to learn and learn well. Why are you doing this?
• Students should struggle with what you want them to struggle with. Pieces that do not relate to the learning outcome, are outside the scope of your course, should go smoothly.
• There has to be careful testing of the activity, and experienced people helping to make sure that things stay reasonable and that students don't start spinning their wheels and become frustrated.
• You need experienced instructors and TAs, and have a really good understanding of the capabilities of the students who will participate, do the project. Often assumptions are made about what students know and can do without any evidence.
• You need to do a test run with a suitable student (not TAs who have taken the course before or you) and use this knowledge and result as a way to adjust the activity, create rubrics, etc.
• It is best to start simple, not grand, and do a simple activity that you can grow over time. Do not try to do everything the first time. Develop it over several years (if necessary).
• Remember, that the focus is primarily on developing student process rather than on specific knowledge. It is about the experience, not the content.
• Do not forget the feedback. Students need feedback about the how and the what during the journey and afterwards.
• Students should not be allowed to simply improvise, cut/paste any old thing together; it should be a rational process with criteria.
• Any design or crafting activity (from the physical to a literature review) requires a verification and validation feedback phase - from knowledgeable people. There should be clear criteria and feedback given.
• If possible, a second follow-up design activity should be planned, to allow the students to use the lessons learned, practice, and be judged again. This is very IMPORTANT.
• Students should not be praised for using creativity to design or craft something that is impractical or impossible or simply shows how quick of a wit they are; unless that is the desired learning outcome. Even in those cases, criteria suitable to the problem domain are needed.
• There is a difference between an exploration activity or teamwork activity (think summer camp), and a design activity. Fun can be the primary goal of summer camp, and while design activities can be fun, that isn't the reason one is offering them. They can spark interest and motivation in a field, but this isn't "fun" per se.
• Office Hours
• Office hours should be scheduled when the majority of students can actually make use of them without having to skip other lectures, labs, and tutorials.

• The hours should be timed to allow students sufficient time to think about the primary lecture, try something based on the lecture, and discover that they need specific help from the instructor.
• Additional office hours might be needed prior to major, formal assessments such as midterm exams, the final.
• The office meeting should not be restricted to a specific question or aspect. It is a good opportunity to discuss with the student how they are approaching the course, how they are focusing on the how and what related to the learning outcomes. Take a holistic approach to the student interaction; if possible.
• Before a scheduled office hour appointment (if appointments are being used), it is a good idea to take a quick look at the student's record and engagement. If an online learning platform is used, it is often possible to see how the student has accessed material, engaged, etc. This intel can be useful when discussing the student's learning challenges during the office meeting.
• Rubrics and Assessment Feedback
• It is best not to give rubrics in advance. There is a note on how to develop and use qualitative rubrics.
• Rubrics must provide sufficient feedback so that the students know what it took to get an 'A' and why they did not. That is, the rubric cannot just have five categories and five possible marks in each. There should be more granular feedback.
• The feedback and marking should be on both process and final deliverable.
• The feedback must be timely and be able to be used before the next 'similar' deliverable is to be submitted. Slow feedback that misses the cycle of learn-do-assess-react is close to being useless with respect to cognitive skill development.

Further reading

• Peters, D. (1974), Course Design and Accountability, Improving College and University Teaching, 22, 2, pp. 88-90, 93.
• Herrmann, J.W. (2016). Decision Making In Course Design, ASME 2016 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, August 21-24, 2016, Charlotte, North Carolina.