carpentries / carpentries/lesson-development-training

Design dilemmas & feedback

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Lesson Design & Development type:discussion
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I've been reading [_Understanding by Design_ by Wiggins & McTighe](https://books.google.de/books/about/Understanding_by_Design.html?id=N2EfKlyUN4QC&redir_esc=y). The whole book is very good and really captures what we are trying to teach here, but a section towards the end, titled _The unavoidable dilemmas in design_, struck me as particularly relevant to this curriculum.

In short, the authors list a number of dilemmas curriculum designers will face, based on the sometimes-contradictory guiding principles we aim to teach in this training:

- big ideas and transfer vs. specific knowledge and skills
- complex, realistic, and messy performance vs. efficient and sound tests
- teacher control vs. learner control of the work
- direct vs. constructivist approaches
- depth vs. breadth of knowledge
- comfort and feeling of competence vs. a real challenge
- uniform vs. personalised work and expectations
- effective vs. merely engaging
- simplified vs. simplistic
- a well-crafted plan vs. appropriate flexibility and open-endedness
- a great individual unit vs. larger goals and other designs

The authors' advice to the reader in how to handle these dilemmas is two-fold: firstly, don't try to find the perfect solution because it probably doesn't exist:

> You don't "solve" these problems; you carefully negotiate them. It is the rare design that leaves the designer completely satisfied, because compromises are inevitable.

and second, gather feedback early and often:

> As we also noted earlier, the key to excellent design is to try something, see how it works, and make adjustments - namely, get feedback against your desired results (as well as feedback against your design standards).

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I am pleased to say that, in my opinion, we are giving this advice in the curriculum already. However, I wonder if the list of dilemmas, and the reiteration that it is essential to test a lesson and gather feedback early, might be good to include somewhere. I think it fits best to the key point that "perfect is the enemy of good" in _Reflecting on Trial Runs_, but it could also make a nice conclusion for the final wrap-up.

What do others think @anenadic @mkuzak @sstevens2? Worth adding and, if so, where is it going to fit best?

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