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by 2b3a51 1149 days ago
Some things that occurred to me while reading OA.

I thought the page covered most things carefully and I suspect the students had a good experience.

In the UK sessionally paid teaching can be just one class a week as an extra thing. There will be the dbs check and if you want to do this as a long term thing you will need to take a basic teaching qualification.

Planning a course:

Write down a series of sentences saying what the student should be able to do after the course. In the UK we call these 'learning outcomes'[1]. For something like the OA's example Introduction to HTML, CSS and Javascript you will end up with quite a few!

Those learning outcomes will help you to devise a series of activities, see below. The outcomes can also help you to devise an assessment if the college requires that. Finally you can write a few sentences explaining what skills students should have to benefit from the course.

Estimating time in class:

Devise some practical activities for your students to complete tied closely to the learning outcomes (does not have to be 1 to 1 mapping). Time yourself working through the activities - line by line. Multiply that by 6 or something like that. OA has worked out that instructions need to be fairly full.

Then add time for the 'whole group' explanations (the bit where you stand up and explain stuff).

IT classes:

Your learning outcomes and activities will help you to list all the facilities you need. As OA found out Colleges can have quite locked down systems. Might be an idea to talk to technical support in the College through your contact there while planning.

[1] http://www.bristol.ac.uk/academic-quality/approve/approvalgu...

Above is just one I found doing a quick search. Seems pretty standard if wordy.

1 comments

Anecdotal experience: my mom used to teach some adult classes in a UK college and while she loved the work she ultimately left because for every hour of teaching she had to do 4+ hours unpaid work (lesson plans etc) and prepare for endless inspections by people who knew a lot less about teaching than she did (she has 20+ years teaching experience).
The formal lesson planning has been cut back a bit these days (last 3 years or so). One of my employers went over to the 'five minute lesson plan' [1]. With a solid scheme of work (plan of the whole course) that works OK.

I taught maths (basic level) and we had a team of something like 20 tutors so materials got produced and a common scheme of work got adapted as needed. All that cuts the work down, along with some amazing Web sites [2]. If you are the only teacher of a specialist subject, yes I admit the planning could be heavy the first time you run the course. Local management can be a factor sadly.

Recent sad events in the UK news [3] I think will result in a change in approach from OFSTED. This will I think happen when the new OFSTED head is in post.

[1] https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/5minplan/ [ I don't think we paid anything! And the differentiation bit is different for adult education]

[3] e.g. https://www.skillsworkshop.org/ and https://corbettmaths.com/

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65207784

She used to teach a foreign language, so there was only one other teacher and yes management really was a problem. :(

Good to hear that things have improved - it’s been about 10 years since she moved on to teaching privately.

The moment I saw foreign language I thought: better off in business sector

Management can be abysmal. I've been lucky.

Hope Mrs gbuk Senior is doing OK now.

Can I speak to your mom? Apologies for the directness but I work with tech for UK colleges and would love to hear her view (and see if there has been change since).
She left the college about 10 years ago. At the time all she used was a smart whiteboard - the 2 different colleges she worked at had different brands with different software interfaces on her PC and this was a real pain she said - just as she got used to one she had to change to another one.

Apart from that she just made her lesson plans in Word based on a basic template that the college provided.

Thanks for the info!

Seems like besides iPads in the classroom, little has changed.