Athanasis image
Athanasis Karoulis: Academica

home
Start

search
Search

sitemap
Site Map

links
Links

mailme
Mail me!

madewithmac

Thank You for Your visit!...

    personal science lessons    
   
     
Science --> Stuff --> The "Lesson Sheets"

Guidelines on the Construction of the "Lesson Sheets"

According to the corresponding theory, we elaborate a set of "lesson sheets", one sheet for every lesson. The design of the sheet has to take the following principles into consideration.

  • To facilitate the transition from «understanding» to «learning», by accelerating the procedure with the removal of routine tasks (eg. copying from the blackboard)
  • To provide in its full form (after its completion), the "aiding and scaffolding factor" the student needs, eg. during the homework.
  • To provide the student with a more comprehensive environment with visual representations of the knowledge on offer, by making its structure visible.
  • To enclose all the necessary assessment features (exercises, activities etc.), so that the student is aware of his/her own progress.
  • To assign "meaning" to the offered knowledge, namely to be "personalizable" for every participant.
  • To provide a high grade of motivation, as to be interesting in its use.

It is obvious that these principles stand, with minor adaptations, in the traditional approach, as well as in its distance counterpart, at least in the «open learning» part of both. So, we propose the design of the lesson sheets according to following guidelines:

  1. It utilizes the shape of a table, as to frame and structure the offered knowledge.
  2. It contains, in terms of «titles» and «paragraphs», on the left hand side the offered knowledge. In fact, this left hand side provides the outline of every lesson.
  3. On the right hand part of the sheet the student can note whatever he/she wants, corresponding to the pending paragraph, personalizing thus the lesson by the use of one own’s comments.
  4. It includes images, figures, charts, and whatever else is appropriate to visualize the information.
  5. Notifications that are not personalizable, eg. Internet links, tables, additional or external information and resources, even if they belong to the sphere of the students’ notifications, must be provided on the sheet, to accelerate the procedure and diminish the distraction that occurs during the students’ noting time.
  6. The left hand side includes the necessary self-assessment exersises and the activities the student has to perform during the lesson, while the corresponding space on the right is usually reserved for the answer.
  7. It must be usable: no more than 4 pages (sufficient for a 3-hours lesson), with adequate space for noting, good image quality, high quality printing etc.

Get a sample Lesson Sheet (from a course on computer literacy) in Word.doc format.