What Else Can You Teach?
Teachers, instructors, facilitators and instructional designers have a certain freedom when it comes to creating content. Yes, we must ensure that our teaching materials meet the learning objectives, but there’s space within those teaching materials for adding a little something extra.
Imagine you’re teaching math through word problems. Here’s a sample question about addition you could create:
Sarah and Mark are at the beach with their mom and dad. If Sarah has eleven beach balls and Mark has six pails and nine shovels, how many beach toys do they have all together?
This question meets the mathematics learning outcome of teaching addition. But what if we changed that question to add a little something extra?
Instead of Sarah and Mark, let’s add some diversity.
Farah and Marek are at the beach with their mom and dad. If Farah has eleven beach balls and Marek has six pails and nine shovels, how many beach toys do they have all together?
By presenting our learners with names reflecting diverse backgrounds, we indirectly teach them that inclusion matters. Alternately, we could change the question to promote a different value.
Sarah and Mark are at the beach with their moms. If Sarah has eleven beach balls and Mark has six pails and nine shovels, how many beach toys do they have all together?
We could also indirectly encourage our learners to value a volunteering spirit.
Sarah and Mark are cleaning up the beach. If Sarah picks up eleven empty plastic water bottles and Mark picks up six candy wrappers and nine empty juice boxes, how much garbage have they picked up all together?
Or we could use this question to promote kindness.
Sarah and Mark are collecting stuffed animals to donate to sick children in hospital. If Sarah collects eleven teddy bears and Mark collects six stuffed dogs and nine stuffed cats, how many toys have they collected all together?
Creating scenario-based questions works for corporate training as well. For example, a leadership scenario could look like this:
Sarah and Mark were assigned a project. When Mark had to take several unexpected personal days, the work fell to Sarah. She has come to you, her manager, to inform you she won’t be able to complete the project on time. What do you say to her in response?
You could change the names, as demonstrated above, to promote diversity, or change the gendered pronouns to plural.
You could also infuse some of the organization’s values into the question. For an organization that values collaboration, the question could be revised.
Sarah and Mark were assigned a project. When Mark had to take several unexpected personal days, the work fell to Sarah. She has come to you, her manager, to inform you she is concerned that she won’t be able to complete the project on time because the skills Mark brings to the project will be lacking since she’s now working independently. What do you say to her in response?
For an organization that values creativity, the question could be revised again.
Sarah and Mark were assigned a project. When Mark had to take several unexpected personal days, the work fell to Sarah. She has come to you, her manager, to inform you she won’t be able to complete the project on time because she is not satisfied with the quality of her independent work. The company is known for its creative thinking, and Sarah has been too worried about her co-worker Mark to be able to do her best creative thinking on the project. What do you say to her in response?
Reviewing the organization’s values before creating content is a great way to add a little something extra to your teaching. In the comments below, feel free to share what else you’ve taught when creating course content.