Template for creating kick-ass lessons (+ example)

One of the advantages of riding the course creation rodeo for a few years is that you end up finding all sorts of little shortcuts to help you do things faster and more consistently…

Sometimes it’s a particular perspective for looking at a problem.

Sometimes it’s a question that always helps to bring things into focus.

And sometimes it’s an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned template where you can just fill in the blanks and suddenly you’ve made a big leap forward.

So today I’ve got such a template for you. One that should help you create better lessons, faster.

(By the way, it doesn’t matter if your lessons are videos, narrated slides or just text on a page, the template is still just as handy.)

So here it is: a simple, five-part template to help you create a kick-ass lesson.

Get clear on these five elements before you do anything else, and you’ll be a lesson-creating machine!

1) Outcome — What’s the learning outcome this lesson should achieve? In other words, what will students know, understand, believe and/or realise as a result of completing it?

2) Relevance — Why is the outcome important in the context of the course as whole? Also, what’s the implication of your students not achieving the outcome, i.e., why is this lesson essential?

3) Takeaway — If students retain just one idea from this lesson, what should it be? (This is the idea you’ll need to reinforce several times in the lesson.)

4) Obstacles — What mental hurdles might prevent students from achieving the outcome? For example: doubts, confusion, scepticism, missing information, unanswered questions, etc. (You’ll need to tackle these in your lesson.)

5) Magic! — What could you do to add a little magic? Think: how could you present the information differently than expected, or add a little creative “flourish” that would elevate your lesson from good to great?

By the way, if you want to see a completed example of this template, just click the link below. (There’s no sign-up or download required — it’s just a public Google Doc.)

Click here to see the example template.

Let me know if you find it useful!

See you soon,

Glen.