Do you co-plan learning experiences with a teaching team?
Learning experiences are SO much more powerful when co-designed with fellow educators.
You get more voices in the room.
Unique perspectives to pull from.
Individual talents and expertise to incorporate.
Multiple personalities for students to connect with.
More people to shoulder the workload.
That’s the ‘blue sky’ picture of planning with a team.
But let’s face it. It’s not always ‘blue skies.’ Co-planning takes work. As educators, we aren’t used to sharing the fiefdom of our classroom with other practitioners. And oftentimes when you get more voices in the room, you get conflicts, disagreements, and messiness that often doesn’t happen when planning in isolation.
Pictured above is a PBL co-planning team who underwent all of those phases in their co-design of an experience for year 5 learners.
Some planning sessions ended with frustration and irritation.
Others concluded with excitement and elation.
But more important than the emotions they felt in each session, was the PROCESS and OUTCOMES they committed to achieving.
This pushed them through the difficult moments of agreeing on ideas, and roles they would take during PBL implementation.
Sound familiar?
This is something ALL learning designers face when working with a team.
And rather than provide you with a clear cut strategy for co-planning, (I’ve yet to find one), I wanted to provide you with something far more valuable.
10 Reflective questions.
These reflective questions will help ensure each team member is committed to bringing the best version of themselves to planning sessions, while also helping the team move forward. I hope you find them useful:
- What is something new you learned about yourself during co-planning?
- What outcome were you trying to achieve? Did you reach them? How do you know?
- What did you learn about working with a team? What were high points? What were some low points you encountered, and how did you overcome them? (Or how will you overcome them in the future)
- What are your strengths as a learning designer and team member? How did you utilize your strengths to enhance the design of the learning experience?
- What are your ‘blind spots?’ (ie areas for improvement) How can you lean on a team or others to support you in these areas?
- What excites you about the learning experience you designed? What scares you?
- What was your biggest ‘AHA’ moment during co-planning sessions?
- Please complete the following line. “I used to think… (complete the line); “I now know… (complete the line).”
- How will you prepare yourself mentally for the new learning experience you designed?
- Fast forward to the end of the learning experience you designed for learners. What does SUCCESS look like? How will you know if it was a ‘successful’ experience?
Here are all of those questions in a Word Doc Format: Co-Planning Team Reflective Questions
Together in enhancing our co-planning of learning experiences.
Our learners deserve it.
Your [co] learning experience designer,
