Teaching design

Teaching Design

When to use

Use this whenever the deliverable teaches: a workshop, course, talk, video script, webinar, stream, or onboarding session. Also use it as a diagnostic when existing content feels flat — every failure to learn traces back to a skipped step below. Core stance: energy, attention, and learning are properties of the design, not the delivery. Never open slides or start scripting before finishing phases 1-3.

The procedure

Phase 1 — Learning outcomes (what)

1. Profile the audience first: who are they, how experienced, why are they showing up, what are they skeptical about? This decides what to cut. A session about "everything" is always wishy-washy.
2. Write Learning Outcomes: the specific delta between what the audience believes/can do on arrival vs departure. Sharpen each with: "What's the specific argument I'm making? What do they believe differently at the end?"
3. Reject topics; demand takeaways. "CVs" is a topic. "What to delete from your CV to make it stronger" is an outcome. First passes are always too vague — rewrite.
4. Cut ruthlessly. You are not a Wikipedia article; the designer is a curator, and deciding what's out matters as much as what's in.
5. Expand each outcome into 2-4 supporting ideas: "What else must they know, believe, or be able to do to absorb the main outcome?"
6. Get feedback on the outline now — before anything is built, while changes are free. The outline doubles as marketing copy.

Phase 2 — Skeleton (when)

1. Place breaks BEFORE designing content: 15 min coffee / 60 min lunch after every 60-90 minutes. Breaks are sacred — never shrink one to cram content.
2. Budget 30-45 minutes per Learning Outcome (a 30-min outcome = ~10 min lecture + 10 min exercise + 5 min follow-up + 5 min Q&A). So: 2-3 outcomes per 90-minute chunk, ~2 per short video, ~3 per talk.
3. Jam the outcomes into the schedule and sanity-check. If it's crammed, cut a whole outcome NOW — an ignored squeeze resurfaces on the day as rushing, skipped exercises, and drained energy.
4. Secretly plan to end early. Nobody in history has been upset about ending 15 minutes early.
5. The Skeleton (audience + schedule + outcomes) fits on one page. Keep it at hand while delivering.

Phase 3 — Format selection (how)

1. Mark every line of the outline K/S/W: Knowledge, Skill, or Wisdom (judgement/evaluation/decision-making).
2. Match format to type: Knowledge -> lecture. Skill -> "try it now" practice, immediately after introducing it. Wisdom -> scenario challenge (evaluate the situation, then decide, each with discussion). Teaching a skill by talking is "teaching yoga with a lecture" — if people aren't learning, change the format, don't polish the lecture.
3. For each K segment, still find a discussion angle: the implications of that knowledge for these people.
4. Sanity-check for Format Fatigue: no single format runs past 20 minutes. Fix AAABB by reordering to ABABA, inserting a micro-exercise (AAA -> ACADA), or moving a break into the long stretch.

Phase 4 — Timing and buffers

1. Add schedule springs: credible-but-deletable time (Q&A is the classic) — at least 15 minutes per 90-minute chunk, in small doses after each outcome rather than one block at the end. Their primary purpose is to be deleted when running late.
2. When behind, recover by cutting content decisively, in order: spring -> anecdote (~5 min) -> exercise (10-15) -> whole outcome (20-30). NEVER keep all the lecture and cut the exercises — that undoes the design. You cannot recover time by talking faster.
3. Budget total exercise time honestly: 5 minutes of task consumes 10-15 minutes with formation, instructions, and sharing.

Phase 5 — Exercise design

1. Every lecture segment pairs with an exercise attacking the same topic; lecture segments stay 5-20 minutes, three points max per 20.
2. Discussion prompts: sharp question, personal answer (no factual "right" answer). Write the prompt where it stays visible for the whole task; "turn to your neighbor and discuss" is a dead exercise. Discussions >5 minutes are too vague — subdivide into back-to-back timed prompts.
3. Hunt "draw the owl" prompts: a multi-step task disguised as one instruction. The tell is that learners ask clarifying questions at all. Fix by writing out the sub-steps an expert takes implicitly.
4. Pitch difficulty so learners succeed only with some support (too easy = boring, too hard = stranded). Goal is not mastery — just comfortable enough to try it alone and make their own mistakes.
5. Debug new exercises on a safe test audience (friends, colleagues, a small stream) before the real event.
6. Slides/visuals come LAST, essentials only, under an hour: outcome summaries, exercise prompts, resources. Titles carry the message, not the topic ("Sales 101" -> "Sales is about asking good questions"). No decorative images. Style in a single later pass.

Rules and quick reference

The five formats (sufficient for almost any topic):

1. Lecture — book knowledge; 5-20 min segments; extract lessons after exercises.
2. Small group / pair discussion — ambiguous options, personal implications; groups for perspectives, pairs to force participation.
3. "Try it now" — hands-on skill practice, immediately, in a safe constrained task.
4. Scenario challenge — judgement: scenario -> evaluate -> decide; can anchor 45-90 minutes and is infinitely reusable.
5. Q&A — a schedule spring and confusion safety net, not real interactivity; the silent majority never speaks (use polls/post-ups instead).

Format Fatigue / 20-minute rule: any format — however lively — drains the room past ~20 minutes ("brilliant at 15, a drag at 30"). Switch formats at least every 20 minutes; even small switches (groups -> pairs) partially refresh.

Energy management: goodwill is a consumable resource — attention is loaned against the promise of value. Deliver an a-ha early and often; every boring or pointless ask is a withdrawal. Energy comes from breaks + format variation, never from performing enthusiasm ("your enthusiasm can't cross the air gap"). Protect your own energy on long sessions; fatigue makes you "alert but stupid." When things break live, the audience mirrors your panic — stay calm, buy time, deliver the outcomes by any available means. Run a 10-20 minute retrospective after every session: what worked, what didn't, 2-3 concrete changes. Compounding is the whole game.

Adapting by medium

Transfers everywhere (video, talks, streams, courses, docs): goodwill economics (front-load an a-ha; a long channel intro is the host who won't pour the beer), Learning Outcomes before script/slides/recording, format variation as pacing (talking head vs b-roll vs demo vs theory, switched every few minutes on video), K/S/W matching (skill on video needs code-alongs or pause-and-try prompts, not narration), title = message not topic (video titles, headings, subject lines), "draw the owl" (any tutorial step hiding sub-steps strands beginners), the story list (prepared spontaneity for Q&A and podcasts), and the retrospective after every publication.

Needs translation for one-way media: the interactive formats collapse — replace "try it now" with explicit pause-and-do prompts and homework; replace scenario discussion with "what would you do?" segments where you then reason through it. Live-but-remote (streams, webinars) keeps schedule springs and needs poll/form equivalents of Dot Votes and Post-Ups; chat Q&A has the same silent-majority flaw as raised hands.

In-person only (skip for other media): seating and group formation, walking the room, stand-and-share choreography, break wrangling, venue logistics, helper roles.

Source

Compiled from The Workshop Survival Guide — Rob Fitzpatrick & Devin Hunt (2019). The skill is the procedure; the book carries the depth (worked examples, edge cases, the author's reasoning). If this stage is where your venture lives right now, buy and read it.