3.1 Benefits of the activity type approach

The Activity Planner allows educators to see what ‘shape’ the overall course has, and whether that reflects the learning requirements. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers – what is important is that the profile is appropriate for your learning and teaching context.

Some things to consider when using the activity planner:

• You may have a set number of hours, if you increase/reduce hours spent engaging in one type of activity you may have to increase/reduce hours elsewhere.
• Not all activity types have equal value in terms of how much will be learnt in the space of an hour, and to what level.
• Do you or others in your team have the skills required to design and produce the learning planned?
• What are the skills and expectations of your learners? How far do you want to, or will need to, develop these through your course materials?
• Teachers are often ‘time poor’ and may wish to skip some things but an hour spent planning is worth many hours later on.

Figure 4 What are tricky topics?

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A sketch with the wording ‘what are tricky topics?’.

The first image shows a man with his head in his hands. Below reads the text ‘stuff that’s difficult’.

An arrow points to the same man still with his head in his hands but one eye peering through the side of his hand. The text below reads ‘but should be transformational’.

Figure 4 What are tricky topics?