Evolving Lesson Plans To Assist Educator

D. Monett and T. Weishaar (2015). Evolving Lesson Plans to Assist Educators: From Paper-Based to Adaptive Lesson Planning.
In Proceedings of the Multidisciplinary Academic Conference on Education, Teaching and Learning 2015, MAC-ETL 2015, Prague, Czech
Republic. 1st Edition, MAC Prague Consulting Ltd., December 2015 (ISBN: 978-80-88085-04-1)
Evolving Lesson Plans to Assist Educators:

From Paper-Based to Adaptive Lesson Planning
Dagmar Monett
Dept. of Cooperative Studies, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany
Dagmar.Monett-Diaz@hwr-berlin.de
Tino Weishaar
CS Undergraduate Course IT2013, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany
tino.weishaar@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper introduces a research project on design for learning in general and on
lesson planning in particular. It focuses on a survey that was conducted to gather educators’
opinions on the use of lesson plans. Results show that educators document different
information about a lesson either with the explicit use of lesson plans or without them. When
they are used, however, several conclusions can be drawn in order to improve teaching. This
is where computer-aided design for learning, especially pedagogical planners, could play an
important role in effective lesson planning if pedagogical knowledge, among other desirable
aspects, is adequately supported. Further project phases that deal with these issues are also
presented in this paper, together with those areas that are topics of undergraduate student
research projects.
Keywords: Design for learning, lesson plans, pedagogical planner

Main Conference Topics: Pedagogy, Educational Technology
Introduction
Koehler and Mishra [11] define teaching as “a complicated practice that requires an
interweaving of many kinds of specialized knowledge” from different domains. In order to
teach effectively, educators need to create learning experiences (i.e., where learning takes
place) which provide “flexible access to rich, well-organized and integrated knowledge” [11]
from these domains. The most predominant domain is the one that considers the subject
matter that is to be taught: Content knowledge is “the amount and organization of knowledge
per se in the mind of the teacher” [16]. It is mainly available in the field of educators’
expertise in their particular subject. But how about other kinds of knowledge domains? As
Schulman [17] suggests, educators’ knowledge base (i.e., an aggregation of “what teachers
should know, do, understand or profess”) would include, as a minimum, other categories like
curriculum knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of learners and their
characteristics. Unfortunately, however, many educators underestimate the importance of
pedagogical knowledge (in Schulman’s words, the “broad principles and strategies of
classroom management and organization” [17]), either consciously or unconsciously, and it
does not receive the attention it deserves. In particular, lesson planning becomes a nightmare
to many novices and experienced educators alike.
Design for Learning
Design for learning means “creating a plan or a structure for a concrete learning
situation” [2]. One major principle that drives design for learning is that it is mainly
concerned with “the design of good learning tasks” [10], that is tasks that can be well
understood by learners and that are related to the learning activities they should perform in a
specific learning context in order to achieve some learning outcome. As Goodyear and
Carvalho [10] discuss, a crucial point in design for learning is to reflect on what the learner
1
does, taking an activity-centered position when designing those learning tasks that learners
will accomplish by using appropriate supportive learning resources.
Intended learning outcomes are specific and define what is expected of learners after
exposure to teaching [3]. They are commonly written using action verbs like the ones from
Bloom’s taxonomy [1, 4], which describe the actions or interactions that should be undertaken
by the learners depending on the learning environment in which they interact. Learning
activities are then “what [learners] need to do in order to meet the intended learning
outcomes” [3], which depend on learning objectives that focus on what learners should learn
but expressed in general terms. Learning objectives can be classified 1 as cognitive objectives
(what learners should know), affective objectives (what learners should think or care about),
and behavioral or psychomotor objectives (what learners should be able to do). They should
be written from the learners’ point of view.
Traditionally, educators have used a sequential approach to pedagogical design, from
the intended learning outcomes over the learning and teaching activities to the assessment
tasks that test whether the outcomes have been reached. However, different factors have
influenced the strategies they follow in their own situations. While some educators might find
it straightforward to start with the goal in mind, that is, what the outcomes of the learning
process should be, others might first consider the learning and teaching activities that are
suitable in a specific learning environment in order to later define which learning outcomes
follow from those activities. Others might even start at the assessment guidelines that are pre-
defined for a course module in order to shape which activities and learning outcomes should
align with them.
Lesson Plans and Pedagogical Planners

A lesson plan (LP) is a step-by-step guide on how to systematically approach a
learning session. Its major goal is to structure a lesson (or a unit of learning or a piece of
instruction) in order to teach concepts or specific skills or to give learners the opportunity to
discover information on their own or with their peers [15]. Designing, planning, and writing
LPs has numerous advantages, for example for substitute teachers who might occasionally
take care of a class, for better preparing and organizing instruction, or for reflecting on the
improvement of future lessons [7].
When planning a lesson, knowing about its structure eases the process. A very general
structure of an LP is presented by Ostenson [14]. It consists of two sections. The first is a
planning section, where general information about the lesson is defined together with the
learning objectives, materials, teaching and learning strategies, and steps that are necessary
before teaching the lesson. The second is a performing section, where it is described what
learners will accomplish and how, what the educator will do and say, as well as the specific
learning activities learners will be engaged in during the lesson and beyond.
There exist many styles, formats and templates for LPs. Some of them make more
emphasis on the teaching and learning activities that should be accomplished during the
lesson. Others simply describe the elements and steps of the instructional model they
sequentially follow. Whichever model is used, an LP helps both learners to structure and
accomplish their learning and educators with the flow of the lesson.
What then are the components of an LP? According to Skowron [18], for example, the
components of an effective LP are: statement of what is to be taught, introduction or opening
of the lesson, teaching strategies, student activities, closing/summary/reflection,
materials/resources, practice and follow-up assignments, assessment, performance
expectations, and timing. Orlich et al. [13] add to them: general information about the lesson,
1
The origins of this classification go back to Gagné’s domains of the process of learning [8] and to Bloom’s
domains of educational objectives [4].
2
general learning objectives, specific learning outcomes, and rationale (i.e., importance of the
lesson in achieving the goals).
Pedagogical planners have been created as structured guidance for educators to assist
them in the complex task of designing learning sessions [5]. A range of pedagogical planners
are reviewed and discussed by Conole [6], and some are introduced as follows: Phoebe is an
online pedagogical tool that supports design for learning by planning individual learning
sessions as a sequence of learning activities. 2 Its academic project ended 2008. Unfortunately,
the tool stopped functioning five years later, in February 2013. Many of its ideas were
continued in a new project aimed at providing a learning design support environment, known
as LDSE, for technology-enhanced learning. 3 The resulting tools were Learning Designer, to
assist educators in the design process, and Pedagogical Pattern Collector, to share
pedagogical ideas among other educators and students, both with latest research publications
dating from 2011. There exist other planners, some of them with commercial uses like
Planboard4 and PlanBook.5 These, however, have a limited set of functionalities for teaching
approaches and cannot be applied to all design for learning practices. As a result, educators
are overwhelmed with the learning of a new tool they cannot use successfully. Instead, they
continue using traditional methods which do not meet the ever-growing technological
requirements of learners and institutions.
Evolving Lesson Plans

One of the most used traditional methods when planning a lesson is the documentation
of LP components by hand or assisted by technology, for example by filling out a template
previously created on a computer. This process might be very time-consuming and the task of
adding new components to a static template, if available, might be arduous or simply
impossible. As a consequence, information is duplicated each time, might be held in different
places, or might be difficult to adapt for use in a new learning session.
These drawbacks were the origins of a research topic that started in 2011 with a one-
person pedagogical project. Four years later it involves faculty and undergraduate Computer
Science (CS) students not only doing research around LPs but also developing software tools
for them. The resulting research project has supported the evolution of LPs, and comprises the
following phases: I) Paper-based LP for a specific pedagogical project in a CS course, II)
general LP schema for its use in other courses, III) software prototype for particular and
individual computer-aided use of LPs, IV.a) literature review on design for learning and LPs,
IV.b) survey to collect other educators’ opinions on the use of LPs, IV.c) extended analysis
about software tools for LPs, IV.d) parallel analysis, design, and implementation of a second
software prototype for collaborative use of adaptive LPs, V) further implementation of other
software requirements, and VI) software evaluation and usability tests.
Some of the experiences from phases I (August to December 2011) and II (2012 and
first half of 2013) on the (paper-based) design, planning, and evaluation of a Software
Engineering undergraduate course were documented in a previous paper [12]. Phase III
(August 2013 to January 2014) was the topic of a CS undergraduate student project and it
finished with a computer program that served as a baseline for functional requirements for
later collaborative LP software. Phases IV.a to IV.d (January to August 2015) come to their
end just at the time of writing this paper. A short overview about phase IV.a was introduced in
Sections 2 and 3. The rest of the project phases are presented in the sections that follow,
starting with the survey of phase IV.b.
2
Available at http://phoebe-app.conted.ox.ac.uk/ (retrieved October 10, 2015).
3
Available at https://sites.google.com/a/lkl.ac.uk/ldse/Home (retrieved October 10, 2015).
4
Available at https://www.planboardapp.com/ (retrieved October 10, 2015).
5
Available at https://www.planbook.com/ (retrieved October 10, 2015).
3
Survey Methodology and Demographic Overview

The questionnaire from phase IV.b on the use of LPs was available online between
May 11 and June 4, 2015, and it was the topic of another CS undergraduate research project.
It was managed and its data were collected using Google Forms. The survey comprised
twenty closed-ended questions and one open-ended questions that were prepared and their
results later analyzed in close interaction with faculty. Questions with categorical response
options were conditionally visible to the participants, that is they were to be answered only
depending on previous answers. After collecting the answers, some initial steps were
performed to prepare the data for processing and analysis. When cleaning and transforming
the data, for example, text values were converted into numerical ones according to different
answer possibilities. Although mainly conceived to gather feedback from faculty, an
invitation to participate in the survey was also sent to several teachers from local schools.
A total of 44 educators participated in the survey. Thirty-five of them teach at higher
education institutions (faculty) and eight teach at schools (teachers). The gender and age
proportions are as follows: 43.2% of the participants are female, 50% are male, and 6.8% left
that question unanswered. 13.6% of the respondents are aged 40 years or less, 34.1% are
between 41 and 50 years old, 43.2% are aged 51 years or more, and 9.1% provided no
information on their age. Twenty-five percent of the participants in the survey have five years
or less experience in their current teaching position, 29.5% have between 6 and 15 years,
34.1% have more than 16 years experience, and 11.4% provided no information for that
question. Furthermore, 36.4% of the educators that were surveyed teach in STEM -related
areas, 50% teach in non-STEM areas, and 13.3% provided no information about their
teaching field. A quarter of all respondents are CS educators.
Findings
When asked about the use of LPs, over half (52.3%) of the respondents answered that
they do use LPs to support their teaching. That is the case of 27.3% of them which are CS
educators, representing 54.5% of all the CS educators that participated in the survey. All these
CS educators teach at higher education institutions: they are 66.7% female and 33.3% male
CS faculty. With experience, the use of LPs decreases, however: most educators aged 41
years or more (85.7%) do not use LPs and only 4.8% of those who do not use LPs are aged 40
years or less. In other words, LPs are more used by younger educators in general.
The specific reasons for using LPs vary depending on the professional role at the
target institution (i.e. teachers at schools vs. faculty at higher education institutions). Figure 1
shows the most important reasons, ordered by preference, as well as, a detailed view
according to professional role. There are two clear winners: educators create LPs to structure
their teaching in a timely way (see 87% in Figure 1) and to define clear learning goals (see
82,6% in Figure 1). An interesting point is the fact that LPs also help 40% of teachers with
their lesson flow whereas this is not an important aspect for faculty (see the third pair of bars
in Figure 2). On the contrary, 44.4% of faculty use LPs to plan the use of different teaching
methods whereas this is not a particular need of teachers (see the second pair of bars in Figure
2). It is not surprising that teachers might be more aware of pedagogical knowledge issues and
at the same time more worried about organizational ones. Faculty, however, might be more
aware of content knowledge issues and see LPs as a secondary complement to their
pedagogical knowledge.
The gender proportion of the educators which use LPs is as follows: 43.5% are female,
47.8% are male, and 8.7% did not answer that question. Proportionally, female educators
make use of LPs more than their male colleagues (52.6% compared to 50%).
4
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Reasons for creating or using lesson plans: (a) average ordered by
preference and (b) detailed view according to professional role.
Planning a lesson can be a time-consuming task: 56.5% of the respondents invest one
hour or less in preparing a teaching unit of 45 minutes’ duration, 21.7% invest up to two
hours, 17.3% up to four hours, and the small remainder invest more than four hours in the
preparation of a teaching unit. Although 47.7% of the participants do not use LPs explicitly,
they do document some information about their lessons. Figure 2 compares the kind of
information documented by faculty and teachers.
Figure 2. Information about a lesson that is documented when no explicit lesson

plan is used.
In schools, teachers document many more components of an LP than faculty at a

higher education institution. For example, a general description of the lesson, the learning
objectives, activities to do during the lesson, the time required for each of them, exercises to
be done by the students, as well as notes or comments about the lesson and its development
are always documented by teachers. However, only 50% of faculty document these LP
components, on average. Even when these educators respond that they do not use LPs
explicitly to document information about their lessons, they do it implicitly with the help of
technology like MS Word (83.3%), MS Excel (33.3%), and other resources such as web
applications (33.3%). For educators who explicitly use LPs, however, the percentages are as
follows: MS Word is used by 66.7%, MS Excel by 60.0%, and MS PowerPoint by 33.3% of
them. Among these educators, that is the ones that use LPs, 26.1% do not use technology at
all. When asked for the reason, they answered that it is too complex or that there is no good
software available for adequate lesson planning. When technology supports design for
5
learning, the devices that are used are personal computers or laptops (100%), tablets (13.3%),
and smartphones (6.7%). As mobile technology expands, there is a huge potential market in
education for applications which allow mobile lesson planning. This could be a great
opportunity for CS faculty to define both course and student research projects and to assist CS
education in the engineering of software for mobile design for learning, for instance.
Lesson planning depends not only on time or demographic issues but also on the
pedagogical knowledge educators might have. For example, learning objectives, an important
component of an LP, should be defined according to their type or classification, which is not
always common knowledge to all educators. Are the surveyed participants aware of the
pedagogic terminology related to these issues? For example, do they know the classification
of learning objectives in cognitive, affective, and behavioral or psychomotor objectives? Do
they know Bloom’s taxonomy? Table 1 shows the answers to these questions.
Table 1. Knowledge of specific pedagogic terminology.
Classification Classification Bloom’s Bloom’s
Criteria of LOs of LOs taxonomy taxonomy
known unknown known unknown
LP use
used 73.9% 26.1% 30.4% 69.6%
not used 81% 28.6% 33.3% 76.2%
Role
teacher 100% 0% 0% 100%
faculty 60% 40% 40% 60%
Gender
female 73.7% 26.3% 31.6% 68.4%
male 59.1% 40.9% 36.4% 63.6%
Age
40 or younger 66.7% 33.3% 0% 100%
41 or older 64.7% 35.3% 38.2% 61.8%
The majority of educators know the cognitive, affective and psychomotor

classification of learning objectives: all teachers know it, as do 60% of faculty. Fifteen
percent more female than male educators also know the classification. The great majority of
both educators who use LPs explicitly and those who do not use them at all know the
classification. The representative group which knows the classification is the one of female
teachers aged 40 years or less and who do not use LPs to design for learning. Although
strongly related, the results are not too positive in the case of Bloom’s taxonomy. Knowing
Bloom’s classification neither depends on gender nor on the use of LPs. No single teacher
knows Bloom’s taxonomy by its name; however, 40% of faculty do. No single participant
younger than 41 knows it either. The representative group which knows the taxonomy is the
one of male faculty aged 41 years or more who do not use LPs to design for learning.
Supporting Pedagogical Design and Planning

How to support educators with the design and planning of their lessons and at the
same time increase their pedagogical knowledge? This is the most important goal of most of
the project phases introduced in Section 4. In particular, the aim is to assist educators with a
computer-aided lesson planner that allows for both the collaborative design and the effective
planning of their lessons.
Adaptive LPs are thereby the core feature of the planner. Educators should be able not
only to document the components and elements of their LPs (see Section 3 for more) but also
to work with dynamically changeable LPs. This idea is based on the following thoughts: for
6
individual lessons, Gagné [9] suggests considering sequentially ordered events of instruction
that form the basis for learning to occur, thus helping in the achievement of the learning
outcomes. In practical science or engineering courses, like CS programming labs, for
example, where special training on the manipulation of a software tool relies on the
demonstrated behavior of the learners, a particular sequence of Gagné’s events might be more
convenient than another plan which requires verbal recall of definitions or modification of
learners’ attitudes towards their classmates. The same applies to active and passive teaching
units of the learning opportunities provided to the learners. Educators should be able to
change them depending on the specific learning situation the learners interact in, on the
achievement of the intended learning outcomes, on the completion of the learning activities,
and so on. This is why LPs should be adaptable in a straightforward way. That is the most
important feature of the collaborative software program developed by two undergraduate
students in phase IV.d of this research project. Phase V (August 2015 to January 2016) of the
research project is already planned and is expected to consider both the conclusions of phases
IV.a to IV.c and the current development of the software in phase IV.d. Finally, phase VI
(starting January 2016) will provide the opportunity for developers and other educators to test
the software and to evaluate it for improvement.
Conclusions
The aim of this paper was to highlight the important role pedagogical knowledge plays
in effective teaching and the crucial support that is needed for effective lesson planning. What
started as a single research on CS education, making use of paper-based LPs for a Software
Engineering course, evolved into an ongoing research project where not only CS
undergraduate students develop tools to assist pedagogical design and planning, but also
where other educators’ opinion is key.
One of the phases of the research project included a survey that asked respondents to
give information about the use of LPs in the planning of their teaching. Among the most
relevant results are the following findings: over half of respondents use LPs explicitly and
almost one third of them are CS educators. Proportionally, female educators make more use
of LPs. With experience, the use of LPs decreases; they mainly serve as a context to define
clear learning goals and to structure the lesson in time units. Educators use technology to
support pedagogical planning; software tools for doing it efficiently and effectively are still to
be developed, however. Out of all educators that do not make use of LPs for design for
learning, male faculty aged 41 years or more and female teachers aged 40 years or less are
two potential groups which could increase both their pedagogical knowledge and the
awareness of pedagogic terminology. Further research will be dedicated to adaptive LPs and
to sharing the development and evaluation of a pedagogical lesson planner.
Brief biography of the authors

Dagmar Monett is Professor of Computer Science at the BSEL, where she has been
teaching Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering since 2010. She received a B.S. and
a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Havana University, Cuba in 1992 and 1998, respectively,
and a Dr. rer nat. in Computer Science from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany in
2005. She has more than 25 years of teaching experience and has taught in Cuba, Venezuela,
England and Germany.
Tino Weishaar is an undergraduate Computer Science student at the BSEL since
2013. He successfully completed a specialization on System Integration also in 2013. He has
over five years of practical experience in the areas of System Integration, Computer
Networks, and IT-Security, as well as two years in the areas of Software Engineering and
Project Management. He will major in Computer Science in 2016.
7
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D. Monett and T. Weishaar (2015). Evolving Lesson Plans to Assist Educators: From Paper-Based to Adaptive Lesson Planning.

Evolving Lesson Plans to Assist Educators:

Keywords: Design for learning, lesson plans, pedagogical planner

Lesson Plans and Pedagogical Planners

Evolving Lesson Plans

Survey Methodology and Demographic Overview

Figure 2. Information about a lesson that is documented when no explicit lesson

In schools, teachers document many more components of an LP than faculty at a

The majority of educators know the cognitive, affective and psychomotor

Supporting Pedagogical Design and Planning

Brief biography of the authors

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