Planning and Designing Teaching Topics/Units/Lessons

1. Planning and Designing Teaching Topics/Units/Lessons

When planning teaching content, it is important to understand how to organise it into meaningful and interconnected structures. The terms topic, teaching unit, and lesson are often used interchangeably, but they differ in scope and function within the teaching process. Clearly distinguishing between these levels contributes to more effective planning, implementation, and evaluation of instruction.

2. Structure of the Teaching Process

3. Teaching unit

The concept of a teaching unit can be used as a practical level of organisation that brings together a series of teaching and learning activities within a single class session. In higher education, a teaching unit most commonly refers to one class period or a block of lecture, exercise, or seminar time. Within a single unit, multiple teaching and learning activities connected to the same learning outcome may be carried out.

4. Literature

B. Divjak, D. Grabar, B. Svetec, and P. Vondra, “Balanced Learning Design Planning: Concept and Tool”, J. inf. organ. sci. (Online), vol. 46, no. 2, Dec. 2022.

D. Laurillard, P. Charlton, B. Craft, D. Dimakopoulos, D. Ljubojevic, G. Magoulas, E. Masterman, R. Pujadas, E. A. Whitley and K. Whittlestone, "A constructionist learning environment for teachers to model learning designs", Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29(1), 15–30, 2011.