Good Lesson Planning Improves Learning Outcomes
Bob Dylan once famously sung “He not busy being born is busy dying”.
I am sharing this with you today because I would like you to use this as a reminder to tell yourself how important it is to keep learning and always striving to grow.
I understand that the decision to return to school can be one with a lot of questions. Hoping this would bring you one step closer to making your decision, I would like to take you through the journey of how the Pragmatic Product Leader Course was built and the science involved behind building it.
Our aim was not only to generate content but create resources which would be precise and clearly define a direction for our students without wasting their precious time.
As a result of all this hard work, we were able to build an umbrella pedagogy, covering everything from techniques for analysis and market differentiation to designing and shipping your final product.
In this post, I would now like to familiarise you with the science behind how our lessons are planned. We have designed our lessons according to the guidelines used by the top universities for building their study material.
Thus, our course is based on the following four scientific principles:
Lesson Organisation
Kallison (1986) was of the opinion that good organisation of subject matter and planning of the course are important to student learning. Based on this thought, Pragmatic Product Leader Course is divided in 326 sub-topics spread across 20 modules. The organisation of the study material is such that it covers the process of Product Management, from start to end, using linear progression. Broadly speaking we covers, introduction to product management followed by designing the product and development of the product and finally, competitive analysis and techniques for marketing as well as people management- in that same order.
Lesson Clarity
Good organisation of study material alone is not enough. We need to build content that is easily comprehensible and promotes learning. Well-structured presentations, lecture-outlines, headings, subheading, and syllabi enhance students’ learning experiences (Feldman 1989, Murray 1991). Our study material is built on the premise that the manner in which lessons are laid out have a significant impact on transfer of knowledge and learning abilities of students. They serve as an advance organizer providing students with chunking strategies, thus contributing to more efficient learning.
Here is a peak into what your study material looks like!
Generating interest
We follow the “deep approach” to learning which focuses on understanding the course material rather than the “surface approach” focussing on rote memorisation. Different techniques and platforms such as webinars, PPTs, and articles have been built in the course to ensure each student has access to the resource that best suits their attitudes and interest. Learning takes place in the context of a web-based Learning Management System (LMS) which integrates all necessary elements for the course such as- viewing course materials, peer to peer as well as student-teacher interaction and quizzing and grading into one location. This also ensures that our in-house student success team can closely track each student’s progress and step in timely to ensure no student is left behind.
Creating Positive Classroom Environment
Positive environment is created by ensuring that students relate to other students, can participate in class and can receive help when needed. To ensure this, we follow a two step process. First, we have a three layered selection process ensures that each student brings something unique to the community whether it be experience or the fact that they hail from a different part of the globe- it all counts! This promotes “shared learning” and helps generate curiosity amongst the students. Second, unlike most online courses, we offer 20 live tutorials, which gives opportunity to our students to engage with their teachers in real time.
That being said, Product Management is a dynamic and multidimensional field. There are bound to be blind spots. Theory cannot alone compensate for practical experience or hands on learning.
Keeping this in mind, we have built experiential learning as an integral part of our course. Unlike those courses that focus only on theoretical aspects of learning, we focus on highly task based learning simulating authentic working situations. To this end, we team you up with our inhouse development team, who not only helps you build the product, but also ship it !
To learn more about experiential learning and how it improves learning outcomes please read my previous blog post 4 Proven Ways to Learn Faster, Better!
You can Download the Complete Syllabus here.
Want to know how Pragmatic Product Leaders Program is different from any other Product Management Course out there? Click here to know more about the Program.
Already made up your mind to enrol for Pragmatic Product Leader Program? SIGN UP for our waitlist and we promise to make this new journey of yours awesome!
