Start the First Lesson with Foreshadowing
First impressions matter. As instructors we set the tone for the whole course during our first lesson. We have the opportunity to create an open, accessible, safe and engaging learning environment from the very beginning if we can teach our first lesson well. In what follows, I will discuss how instructors can borrow the foreshadowing device widely used in literature and film to design first lessons so that it can leave a deep impression on our students and contribute to a meaningful learning experience.
What is foreshadowing? It means offering hints and indications in advance to help readers and viewers develop expectations of what might take place later in the story. In the movie, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, for instance, when the police tried to catch E.T., he and his human friends managed to escape by biking into the sky with E.T.’s help. This was foreshadowed earlier in the movie when E.T. used the same magic power to take his best human friend, Elliot, on a bike ride in the sky. Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, starts with a detailed depiction of Antonio’s depression. As readers, we soon learnt that he was worried whether his ships would return to port safely. Yet Antonio still kindly offered to help his friend by borrowing money from Shylock. We could somehow foresee the possible misery he would encounter later when Shylock wickedly announced that he requested a pound of Antonio’s flesh in case Antonio failed to repay the debt.
How to borrow foreshadowing to first lessons and why? Applying this idea to the design of our first lessons, we can provide clues to the students of what they can expect from the course. Most importantly, we have the opportunity to instill a sense of curiosity and suspense in our students so that later in the course we can echo back some of the previous hints that we offered in our first lessons. Now, let me offer an example by introducing how I have designed the first part of the first lesson of Design Thinking, a project-based elective course that undergraduate students from all years and all majors in my institution can enroll in.
Ten minutes before the first lesson starts, I would arrange the seating plans into clusters of tables and chairs so that groups of 4–5 students can sit around each table. I would also scatter piles of Lego™ pieces on each table. Once the class begins, I would turn to the slide showing three words in a large font, Magic Gadget Challenge. I would offer a quick explanation of the challenge with a few slides, highlighting the expected outcomes: students have ten minutes to develop a magic gadget with Legos™ to solve a problem in order to make the world a better place. I provide the definition of gadget, ‘a small mechanical or electronic device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one’ and stress the four key words of the challenge: magic (for instance, they can pretend that by clicking on one Lego™ button the gadget can take everyone to Mars), team (they have to do this as a team exercise, together with peers sitting at the same table), problem solving (they cannot build Legos™ for fun; the gadget they build need to solve a problem), better (the gadget they build need to make the world a better place, so building a weapon to eradicate everyone on earth is out of the question).
What happened when I tried this? Taking one of my past lessons as an example. During the ten minutes, I could hear the mixed sound from loud voices of heated discussions and the more subtle swishing of Lego™ bricks. I offered students reminders of the time, ‘five minutes remaining’, ‘two minutes remaining’, ‘last minute’. Each team then came to the front of the room to present their solution, demonstrating to the whole class the problem that their gadget tried to solve. Examples of some of the gadgets include: a teleporter to help us eliminate long flights; a new type of pavement with tiny holes that absorb and store rainwater for other usages; a three dimensional projection machine to help designers and architects better visualize and modify their designs; an AI machine that filters fake news before news reports.
Designing a first lesson with the foreshadowing device has at least three major benefits:
- It creates a unique learning culture
In this particular course, the magic gadget challenge foreshadows many of the future class activities, assessment, and course projects that students will work on. By starting with this particular exercise, I hope to provide students first-hand experience about the most prominent features of the course. In other words, students can have a bite of the course and experience how it may taste.
An alternative first lesson may look like this. I could start by introducing myself and ask each student to make a self-introduction. This could be followed by my explanation of the major coursework, stating that it would involve teamwork to build a prototype of a solution for a problem they identify within the scope of the design challenge of the course.
The foreshadowing version I just introduced is much more engaging as students are given an opportunity to think and act themselves. They can ‘sense’ the learning culture by engaging themselves in the magic gadget challenge activity.
2. It creates a common lexicon between the teacher and the students
It is true that sometimes elements of foreshadowing can cause certain levels of confusion at the beginning, and even generate mixed feelings that might include frustration, confusion, excitement, confidence, and anxiety. To better apply the foreshadowing device, we need to contextualize the foreshadowed elements so that they are connected with other parts of the course.
Well-designed foreshadowing elements create a common language for everyone involved in the learning community. In my case, for instance, when I later facilitated discussions and exercises about what it meant to work as a team and how to brainstorm effectively, I started by asking students to recall how they performed during the magic gadget challenge and to think about aspects that can be improved. When I introduced the importance of prototyping, students would remember how they demonstrated their solutions by building Lego™ bricks during the first lesson, a vivid example of making prototypes. When we discussed the concept of stakeholders when designing a product, I also asked students to reflect back on who might be the stakeholders regarding the problem they tried to solve during the magic gadget challenge.
By reiterating and revisiting some of the key points during our first lessons, we can create interconnectedness and coherence within our courses. This requires us to carefully think about how each part of the courses are connected and how we can work towards this goal from the very beginning.
3. It motivates students by throwing them off balance for a moment
One goal of foreshadowing in literary works and movies is to create suspense so that readers or viewers are tempted to see the full version. In my case, students were not sipping coffee with friends and building Lego™ bricks for fun. It was a tense challenge: in ten minutes, they might find it difficult to agree with each other’s ideas; they might feel a little overwhelmed to come up with creative ideas within such a short time; they might not even have time to complete building their solutions.
The climax of the magic gadget challenge was actually the debrief part. After the demo show, I asked my students to think about why we started the lesson with this challenge. After students shared their views, I would continue to bombard them with a number of questions: What does ‘making the world a better place’ even mean? Does it mean the same thing for everyone? Who gets to decide? Have they planned out how they would want to organize the ten minutes? Would it be helpful if they did? How did they feel about the teamwork? How difficult it was to try to communicate their ideas by building a tangible model? Did they discuss or think about their own goals while engaged in this challenge: to simply complete a class exercise; to compete with other teams; or to take some risks and see what happens?
Learning happens when students feel challenged but can still be motivated to strive to overcome the difficulties and maintain their curiosity to figure out why and how they can do better.
I have used my own example to try to illustrate the value of the foreshadowing technique. I am not suggesting that we should all start our classes with Lego™ building activities. If your course is centered around debates and discussions, why not begin with a mock debate? If you decide that writing an academic essay is one major coursework of your course, try starting the first lesson by asking students to write for 10–15 minutes on an assigned topic on the spot as soon as the class starts!
Beyond giving students a taste of the whole class, we can also design pre-assessments as a major foreshadowing element during the first lesson to identify and respond to different learning habits and needs. After all, we are helping our students to create their own unique learning experiences.
The first lesson matters. It can be the moment when magic happens.
Yanyue Yuan is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU Shanghai. She is passionate about teaching and she is a firm believer of experiential learning and project-based learning. Yanyue conducts research on the teaching of design thinking, creative learning in informal settings, and intergenerational learning. Yanyue was born and raised in Shanghai. She loves making and drinking tea, and enjoys writing free-style poems to document her reflections on life.
The opinions expressed here are her own and not necessarily those of her employer. She would like to thank Jace Hargis, Adam Brandenburger, and Sam Li for offering feedback on earlier drafts of this article.
