Which Principles of Material Design are most important for you? Why?
I agree with Maria's point that the teaching context will strongly influence which principles of material design take priority. In my university context, I'd prioritise the two points made by Tomlinson in his conclusion about the needs and wants of the learners and the materials being a resource rather than a script.
On the first, however, I may think I know what the students' needs are but they may (and sometimes do) disagree. Also, academic departments are not always keen to tell support staff (such as those teaching English and academic skills) what they want their students to have. On the second, teachers with less experience (or less time to adapt) may want to follow a script and so I feel materials need to provide enough support for them to do this.
As with many other people, a further issue I would emphasise is clarity, especially clarity of instructions. But I’m also trying to help students notice that not every situation has a clear single answer and that sometimes they will need to accept, and ideally be comfortable with, a lack of clarity (e.g. when there is more than one acceptable language answer and there is no clear difference between some of them). I try to build this into my materials when appropriate.
Thanks for your thoughts on principles Andrew. One thing that occurred to me as I was reading this is that it could be a good idea in your particular context to have a dialogue with students about principles. It's highly likely they've never considered principles of materials and to have a discussion about their own needs and perspectives could throw up some interesting insights. I'm not teaching a class at the moment but if I was, I might do something similar, just to see what kind of things they appreciate in materials - and what things they really don't like. It could be an opportunity to explain the reasoning behind some things they may not like. Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think I'll do that. This last year I've been spending more time explaining the rationale behind many of the texts I'm asking students to read and the tasks I'm asking them to complete - hadn't thought about extending this to materials design but it makes a lot of sense. Thanks again.
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