The education sector has been booming lately. With proliferating MOOCs and EdTech companies revamping it, everyone seems to take this opportunity to create a side stream of income. My story, although different, offers interesting takeaways to a new entrant.

I took a one-year break from my PhD program at the end of 2019. Fresh outside the campus, I thought I could gain some teaching experience. So, I joined a business school in Vijayawada, India as a visiting lecturer to teach two courses. The courses were to start within two weeks from receiving the offer letter. Consumer Behavior (CB) was one of them.

A timeless challenge in teaching is coming up with quality content. Even more testing, if you get less than two weeks to design and deliver a course to an audience of MBA students. This post will outline my learnings on conquering this challenge and how I would approach course building for future projects. 

Course Design Starter Pack

Without prior teaching experience, building a course from scratch was going to be challenging and a lot of fun. So, to start, I had to quickly climb the shoulders of the giants who had taught CB before me.

I started gathering all the CB slides from the different batches of my alma mater. Alternatively, you can refer to slides available online. It gives a good idea of the depth covered and the approach used for instruction by other instructors. I noticed that the instructors had used lots of print and video ads to explain a concept.

Next, I searched for good course outlines online. I’ll highlight how critical designing a good course outline is in a while.

Then, I pulled out my notes from the Management Pedagogy course I had taken during my PhD. This course gave me a hands-on experience of using the different business teaching methods within the comforts of the classroom. A quick refresher was surely going to be helpful.

Lastly, I had to find good books for the course. I had taken this course and many related ones during my PhD. But, as an instructor, I needed better mastery over the subject.

Thus, I had the basic ingredients for designing the course.

About a week before commencement, the college admin handed over the syllabus. Luckily, I need not change what I was doing substantially. Why? Well, I hadn’t done much, except for reading the books and creating notes. But, I had to now.

Creating the Course Outline

I had to create a personalized course outline that was different from the generic syllabus that the participants receive. Why? Because as opposed to a syllabus, a course outline acts as a contract between the instructor and the participants. It is designed around the instructor’s teaching philosophy. It clearly states what I promise to deliver and what I expect you to do such that everyone has a clear idea of:  

• What the end outcomes of the course are 
• What will be the rules of the interaction
• What the timeline looks like
• The assessment policy 
• The penalties
• The resources to refer to, and so on

It is the ultimate accountability tool in a classroom setting. Also, it is the first indicator of the quality of future lectures.

Course Outline Contents

I’ll briefly discuss the content of the course outline here. Feel free to jump to the next section.

As a beginner, I kept it simple. I created a skeleton draft of the outline first. The first section was an ‘Introduction’ to the course, followed by a ‘Course Objectives’ section that had three expected outcomes at the end of the course. These two sections best display the teaching philosophy of the instructor.

Next, I mentioned the ‘Pedagogy’ I’d use. I used a combination of lectures, case discussions, and role-plays during the sessions. 

The next section was the ‘Evaluation Scheme’ and the subsequent sections were dedicated to the three different units:

1. Consumer Behavior Introduction, Consumer Motivation, Personality, and Consumer Perception
2. Consumer Learning and Reference Group Appeal
3. Consumer Influence, Purchasing Process, Structure and Post Purchase Behavior

These sections included the specific topics to be covered in each unit, tentative session numbers, and the corresponding pre-session readings or videos. 

Alternatively, one can go with session plans instead of unit plans. I wanted to keep it somewhat open-ended, so I went with units. 

The last section listed the ‘Reference Books and Additional Readings’.

The Classroom Experience

Things do not go as planned when the sessions begin. Time management is the hardest part. Sometimes I found it tough to complete the sessions within the duration. On other occasions, I ran short of materials. I carefully noted how much time each activity took. I was better after a few sessions.

Another lesson is that the lecture method is the worst method for learning. For better retention, learners must actively participate in classroom interactions. I had to keep interactive activities planned throughout the session to retain their attention. A few tips for engaging participants:

1. Make appealing ppts: Boring slides are sleep-inducing. Your slides should have enough animations, images, links, charts, embedded videos, etc. I discovered that in contrast to plain slides with white backgrounds that are expected during research presentations, classroom slides are effective when colorful and exciting.
   
2. Use Commercials: A few funny or otherwise engaging commercials in between monologues work like steroids in grabbing attention. I found out that the participants retained the concepts much better when they associated them with the example commercial played. Liberal use of advertisements in my slides probably contributed most to the positive reviews I received after the course. However, this tip is specific to marketing-related courses.
   
3. Open-book quizzes: During the sessions, I would often recap previous concepts by randomly quizzing previous topics. It helped solidify the foundation for the upcoming modules.
   
4. Role-plays and participant presentations: Well, some participants love them while some don’t. But no doubt, everyone retained what they spoke or presented.
   
5. Case Studies: Participants connect the theories to practical problems the best when pressed to think like the protagonist of a case study.
   
6. Points for class participation (optional): Although I do not advocate this technique, assigning points for class participation incentivizes some participants to interact.

Good teachers are often eloquent speakers. But my experience taught me that good teachers also need to be exceptional listeners/observers. I received great feedback from the participants throughout the course. I would have missed that if I focussed too much on my performance. Also, participants have unique contributions to make in a classroom discussion.

Some bonus tips: –

• Make a good first impression: Prepare a good introduction slide for yourself. Highlight all the big brands you’ve been associated with. Association with good brands builds credibility for the instructor in the participants’ minds.
  
• Use a custom template for your slides that contains details such as unit name, page number, institute’s logo, a custom navigation panel, etc. You can use the Master Slide feature (if you are using Microsoft Powerpoint to create the slides) to create these templates.
  
• Make the sessions as learner-centered as possible.
  
  ‘I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.’ –Albert Einstein
  
• Take regular feedback in the form of quizzes and assignments. Sometimes surprise and sometimes planned.
  
• Once in a while, play a super dumb game of charades! (yes, the participants had the audacity to record using cellphones!)

Lastly, remember that designing a course is an iterative process. You are supposed to improve the course every time you redeliver. 

What teaching taught me

Robert Heinlein said, “When one teaches, two learn”. I cannot tell about the participants, but I no doubt carried a lot of lessons to my life and career ahead. Not just Marketing or Consumer Behavior, but teaching also refined my soft skills such as story-telling and listening. It improved my people management and time management skills. It increased my accountability and made me a more organized individual. 

I knew that if I were preaching about the value of time, then I could never be a minute late into the class. I knew that the participants’ experiences and partly their career prospects depended on my performance every day. This sense of responsibility made me prioritize my preparation for the sessions over food and sleep (not proud of it though!). 

I learned a lot from that experience and will forever cherish the relationships formed and the memories made!