Saturday, April 3, 2010

Preparing an Outline

How do you prepare your course outlines? Here is a method that I use. I color code my materials into three classifications; Red for must know, Yellow for good to know and green for nice to know. I also use the method of telling them what I want to tell them, tell them and tell them what I told them.

Now I set up the introduction in accordance with telling them what I am going to tell them. The body of my presentation comes next, the method you choose depends on what works best; chronological, important to least important, narrative, story-telling or whatever one you pick. My conclusion is a recap of what I told them and here I emphasize the main points.

Now back to the color coding idea. In each section I have the important (must know) points first. The next material is good to know and supports the must to know material. The final part of each section is my nice to know material. This material is just icing on the cake so to speak, not critical but not useless, just nice to know.

Now depending upon how the audience is interacting (questions, etc.) and how much time I have been given determines if I ever get to the nice to know material. You can always leave the material you did not get to cover in the form of a handout or save it for a later date.

Just something to think about. What do you do when preparing your teaching/training outlines?

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