Pedagogical Pattern #34
Early Bird Pattern
(Version 1.2, October 1998)
Contributed by:
Joseph Bergin
Pace University
One Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10038 USA
berginf@pace.edu
NAME:
Early Bird
THUMBNAIL:
The course is organized so that the most important topics are taught first. Teach the most important material, the "big ideas," first (and often). When this seems impossible, teach the most important material as early as possible.
AUDIENCE/ CONTEXT:
This has very wide applicability to almost every domain. If design is more important than programming, then find a way to do design as early as you can. If functions are more important than if-statements in programming then do them first. If objects are more important than functions, then do them first.
FORCES:
Students need to see where they are headed. They need to see that detail presented early in the course will relate to important ideas.
Students often remember best what they learn first. This can be both positive and negative, of course. Important (big) ideas can be introduced early, even if they can't get complete treatment immediately.
SOLUTION:
A course is mined for its most important ideas. These ideas become the fundamental organizational principle of the course. The ideas, and especially their relationships are introduced at the beginning of the course and are returned to repeatedly throughout the course.
Here we order class topics in order of importance and find ways to teach the most important ideas early.
DISCUSSION/ CONSEQUENCES/ IMPLEMENTATION:
The most important things in a course or curriculum receive more focus from the instructor and the students. Students can be made more aware of what is paramount.
Implementation is difficult. Often only simple aspects of an important idea can be introduced early. Sometimes it is enough to give important terms and general ideas. Some "big" ideas are thought of as advanced. It is difficult to introduce some of these early. Hard thought and preparation are needed in curricular design. Sometimes a really big, but difficult, concept can be introduced incompletely. Then as other material that relates to it is covered, the relationship to the big idea is carefully explored.
Professors need to be able to analyze deeply what are the consequences of developing material in a particular order. It is often helpful here to have a forum in which ideas can be discussed and refined. It is also often necessary to develop your own materials, which requires time and effort.
SPECIAL RESOURCES:
Time and deep thought are clearly required. Discussion groups with other educators who share similar ideas about the most important concepts in a domain are very helpful.
RELATED PATTERNS:
- It may be necessary to Spiral to give some needed background on the important topics.
- A Lay of the Land example can be used to show the students an example of a big idea in action. If there are many important ideas it can be Larger Than Life.
- A Fixer Upper can be a good way to get started. It must emphasize the big idea of course.
- If the idea is complex, use a Toy Box example to introduce it.
- Interrelated ideas can often lead to components of a Tool Box.
Note: This pattern is actually recursive, as patterns themselves are a really big idea.
See Also: Fixer Upper, Spiral, Mistake, Early Bird, Toy Box, Tool Box, Lay of the Land, Test Tube and Larger Than Life as a pattern language.
EXAMPLE INSTANCES:
Teaching objects first (or at least early). Teaching design first. Teaching concurrency first in operating systems. Teaching user requirements first in Database. Teach recursion before loops. Of course, these are my definitions of what is most important. You may disagree, but then it is your course, so discover and implement your own "firsts."
The book Karel the Robot, by Richard Pattis was designed with this pattern in mind as a way of teaching procedural programming (procedures first). Its successor, Karel++, attempts to do the same with Objects (classes first).
CONTRAINDICATIONS:
It may be a mistake to try to use this pattern with material that has clear prerequisite ideas to the important ideas. This would be especially true if the relationship between the prerequisite idea and the big idea is especially subtle or if the prerequisites are especially difficult to master. Then again a clever use of
Toy Box
or
Lay of the Land
might let you do what seems difficult in presenting topics early.
REFERENCES:
Karel the Robot, Richard Pattis, Wiley, 1981
Karel++, Joseph Bergin, Mark Stehlik, James Roberts, Richard Pattis, Wiley, 1997.