TAGS and TASKS: How to Design an Effective, Fun Breastfeeding Education Class

If you are new to teaching health education classes, you may wonder how to design a class that helps maximize the chances that your students will remain engaged and, most importantly, take in and retain the concepts needed to understand the content!  By remembering these two acronyms: TAG and TASKS, and completing the steps in this order, you will be able to design and, more importantly, be ready to teach ANY class.

Nota bene: this is not me. For one thing, these are women, not girls. For another, I am as white as milk.

When I was a girl, I loved participating in relay races.  Teaching is a lot like a relay race.  You acquire the baton of learning from another teacher, sprint with it in your own way at your own pace, and then, when the time is right, pass it on to someone else, who has to run their own race in their unique way.  In our learning analogy, your learners have done their own training, but they can’t take their leg of this race until you make contact, or “TAG” them with your unique baton of learning.

T=Title
A=Audience
G=Goals

1. Choose your Title

The first step in designing your health education class is to choose or identify your Title, the main topic of your class.  At this point, this will be very much a working title--you can, and probably will, change it when you're all done writing your class.  Sometimes the Title will be a given, especially if you have been asked to teach a class on a specific topic.  Other times you get to choose the main topic you will teach, especially if you have your own educational outlet, such as your own business, or your job includes the responsibility to teach classes, but your employers have not specified certain classes or topics.  Whether a given or self-generated, your first step is to identify the main topic of the entire class, and write your working Title, such as "Getting Started Breastfeeding."

2. Identify your Audience

 As you are designing your class, the very next thing you need to consider is your target Audience.  Obviously, a group of M.D.s are going to need an entirely different kind of class than a group of middle school students, even if they are learning about the same topics.  While you don’t want to stereotype your target audience, there are some basic principles that tend to hold true.  Older, more educated audiences are interested in more “left-brained,” facts-oriented presentations; whereas younger, less educated, tech-savvy audiences tend to be more interested in visual teaching tools and activities that present benefits and risks in ways that allow THEM to sort through decisions for themselves or engage in group decision-making.  If you are or will be teaching to audiences predominantly composed of people of another culture or subculture, it is well worth your time to learn about their customs, beliefs, and taboos so that you do not unnecessarily offend with your presentation.  As a negative example, when I was a new childbirth educator, I included videos of natural childbirths; however, the mothers were nude.  To some of the conservative couples I taught, the nudity was very uncomfortable for them, and they were unable to appreciate the lovely births depicted, because the visual I had chosen turned off learning for them.  For these couples, “natural childbirth” became something only “hippies” chose and had the effect of actually encouraging them to use pain medications.  My objective to help them recognize the benefits of a natural birth, appreciate the natural design of the birth process, and, hopefully, consider a natural birth, completely failed.  This is an example of how trying to think like your audience enhances learning, but insensitivity may completely disable learning and openness to new ideas.  This is something to be aware of in breastfeeding education, since it involves... breasts!  Consider your audience when using visual aids AND give them the opportunity to opt out if your visual aid includes nudity, especially in mixed male-female classes.

---

I hope this teacher gets a few more students in his class. On the upside, he has plenty of snacks--great idea!

3. Write Goals for your learners

Once you have thoroughly considered the learning needs, learning styles, preferences, and “turn offs” for YOUR target Audience, it is time for you to set Goals for the session.  These Goals, or learner-centered objectives, need to be specific things THEY should be able to accomplish by the end of the class.  Do not make the mistake of setting goals for yourself, such as “I will cover the process of how human milk is made.”  We can probably all remember classes we once took where the instructor “covered” material, but very few actually learned it.  Instead, write your Goals in terms of your learners.  For example, “the learner will be able to list the three stages of human milk: colostrum, transitional milk, and mature milk.”  In order to determine if your learner has achieved the Goal, you should write one specific criteria that will demonstrate that the learner has accomplished the Goal.  For example, one criteria for how a learner could demonstrate that they have reached the Goal of truly understanding the process of how a breastfeeding mom produces mature milk, could be, “The learner can list at least one sign for how to be reasonably sure that a breastfeeding mother has begun to produce colostrum, transitional milk, and mature milk.”

4. Turn your goals into Topics

Having successfully TAGged your audience with the baton of learning, by choosing your Title, identifying your Audience, and writing your learner Goals, it is time to for them to start the race--grabbing that baton and running through the learning TASKS!  The first “T” of TASKS stands for Topics.  You simply take each of your Goals and turn them into the relevant Topic or Topics that will allow your learner to be exposed to the information needed to be able to reach the goal.  In the example of the goal we set, “the learner will be able to list the three stages of human milk: colostrum, transitional milk, and mature milk,” your topic will be Lactogenesis.  For most audiences, you will rephrase this in “layman’s” terms, so perhaps your topic will be “How a Mother Makes Milk” or even something fun or humorous like, “Breasts: Human Milk Making Machines!”  ...But do keep your target audience in mind.  Those M.D.s are probably going to love it if you stick with Lactogenesis.  (Though even M.D.s have a sense of humor!  So as long as you actually use the word “lactogenesis” in your presentation, they might appreciate you using humorous topic titles or subtitles.)

T=Topics
A=Activities
S=Steps
K=Keep it fun
​S=Strong finish

5. Think about which Activities will help your learner engage with each topic

After your have chosen your topics, you will use your topics and goals to guide you to design your Activities!  This is the really fun part.  Here is where you get to let your creativity run wild.  Don’t stifle the process by thinking too practically about your budget, what your students will pay or not pay, or other downers that will make your class too serious (i.e., boring).  Most audiences will include both “right brained” and “left brained” learners, (though current research indicates--shocking--people actually do use both sides of their brains!) and people of all learning styles.  So for a basic class, make sure to include activities that appeal to all types of people.  If you keep your activities fun and engaging, most adult learners will willingly participate in all kinds of class activities, because, in general, they CHOSE to attend the class, so they are motivated to follow your directions in order to get to the goal of what they came for: learning.  For most audiences, you will want to mix things up: include some videos / DVDs, some personal stories, some facts, some charts or posters, some lecture, some short worksheets, and some discussions.  You might want to invite in a guest speaker or have a panel discussion.  "Graduates" of previous classes are always popular.  Class discussions are also appealing to many audiences.  For more meaty topics and especially for any information you want your students to retain, handouts or booklets to take home work well, because the student can pull them out after the class to review the material.  Next, estimate how much time each Activity will take so you can stay on time during the class, and make sure you have planned enough Activities, but not too many, to cover the total time you want your class to take.  Whew!  When you’re all done designing your Activities, make sure to stop for a moment and call to mind your target audience and review if these Activities seem appropriate for your audience.

6. Fill in the Steps for each activity

Having chosen the activities that will help your students learn about each topic (and reach the learner goals), you fill in the Steps either you or your students will take to complete each Activity you chose.  For a resource like a DVD, you would write Steps such as: “1.  Play “Breastfeeding is Awesome” DVD.  2.  Learners take notes on the benefits of breastfeeding that appeal to them most.  3.  After the DVD is complete, ask learners to read their lists and talk about why that benefit appeals to them the most.”  For a lecture, you will need to write an outline with the points you need to cover.  Here’s a tip: keep your teaching notes SHORT.  I may just have a major case of postpartum brain, but I find that when I’m a bit nervous in front of an audience, I need bullet points.  When my lecture notes are too detailed, I tend to get lost...which makes for more embarrassment...which makes me get more lost…  So stick with bullet points, and do write down any specific, important details you might tend to forget under the pressure of thirty pairs of eyes.  When you're all done, again, pause for a moment and think: do these Steps lead to the Goals?  If not, adjust.  You may also need to adjust your time estimates or your steps to make sure you stay within the estimated total time for the entire class.

7. Keep it fun!

Pumping moms are completely welcome to cry over spilled milk.

Remember as you write your class activities and steps to Keep It Fun.  It is the “fun” factor that keeps your students engaged.  Laughter is good medicine--and aids learning!  Go back into your document and add some jokes or funny stories, photos, or cartoons.

8. Finish Strong by adding your transitions and a student evaluation

Your last step in designing your class is to finish Strong.  Assuming you’ve gotten this far, you will just have the finishing touches left and your class will be ready to present!  Back to our race analogy.  You always need to warm-up before and cool-down after running right?  So it is with a class.  Remember that working title?  Now is the time to either verify that it is still a great title, or to change it to better reflect what your students will be learning, or make it more appealing (Keep it fun, remember?).  Next, at the beginning of your class, you will want to add an Introduction--a longer warm-up, often taking the form of an Ice-Breaker question or activity in a more informal class; or your professional Introduction and credentials in a more formal class.  

It's your call whether to make your students actually stretch their hamstrings for their warm up.

You’ve finished adding your warm-up to your class, now it’s time for the cool-down.  At the end of class, you want to review the goals and most important ideas in your Conclusion.  For more formal classes, this can be done in a straight-forward lecture style.  In less formal classes, you could consider adding one final activity or review questions to help your students recall what has been covered in the class.  All classes usually appreciate one final opportunity to answer any remaining questions they might have.

Next, you want to write a much shorter warm-up and cool-down for each topic.  Your topic warm-up should be a transitional sentence or question that bridges the gap from the prior topic or question so that your students know you are changing the direction of the conversation.  Your topic cool-down should be a brief summary of the most important ideas they need to remember about that topic.  Again, this can be accomplished lecture style, or you can ask questions that your students answer to show they've retained the most important ideas.

You've done a lot of work!  You've chosen your Title, identified your Audience, written your Goals; then chosen your Topics and Activities and their Steps; remembered to Keep it Fun!, and finished Strong.  There's only one more thing to do.  Before they head out the door, give your students a form to evaluate their experience of your class.  While it may make your knees knock, you DO want to know if there are areas you can improve, so that your future students will get more out of the class than these students did.  ...And it’s nice to get your own “blue ribbon” in the form of positive feedback!

Winning a blue ribbon is great; sharing a carrot with a horse...not so much.