In the PLAN phase, you turn a verified problem into a blueprint for solving it.
You sort out what your learners can do now, the observable things they need to be able to do, what motivates them, the limits you’re working with, and how they move through the learning experience — so what you build solves the problem, not just covers the topic.
Learners’ world
Before you plan a single lesson, picture the one person this is for. What does their Tuesday look like? What’s hard for them right now? What do they wish they could do?
When you can see that person, everything you plan after this gets easier.
Where they’re headed
A destination is what your learners will be doing once this course has done its job. It’s not a list of topics. We’ll work this all out next.
Their lessons
The lessons move your learners from where they are today to where they want to be. We’ll plan them one at a time.
Count the ones they touch directly, then the ones further downstream. “Mostly themselves” is a valid answer, too.
Name the everyday things first, then the moments where it really matters. If you answered “mainly themselves” last screen, skip ahead — this one’s not for you.
What are they already solid at? Where do they wobble? What have they never had to deal with?
This is what your learners want next for themselves — answer it the way they would.
Think tools: a checklist, a plan, their own reference — made by them, for them. If it only exists to be graded, it doesn’t count.
Someone credible who was in their shoes recently enough to remember what it was like. (Not the distant expert.)
There’s always an inner circle — the ones who really know what they’re doing. Being counted in is powerful fuel.
Time, energy, backup, materials — the limits they live inside every day.
The real deadline in their world — a start date, a season, a moment that will arrive whether they’re ready or not.
Consider the what-ifs, the why-nots, the how-do-they-do-thats.
Consider the myths, the shortcuts everyone swears by, the advice that gets passed down unquestioned.
Consider the mistake they dread, the person they’d hate to let down, what a bad day feels like to them.
Pick every one that applies. This changes what you make. A lesson someone works through alone and a page someone prints for a room aren’t built the same way, even when they teach the same thing.
These are the real-world limits. Your best guess is fine.
We’ll check your lessons against this later, once there are lessons to count.
Pick one (or more) outcomes your learners would care about most.
Your pick decides what lessons feel like for your learners — exploring ideas, following steps, practicing, solving, responding, or building.
New lessons will start with this approach. You’ll be able to change it for any single lesson while building.
Now it’s time to go deeper and get more specific.
Why? Because the lists you make here inform what lessons to build and how to design the best learning experiences.
Three things make up their finish line: who your learner became, what they can do now that they couldn’t before, and what they have now that they didn’t have before.
Not what they can do. How they see themselves, and how other people see them.
One line each. Something you could watch them doing. Start with the learner, then a verb.
Planning the first lesson usually takes the longest, but after that, the rest will go more quickly because you’ll be more familiar.
Plan
Teaching approach: · Change for this lesson
The rest of the course stays on its approach. This changes only this lesson.
These starting drafts are samples so you can feel the flow. The finished version has Astara write each draft from your own course.
Removing also removes what you wrote in it.