Reading and understanding recipes
Why are we calling these recipes?
Recipes are a well-known and widely used design. We hope that, conceptually, this will mean the ideas here can be more easily followed, shared and implemented.
Most people will have used a food recipe and will recognise the pattern - a summary of the outcomes, list of ingredients, step by step instructions for the method(s), some tips and tricks. Some recipes refer to other simpler recipes and become a sort of 'meta' recipe bringing together 'one(s) we made earlier'.
The idea of being able to share recipes is especially important as we want to hear from people where they have developed their own recipe, or changed an ingredient, to achieve a similar or widely different outcome; we also hope that if something here works particularly well for you, that you will share it with your colleagues.
The 'basic' recipe
These are the base level recipes - they introduce the concepts, give some pointers, and let you decide the best way to achieve the aim. Some of them go a little further and give more detailed instructions but are generally not tied directly to step by step guidance. We call these 'inspirations'. You will recognise these by the dark boxes at the top and bottom - the challenge, and the descriptive metadata (categories, goals and tools). The basic recipe also includes a solution overview and a simplified process. You can see definitions of these areas in the full recipe section below.
The full recipe
As we roll out (pun intended) our new recipe designs, you will see that these have expanded considerably on the concept whilst keeping some of the essential ideas from the basic recipes.
Description, ingredients, and method
Challenges
This list summarises the teaching challenges that the recipe can help you address. Use it to see if the recipe might help you to overcome a challenge of your own, or as an inspiration to expand your current practice.
Solution overview
This section provides you with a simple overview of how this recipe will help you overcome the challenges, using which tools, and what the next steps might be. It may provide more background to the recipe including conceptual and pedagogic elements.
Process
As you would expect, this is the staple part of the recipe - the process steps, or method - detailing how to complete it successfully.
The steps will include prerequisites, links to our guides , associated recipes and other online help . Some steps will give you options - these do not change the recipe outcome, but can let you choose the method or tool you are most confident with or think fits the challenge best.
Recipe ratings [new]
About this recipe
Is this recipe for you? Is it, relatively speaking, easy or hard, long or short? What goal can you achieve? This section details all of this for you to scan and make a decision.
Difficulty
This estimate is relative to other recipes, not an absolute. You may find a recipe very straightforward but for other people it may be more of a challenge. Given your own level of expertise, this scale will help you identify the recipes which match, and let you set your expectations accordingly.
Time
As with difficulty, this is a relative measure - more experienced technology users will be able to achieve this more quickly, although there are occasions when the time is fixed as it relies on specific processes to complete.
Type
Is it a basic 'inspiration', giving you the bare essentials and broad steps for you to interpret, or is it a 'complete' recipe with each step linked to the support materials necessary to achieve it.
Tool(s)
Does it use one of our supported tools or suggest an alternative that suits these challenges.
Assessment methods(s)
Which, if any, of the assessment methods detailed on the ADC asessment and design pagesLink opens in a new window does this recipe support.
Categories
What areas of teaching does this recipe relate to. This is taken from the complete list available on the Recipe homepage.
Enhancement goals
What is the pedagogic goal of this recipe? Will it help students become more confident, does it support active, blended or authentic learning, develop student study skills etc.
Summary rating
What do we think of this recipe? An honest summary based on the difficulty, time and type of recipe.
Tips and tricks [new]
Need to know
These are the knowledge prerequisites for this recipe - whether you need to attend some training or simply know how to login to a tool.
Useful to know
These will help you to achieve the recipe more easily but are not essential to know in advance. You can pick this up as you go along.
Make it and bake it, then share it!
We need your recipes. These pages are an attempt to bring together the shared practices of the teaching and learning experts, you, at Warwick. We would love to have you to contribute new recipes, variants to existing recipes (whether this is efficiency improvements or corrections), everything is welcome as we built our community of practice.
Use the recipe structure above, or just the basic trifecta of Challenges, Solution and Process. It would help to have some more background in terms of what the aim is, what goals it achieves, and what you need to know in advance, but these are all optional - we will add this as we test.