Creating an educational program should be like creating a piece of art. Make every piece essential and thoughtful. Waste nothing. Include only that which will enhance, ruthlessly, unapologetically remove everything else.

Think about it. We only have so much time to make a positive contribution to the lives of others. Design a program as you would a piece of art and you will ensure you make the most of these finite opportunities.

When I’m working with an organization, these are the top 5 elements I look for:

1. Relevant

Here’s how you can make sure your content is as relevant as possible. First, refine your message to those components most likely to pique student curiosity. Present these components in small, pithy bursts. Try to do this in less than ten minutes. Use the next ten minutes to encourage students to ask questions and interact with you and each other. Then provide another nugget of content, followed by focussed interaction. This is relevance-making in action!

2. Responsive

We’re inclined to view student questions and comments as a barrier to getting through content. But what if we designed programs to invite questions? Questions are our primary tool for learning. Why not encourage students to exercise this tool?

A word of warning. The value here is in students asking questions, not in you answering them. The process, not the product, adds value to learning.

3. Punctuated

Reading a book without periods, pages, or chapter headings would be a disorienting experience. The previous two elements work best where clear structure exists. Students need to know what you are talking about in clear terms. Once they’re on board, you can open the conversation. The structure you provide will serve to accelerate the learning process.

4. Coherent

Research on the brain indicates that when our brains can’t connect two concepts in a coherent manner, we’ll flush both. Work to make your material build upon itself in a logical manner. This takes work. It’s like rearranging furniture. There are innumerable possibilities, but some make a lot more sense than others. This may sound  rudimentary, but I see this a lot. What flows to us may not have a natural progression for the people we serve.

5. Actionable

Can students clearly identify how they will translate your curricula and program into action? If not, we’re wasting everyone’s time. Budget time to help students determine in clear terms how they plan to translate your conversation into actionable steps.

How are you doing on these 5 elements? What design changes will help your program be a piece of art? Making these changes requires courage.

Systems tend to grow in complexity—education in America, for example.

Artists create remarkable things by moving in the opposite direction. They pursue simplicity and move away from complexity.

Consider the design of the iPhone. Its circuitry is complex. Its interface is simple.

Education is complex. Our interface should be simple and artful.

This is a version of an activity I use in my training that you can use with your team.

Have each person study this picture:

Notice the platform shoes and can of organic soda. They are both sitting on top of a garbage receptacle. Next, have each person craft a story to explain how these items may have come to sit together. Compare the stories.

Why is this activity beneficial?

When we experience dissonance—the clashing together of two or more seemingly unrelated elements—it ignites our curiosity and mobilizes important learning tools. We immediately begin to develop a host of questions and possible explanations in an effort to resolve the dissonance.

Use dissonance to increase engagement with your message. For you, your message is a coherent, harmonic story lacking dissonance. But this isn’t the case for your audience. Your message appears to your audience like the picture. There’s dissonance. Use this to fuel learning.

In the same way you tried to make sense of this picture, your audience will naturally try to resolve their dissonance with your message. They will ask questions. Make comments. Sit in silence. Talk to each other. Challenge what you say. These are tools we all use to transform dissonance into harmony.

Furnish the right answer (if there is one) and you will negate this entire process. Trust that the people you work with, no matter what age, possess the abilities necessary to create harmony.

The result of this process is a new, clear understanding that changes how we see the world. What was foreign becomes familiar. The dissonance leads discovery. Eureka!