Dogfooding

Published on June 11, 2015

Last updated on November 1, 2024

[Dogfooding: Do You Do Your Own Assignments?

Cult of Pedagogy](http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/dogfooding/)

Jennifer Gonzalez:

I would like to propose that we start using this term in teaching, to make dogfooding a regular part of best practices in instructional design. This is not the first time I’ve tried to drag things from the tech world into the teaching world: Last year, I suggested we could grow more as educators by embracing the concept of teaching in beta, where we roll out a new teaching practice before it’s completely perfect, then work to improve it as we go. We can follow technology’s example again by dogfooding our lessons whenever possible. This means trying our own assignments. Taking our own tests. Doing our own homework. Attempting to actually complete those big projects. By doing this, we can detect all kind of problems that we’d never notice if we just created tasks and gave them straight to students.

Great suggestions. Also, film yourself teaching and ask yourself how you would as a student in your classroom.