Second Post - Backward Design

Backward Design as a respond to Twin sins

Design, v.,—To have purposes and intentions; to plan and execute

—Oxford English Dictionary

Teaching is a means to an end (Page 19)

I first decided to create a mind map in order to identify some technical concepts regarding the text. What I found interesting about it was our new positions as “designers” and “creators” of evidences.

Although it’s difficult to accept an up-side-down approach (backward design), I aim to highlight the importance of assessment seen as a process rather than an “evaluation” with all implications it might involve.  

Here I post some ideas taken from UbD that called my interest:

1. In the best designs form follows function. In other words, all the methods and materials we use are shaped by a clear conception of the vision of desired results. That means that we must be able to state with clarity what the student should understand and be able to do as a result of any plan and irrespective of any constraints we face.

2. Good design, then, is not so much about gaining a few new technical skills as it is about learning to be more thoughtful and specific about our purposes and what they imply.

Why “backward” is best?

3. (Teachers) are coaches of their ability to play the “game” of performing with understanding, not tellers of our understanding to them on the sidelines.

4. Backward design may be thought of, in other words, as purposeful task analysis: Given a worthy task to be accomplished, how do we best get everyone equipped? Or we might think of it as building a wise itinerary, using a map: Given a destination, what’s the most effective and efficient route? Or we might think of it as planning for coaching, as suggested earlier: What must learners master if they are to effectively perform? What will count as evidence on the field, not merely in drills, that they really get it and are ready to perform with understanding, knowledge, and skill on their own? How will the learning be designed so that learners’ capacities are developed through use and feedback?

Assess before deciding what and how to teach 

First post - Intro - (Finally)

       To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.

—Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989, p. 98

Understanding by design – Introduction Review

In order to remember and obviously keep them in (web) mind, I decided to post some interesting ideas I found about this intro. 

Nearly every teacher can empathize with the world history teacher’s struggle, given the pressures to “cover” material. The challenge is exacerbated by the natural increase of knowledge in fields such as science and history, not to mention external testing obligations and additions to the curriculum in recent years (e.g., computer studies and drug education). But at its worst, a coverage orientation—marching through the textbook irrespective of priorities, desired results, learner needs and interests, or apt assessment evidence—may defeat its own aims. For what do students remember, much less understand, when there is only teaching with no opportunity to really learn—to work with, play with, investigate, use—the key ideas and points of connection? Such an approach might correctly be labeled, “Teach, test, and hope for the best.” (Page 3)

Key term alert!

The twin sins of design: Activity-focused teaching and coverage-focused teaching 

Question to set us thinking! (Page 4)       

• How do we make it more likely—by our design—that more students really understand what they are asked to learn? 
• What’s to understand?
• How to design?

 Understanding = various facets (Let’s read)

There are different kinds of understanding; we need to be clear about which ones we are after. Understanding, we argue, is not a single goal but a family of interrelated abilities—six different facets of transfer—and an education for understanding would more deliberately develop them all.This dual purpose—clarifying the goal called “student understanding” while exploring the means called “good design”—raises a host of vital questions in the real world of teaching, of course. What is the best way to design for both content mastery and understanding? How can we accomplish the goal of understanding if the textbooks we use dispense volumes of out-of-context knowledge? How realistic is teaching for understanding in a world of content standards and high-stakes tests?
 

Book’s aim! (Page 4)

1.       Propose an approach to curriculum and instruction designed to engage students in inquiry, promote transfer of learning, provide a conceptual frame-work for helping students make sense of discrete facts and skills, and uncover the big ideas of content.
2.       Examine an array of methods for appropriately assessing the degree of student understanding, knowledge, and skill.
3.       Consider the role that predictable student misunderstandings should play in the design of curricula, assessments, and instruction.
4.       Explore common curriculum, assessment, and instruction practices that may interfere with the cultivation of student understanding, and propose a backward design approach to planning that helps us meet standards without sacrificing goals related to understanding.
5.       Present a theory of six facets of understanding and explore its theoretical and practical implications for curriculum, assessment, and teaching.
6.       Present a unit template to assist in the design of curricula and assessments that focus on student understanding.
7.       Show how such individual units should be nested in a larger, more coherent framework of courses and programs also framed around big ideas, essential questions, and core assessment tasks.
8.       Propose a set of design standards for achieving quality control in curriculum and assessment designs.
9.       Argue that designers need to work smarter, not harder, by sharing curriculum designs worldwide via a searchable Internet database.

Key words (Page 5)       

• Curriculum: desired results (content and performance standards). (desired results we mean what has often been termed intended outcomes, achievement targets, or performance standards.)
• Assessments: Desired results are achieved and how are have been achieved (learning-focused term)
• Understanding (so far): is to make connections and bind together our knowledge into something that makes sense of things  - to do it 
• To use what we know – to apply it (like it!)