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A content-centered approach to instructional design risks creation of poorly-defined learning experiences where students aren’t clear on how the learning activities or learning objectives are supposed to support their learning of the content. After an exam, for instance, instructors might hear students express their frustration with statements such as, “that test wasn’t fair” or “that question came out of left field”. Besides the final assessment, teachers can gather evidence of student learning by building regular formative assessments into their lessons or units.
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When teachers are designing lessons, units, or courses, they often focus on the activities and instruction rather than the outputs of the instruction. Therefore, it can be stated that teachers often focus more on teaching rather than learning. This perspective can lead to the misconception that learning is the activity when, in fact, learning is derived from a careful consideration of the meaning of the activity.
Stage 1: Identify Desired Results
Focuses on identifying what students will understand, will know and be will be able to do. The teacher has created an authentic task in which students will design a 3-day meal plan for a camp that uses food pyramid guidelines. The idea of Backward Design comes from Wiggins & McTighe and suggests that learning experiences should be planned with the final assessment in mind. However, the backward design approach provides an authentic learning experience relevant for both the educator and the student when deployed effectively. Next, turn them into KUDs (students who Know, Understand, Do), so that you can identify how you will be teaching and assessing these skills. Identify exactly what you want them to know (such as being able to define empathy), understand (such as recognizing another’s perspective), and do (like solving a social conflict independently).
The Before, Where the Final Product is a Test
A 6-unit, online, self-paced course for K–12 educators seeking to engage students while adhering to standards. By grades 11–12, students in California public schools should be able to “use precise language, domain-specific vocabulary, and techniques such as metaphor, simile, and analogy to manage the complexity of the topic,” in works of literature. In many classrooms, teachers also have students track the appearance of the moon over the course of a month, so that might be added as well. Our students know when they’re being asked to do something pointless. If they don’t see the relevance of what they’re learning or a direct line between the content of your course and a desirable outcome, they’ll tune it out.
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Smart objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Another way I use backward design to support my students’ mental health is thinking about the relationship I hope to have with my students come summer. How you treat them throughout the year is how they will remember you, and we can use backward design to be intentional about our relationships with our students.
How you evaluate and grade an assessment should also track with your intended learning outcomes. If your ILO states that students will be able to analyze the relationship between two concepts in a term paper, then grammar and conventions should not be a large part of the grade, particularly if they can satisfactorily complete the analysis. A well-designed rubric can help you align your assessments to your intended learning outcomes. With intended learning outcomes in hand, the next step of the backward design process is to create assessments that appropriately measure students’ attainment of intended learning outcomes. Various kinds of assessments can fill this role, as long as the assessment task is closely aligned with the action described in the ILO.
Stage 2: Determine Appropriate Assessments
The backward design approach to curriculum planning enables educators to provide goal-centered instruction. With learning objectives centered, students can appreciate the relevance of the instructional content. The backward design approach for curriculum development applies to individual lesson plans through the backward mapping approach. In their excellent book, Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe propose the “Backward Design” framework for course design. This framework is “backward” only to the extent that it reverses the typical approach, so that the primary focus of course design becomes the desired learning outcomes. Only when one knows exactly what one wants students to learn should the focus turn toward consideration of the best methods for teaching the content, and meeting those learning goals.
The first question listed above has instructors consider the knowledge that is worth being familiar with which is the largest circle, meaning it entails the most information. The second question above allows the instructor to focus on more important knowledge, the knowledge and skills that are important to know and do. Finally, with the third question, instructors begin to detail the enduring understandings, overarching learning goals, and big ideas that students should retain.
Learner-Centered vs Content-Centered Approach
All the lesson planning in the world won’t necessarily guarantee that students will retain and master new concepts. To gauge effectiveness and find evidence of learning, you’ll need to plan regular mini-assessments throughout the course of a unit or lesson. If it turns out that those favorite lessons don’t really align with any standards, you might be able to revise them so they do. Or you might keep them for other reasons—not every minute of class time has to be spent on standards-based instruction. Some activities have value because they help us get to know each other better, they help students develop social-emotional skills, or they simply offer a bit of fun. But if a lesson doesn’t do any of these things, if it’s disguised as learning but is doing little more than keeping students busy, it’s time for it to go.
The assessment is kind of an afterthought, a check to see if students were paying attention to the stuff we taught them. Before applying the backward design model, understanding the 7 principles and the big picture will support effective planning with clearly defined goals, aligned assessment and coherent lessons. The knowledge and skills at this substage are considered important to know and do. The information that fits within this question could be the facts, concepts, principles, processes, strategies, and methods students should know when they leave the course. Backward design provides a relevant context for students as they engage in learning activities.
When you set goals upfront, you may base them on assumptions about student potential. These assumptions may not accommodate the needs or potential of individual students. Knowing the kind of experience you want helps you choose the right movie. Finally, decide how and when you’ll assess your students on the skill. Let them know what success looks like and how and when you’ll be monitoring it. During our math lesson, I’m looking for raised hands when something feels confusing or hard,” for example.
For example, you can create online quizzes, video lessons, and online group discussions to make the lessons more interactive. One of the first things you will need to do when starting your journey to using backward design for your course or lessons is to define your learning objectives. Learning objectives are statements that define what students will accomplish at the end of a course, unit, or lesson. In defining specific course goals, many teachers make use of A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing (Anderson, Krathwohl, 2001) as a guide. This taxonomy describes cognitive learning processes with respect to increasing levels of abstraction and complexity, from basic to advanced, around which goals can be organized.
The illustration below shows an alignment between specific assessment types and the different types of evidence they provide. “Backward Design” is an approach to creating curriculum, subjects, and even single class sessions that treats the goal of teaching as not merely “covering” a certain amount of content, but also facilitating student learning. Backward design prioritizes the intended learning outcomes instead of topics to be covered. (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005) It is thus “backward” from traditional design because instead of starting with the content to be covered, the textbook to be used, or even the test to be passed, you begin with the goals. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced backward design in their book Understanding by Design. In contrast to the traditional “forward design” approach, backward design begins by establishing learning goals and then developing assessments and teaching methods to achieve the desired outcomes.
Lists the learning activities that will lead students to the desired results. Learning outcomes describe what students know or can do, not what the instructor does. Remember that “students” is the subject of the generic learning outcome stem shown at the beginning of this section. The goals for your course should not be stated in terms of what the instructor will cover, but rather in how the students will change, facilitated by the instructor’s guidance. Educators can follow a simple process to develop backward lesson plans for higher education. This approach applies to any field, including business, the sciences and STEM.
Every task and piece of instruction has a purpose that fits in with the overarching goals and goals of the course. This last example provides intended learning outcomes for a subject focused more on soft skills, where measuring student ability objectively is significantly more nuanced and difficult. However, these ILOs still communicate crucial information to students about what good communication looks like to the instructor and help them better understand what will be expected of them in the course. The final stage of the backward learning design is to plan the learning activities. By utilizing backward design to teach soft skills, I’m regularly giving my students explicit instruction and authentic practice with the skills that our students so badly need.
Advocates of backward design would argue that the instructional process should serve the goals; the goals—and the results for students—should not be determined by the process. Finally, instructors create learning activities and instructional materials that align with and support the achievement of the learning objectives. Since students will be only part of the way through the unit, and therefore may not yet have mastered the content, the goal of these mini-assessment will be to gauge abilities like critical thinking, inquiry, problem-solving and foundational knowledge. As previously stated, backward design is beneficial to instructors because it innately encourages intentionality during the design process. It continually encourages the instructor to establish the purpose of doing something before implementing it into the curriculum.
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