# data[].attributes.body
Thank you Bryan Garcia for sharing this article on the phases of teaming!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
One Step at a Time Article on PLC Stages (3).doc

# data[].attributes.body
Common definition and lesson plan grid used in 2018 Summer Training

# data[].attributes.headline
Backwards Planning Resources that Align with Anderson's Taxonomy

# data[].attributes.subject
Backwards Planning Resources that Align with Anderson's Taxonomy

# data[].attributes.body
Web resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When backwards curricular design is forward thinking: An overview of the backwards design development process

©Leslie Owen Wilson Ed. D.

How to construct curriculum using a "Backwards Design" process:

In writing curriculum or developing instructional tasks the following elements need to be considered. To use a visual metaphor, if you have ever seen pictures in old anatomy or geology books they used mylar (clear plastic) pictures to show the individual layers of topography, or parts or systems of the human body. And so viewers only got the whole picture when all the layers were properly sequenced, and stacked one on top of the others.

Writing curriculum is a similar, layered process until the instructional design becomes a clear, whole picture. While backwards design is an excellent way to construct curriculum and instruction, it is just one way and there are many other very effective ways to do the same thing. What should be part of all instructional design is the development of some guiding end vision of learners at the end of educational contact.

McTighe and Wiggins (2005) have become very popular authors from the publication of their book for ASCD, Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd edition. In it they suggest that in crafting educational experiences one determines:

Stage 1. What is worthy and requiring of understanding?

Stage 2. What is evidence of understanding?

Stage 3. What learning experiences and teaching promote understanding, interest, and excellence?

I suggest a little different sequence as their questions should be combined with your vision of your exiting learners.

Wilson - Step 1: Crafting a vision of your learners at the end of their contact with you. In creating this vision keep in mind:

All instruction should be measured against what you know about your learners and how the information, processes, and/or skills you are going to teach are relevant or important to both the understanding and perpetuation of your discipline, and/or to the learners themselves and their futures.

You need to learn to keep abreast of generational profiles, social and cultural trends, and demographics which will enable you to better contextualize information and learning experiences so that they are meaningful and connected to learners' lives and backgrounds.

You should also be somewhat familiar with things like instructional technology, learning styles, and what neuroscience tells us about how the brain actually learns and retains information so that you can construct effective instructional experiences.

Too, it is important that you test your end vision of your learners against all stages of your instructional design and learning experiences to make sure they are compatible.

Do your learners have visions of themselves? Older or mature students often have future visions of themselves. Have you spoken with them about how they see themselves in the future? What do they want to be or do, and then try melding your vision and theirs ?

Major question that should direct instruction: What is your vision of your learners at the end of their contact with you?
Click to enlarge - Diagram 1.1, L. Wilson
These types of questions should be asked in forming your end vision of your learners:
Creating Curriculum with Backwards Design - Intersections

Specifically what skills will they have?

What will they be able to do, and at what level of mastery?

What will they know and understand?

How will they have changed? How will their thinking, feelings, or physical movement or abilities have changed?

What is your image of the learners? Are they active or passive participants in the learning process?

What expectations do you have of entering learners? (pre-assess)

What awareness do you have of the culture and history of your learners?

How do students learn best?

What instructional techniques and models work well and fit your content and learners best?

Wilson - Step 2: Determine what is worthy of teaching and learning.

Some of the following have been adapted or modified from McTighe and Wiggins, and should help in selecting and crafting educational experiences. One needs to determine:
Selected filters that will help you decide what understandings (content, processes, and skills) and information to select.

What information is worth knowing?

What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and skills (procedures) will students need to perform effectively and achieve desired results?

What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills?

What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals?

What is worthy and requiring of understanding?

What is enduring and/ or at the heart of the discipline/position?

What needs uncoverage? (Uncoverage means to unearth, expose, to bring to light. Wiggins and McTighe devote a lengthy discussion to this concept and explain uncoverage as "Bring to the surface and bring to light the misunderstood, the subtle, the nonobvious, the problematic, the controversial, the obscure, the missing, and the lost." In essence you are making students think at deeper and broader levels. (102))

What learning and content promotes not only understanding, but interest, and excellence?

What learning experiences and content are potentially engaging?

What is evidence of understanding?

What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals? (This is especially important if you are offering your course online as techniques translate differently according to venue.)

Is the overall design coherent and effective?

They should:

Offer potential for engaging [inspiring or challenging] students

Represent a big idea having enduring value beyond the classroom

Reside at the heart of the discipline (involve "doing" the subject)

Require uncoverage (abstract or often misunderstood ideas).

[*Note: To the uncoverage concept I would add ideas or concepts that are in flux, in the process of changing or becoming - especially if changes are due to new discoveries, findings, information, research, or areas where ideas are being fully synthesized into new frameworks or theories. By anticipating these ideas and bringing them into the mix, you are better able to both anticipate change and prepare students for their futures. L.Wilson]
Click to enlarge
Wilson - Step 3:What is evidence of understanding - how will you evaluate students' progressions toward your vision?
It is also imperative to think about the types of assessments that determine or give evidence of learning during this process.
Creating Curriculum with Backwards Design -Assessments - Diagram from: Wiggins and McTighe
To include prioritizing learning goals or objectives according to importance. This process allows you to accelerate or remediate learning pathways through content or process more easily, especially if limited timeframes for instruction are an issue.
Wilson - Step 4: Select instructional strategies, experiences, methods, or models of teaching and learning for delivery.

Click to enlarge - Diagram from: Wiggins and McTighe

Prioritize learning experiences

Click to enlarge

Creating Curriculum with Backwards Design - Prioritizing - Click to enlarge - Diagram 1.2, L. Wilson

Wilson - Step 5: Reflect, review, evaluate, and revise. This should be a continual process.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Why are these exercises important? We are given only a limited amount of time in order to help students:

Understand the rudiments of a discipline

Create meaning and explore meaning making at personal levels

See connections

Learn facts, concepts, and processes

Acquire skills

Understand cycles and continuums

Develop an appreciation for the discipline

Explore avenues of expressions of selfhood

Learn to be problem solvers and problem finders

Sources:
Teaching focused on what students will look like in the end, lead to types of quality learning experiences that actively engage students and propel them into knowing subjects at deeper levels.

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2005) Understanding by Design, 2nd edition. Alexandria, VA: ASCD -(Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

Wilson, L. O. (2000) Course Packet from ED 721 - Fundamentals of Curriculum, UWSP, unpublished

If you want to know more about how to construct usable curriculum, you may be interested in these pages.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creating Curriculum with Backwards Course Design - The Second Principle

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When backwards curricular design is forward thinking: An overview of the backwards design development process ©Leslie Owen Wilson Ed. D. How to construct curriculum using a "Backwards Design" process: In writing curriculum or developing instructional tasks the following elements need to be considered.

# data[].attributes.body
Rubric for mixed disciplinary teams

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Focus Team Success Rubric with SREB logo.pdf

# data[].attributes.headline
7 Page Summary of Anderson's Findings with Simplified Grid

# data[].attributes.subject
7 Page Summary of Anderson's Findings with Simplified Grid

# data[].attributes.body
Additional web resource

# data[].attributes.body
Presenter's Power Point (all slides)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Presenter's UPDATED VERSION 2018 Summer Admin Training (Collaboration) and (Lesson Plans)_.pptx

# data[].attributes.body
Workbook from summer training

# data[].attributes.body
Articles and Resources used in summer training

# data[].attributes.body
Using observations to support continuous improvement efforts and unpacking Domains 2 and 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Admin Training Day 1 UPDATED July 2017.pptx

# data[].attributes.body
Unpacking Domains 1 and 4

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Admin Training Day 2 UPDATED July 2017.pptx

# data[].attributes.body
Full NMTEACH Rubric

# data[].attributes.body
Handouts used in training

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Admin Training WKBK (June 2017) Updated (1).pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Pocket Guide to Probing Questions.docx

# data[].attributes.headline
16 personalities test to be used with 5 disfunction as a way to learn about team members and how best to communicate.

# data[].attributes.subject
16 personalities test to be used with 5 disfunction as a way to learn about team members and how best to communicate.

# data[].attributes.headline
Get Better Faster Combined Coaches Guide

# data[].attributes.subject
Get Better Faster Combined Coaches Guide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Get Better ss and coachs guide one  document.docx

# data[].attributes.body
There are six sample reports that can be used to review key points to make when having discussions with teachers about their individual reports.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EQ Domain 1 Planning and Preparationbhgaccept BAK 10-13-2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EQ Domain 2 Creating an Environment for LearningbhgacceptBAK 10-13-2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EQ Domain 3 Teaching for LearningbhgacceptBAK 10-13-2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EQ Domain 4 Professionalismbhgaccept BAK 10-13-2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Calibration Rounds Workbook NMTEACH (003)

# data[].attributes.headline
Students Can Thrive in Virtual Learning! K. Stewart Moore

# data[].attributes.subject
Students Can Thrive in Virtual Learning! K. Stewart Moore

# data[].attributes.body
The Positives of Virtual Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities across the world pivoted to virtual learning, and a host of negative consequences quickly followed. Virtual learning exhausts students, exacerbates social class differences and mirrors the gender inequities that exist in in-person classes.

And yet for all its drawbacks, virtual learning has an equalizing power that is undeniable. More institutions of higher learning must leverage many of the features that virtual learning provides to reduce bias and increase accessibility and inclusion for students, and to improve learning outcomes in ways not possible in person.

In a physical classroom, the professor is at the podium and students choose their seats in the classroom. This may result in unconscious biases in both the professor and students about various students' (front row or back benchers) abilities and motivations, creating the harmful Pygmalion effect with disparate effects on learning outcomes.

In a virtual setting, the teacher and students have the same class status and, importantly, cannot elect to be in any one seat, because the technology dynamically assigns seats, and these seats also change during the virtual class. Professors can use virtual learning etiquette rules and features such as chat windows and mute buttons, as well as the raising of electronic hands (and waiting for one's turn to speak), to democratize classrooms. By using audio-only mode, teachers can also eliminate pernicious issues related to disabilities, including stuttering. Such issues are widely prevalent in in-person classrooms and harm learning outcomes.

Virtual learning also enables students to bring their full selves to the virtual classroom. In physical classrooms, professors of classes of more than 100 students find it challenging, if not nearly impossible, to know students' names, to correctly pronounce them and to use correct pronouns. In virtual learning environments, technologies can be used to show students' profile pictures, names, titles, pronouns and pronunciations. All of this enables students to bring their full identities into the open, enhancing their engagement and learning outcomes.

It also eliminates differences that hinder in-person learning. In in-person classrooms, students' races and ethnicities; physical characteristics such as height, weight and disability; personality differences such as introversion and extroversion; and cognitive differences, such as autism spectrum or bipolar diagnoses, are more visible. This can create unconscious biases that can negatively affect student learning.

In virtual classes, visible differences in these categories are reduced and, in some cases, even eliminated. For example, introverts can engage fully through technology tools, including chat windows and response buttons. Moreover, through the creative use of free virtual backgrounds, faculty can eliminate surface-level differences among students in virtual classrooms that are conspicuous in in-person classrooms.

In-person classes are, by definition, at given geographic coordinates at a given time, making it difficult for students who have full-time jobs and family care responsibilities to attend classes, reducing access for those students. Teachers can use asynchronous class recordings and transcriptions of virtual classes to dramatically increase accessibility for such students.

And that's not all. In-person events for professional networking for students and faculty entail substantial costs, such as registration fees, travel costs (exacerbated by asymmetric foreign exchange rates) and visa expenses. Virtual events, at much lower cost to both organizers and participants, increase access, previously constrained by geography and budgets, by leaps and bounds.

There are certainly drawbacks with virtual learning, but it also has a remarkable equalizing power, which can be leveraged by institutions of higher learning to reduce long-standing inequities. It is exceptionally fortunate that higher education institutions can achieve such an aspirational goal during a dispiriting worldwide pandemic. And it is upon colleges and universities to seize the moment.

And, when the pandemic crisis is over, we would be wise to hold on to the positive aspects of virtual learning that we have discovered, and to use it to create a new paradigm for higher education that is truly inclusive, unabashedly equitable and wholeheartedly accessible to all.
Raji Srinivasan is the associate dean for diversity and inclusion in the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.
A version of this op-ed appeared in the San Antonio Express News, Austin American Statesman and the Abilene Reporter News.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Positives of Virtual Learning That Nobody Is Talking About

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities across the world pivoted to virtual learning, and a host of negative consequences quickly followed.