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When I taught seventh grade language arts, one of my favorite things to teach was S.E. Hinton's book The Outsiders. Every year, we began the unit with a discussion about the cliques that formed in students' lives, how these groups interacted, the unwritten rules that governed their behavior, and what happened when groups clashed or people formed relationships across group lines. After we did some reflecting, writing, and talking, we were ready to start the book.

The reading went fine, more or less. Some chapters we did in class (I would read to them, then they would read silently), and others at home. Some students became as absorbed in the novel as I'd hoped they would; others, not so much. Predictably, some fell behind in the book like they did with all assigned reading.

I checked students' progress with occasional quizzes, we did some work on plot and characters, setting and theme, and then, after a unit test over the whole book-containing mostly questions that asked students to identify characters, setting, and key plot points-we spent nearly three class periods watching Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of the book. And I got to drool over Matt Dillon in the movie's opening scene again and again and again. From start to finish, the whole unit took about three weeks.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why it was my favorite. Seriously. I mean, even though I loved the book, my students' response to it was mostly lukewarm. Maybe it was just the idea of teaching it that I loved. Maybe it was the connections I was able to make to the stuff students dealt with on a day-to-day basis. I don't know. I taught that book a few times, and even though I looked forward to it every time, I always finished the unit a little unsatisfied.

And it's only now, years later, that I'm starting to understand that dissatisfaction: I can't say with any confidence that my students actually learned something from that unit. Upon deeper reflection, I'm not confident that any of my students learned anything of lasting value from at least half the lessons I taught.

This is a hard pill to swallow, because I wasn't half bad as a teacher. I had decent relationships with my students and I believe most of them had good experiences in my classroom, but real, durable learning? I can't say how much of that actually happened.

I don't love admitting that.

But at least now I understand why my teaching didn't produce a lot of actual learning: I never set clear, measurable learning targets.

Things would have been so different if I'd known about backward design.

When teachers talk to each other about the stuff they're teaching, they often say things like this:
"What novels do you do in 8th grade?""Oh that'll be perfect. I can use this when I teach the American Revolution!"
"I don't think I can fit that in; we're doing moon phases next month."

We tend to talk about our teaching plans in terms of the broad topics we cover. This shorthand is practical; we're not going to drill down into specific skill and knowledge objectives while waiting our turn at the bagel table. But when I think about the lessons I gave my students, the ones I observed in my colleagues' classrooms, and the work I've seen my own children do, I think this shorthand might be a pretty fair representation of what many of us are still doing: churning out lessons that keep students busy with our content without ever getting clear about what we want them to learn.

Instead of starting with a topic, we'd do better if we start with an end goal, and that's where backward design comes in.

Traditional vs. Backward Planning

Traditional Lesson Design

For many years, teachers have been planning lessons and units of instruction like this:

Step 1: Identify a topic or chunk of content that needs to be covered.

Step 2: Plan a sequence of lessons to teach that content.

Step 3: Create an assessment to measure the learning that should have taken place in those lessons.

Notice that in this approach, the assessment is created after the lessons are planned. Sometimes it isn't created until most of those lessons have already taken place. The assessment is kind of an afterthought, a check to see if students were paying attention to the stuff we taught them.

For most of my teaching career, this is how I planned. It's presumably how most of my colleagues planned. I believe it's still how many teachers plan.

So what's wrong with it? Well, when we plan this way, we're more likely to include content and activities that have questionable value. When teaching the American Revolution, for example, if our goal is just to "teach about the American Revolution," we can throw in anything that has any relation to that topic: a coloring page of the Boston Tea Party, a colonial flag craft project, or a worksheet where students unscramble words like minuteman, independence, and Hancock.

This random approach creates two problems.

The first and most important problem is a lack of durable, transferable learning. One reason so many of us don't remember much of what we learned in school is that we learned it through this haphazard, topic-driven approach. These random activities are taking up precious time that could be spent on much more valuable stuff.

The other is poor student engagement. 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. Sure, many students will do what you ask anyway, because they want good grades and the benefits that come from them. But they're not learning. If you don't believe me, ask them.

Backward Design

In their book Understanding by Design, which was originally published in 1998, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced us to backward design, an approach to instructional planning that starts with the end goal, then works backward from there. The "full" version of Wiggins and McTighe's original approach is pretty complex and can be time-consuming to implement. If you're ready for that, I recommend digging into their book. For now, though, I'm just going to share the most basic version of backward design.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Identify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the learning cycle.

Step 2: Create an assessment to measure that learning.

Step 3: Plan a sequence of lessons that will prepare students to successfully complete the assessment.

The difference in order is significant: Plan the assessment first, then plan only lessons that will contribute to student success on that assessment.

I was first introduced to this concept in my sixth year of teaching, and the genius of it completely blew me away. I used it when planning my next unit and experienced the biggest spike in student success I'd ever seen. On top of that, I was actually excited about teaching the lessons I had planned. For the first time, it felt like none of my class was wasted; everything actually mattered. There was something a lot more satisfying about doing things this way.

Let's take a look at an example to illustrate the difference between a unit planned the traditional, topic-driven way, and the same unit planned with backward design.

Before and After: The Lunar Cycle

The Before, Where the Final Product is a Test

At some point in their school careers, students study the phases of the moon. One pretty typical way to teach this is as follows:

A lecture or video about the phases of the moon, followed by a worksheet to label the phases.

An interactive activity like scraping the filling out of Oreos to represent the lunar phases.

Following a teacher's sample, creating a physical model of the moon phases using something like styrofoam balls.

A unit test that requires labelling the phases of the moon from memory and answering multiple-choice questions about the lunar cycle, eclipses, and seasons.

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.

Following this plan, a teacher would feel pretty satisfied that they "covered" the topic of moon phases. But if we look at the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the standard relating to moon phases says that grade 6-8 students will:

" Develop and use a model of the Earth-sun-moon system to describe the cyclic patterns of lunar phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, and seasons" ( MS-ESS1-1).

Note the language here: Students are meant to develop a model, then use it to describe these patterns. But in the plan above, students merely copied a model, and they didn't use it to describe anything; even if the model required some written captioning to explain what was going on, because the model was a copy, it can't be safely said that students were really the ones describing the system.

Then there's the test. If we assume that a large portion of a student's grade is based on the test, then students are not being measured on their achievement of that standard. The standard does not require students to memorize the phases of the moon. Nor does it ask them to "demonstrate knowledge" of how the whole system works. The standard wants students to develop a model and use it to describe the system.

It would be easy to blow off this distinction, to say Bah, same difference. The test asks students a lot of questions that would show an understanding of these concepts, so we're covered.

But not really. Asking a person to develop a model is a much higher-order task than asking them to copy a model. Describing systems and patterns is way more challenging than selecting the correct description.

Developing models and explaining things is the work of real scientists: They notice phenomena, study it, then figure out how to represent those phenomena in order to make it clear to other people. To say, "Look at this! It's interesting and it explains why things are the way they are!"

And that's exactly what the NGSS authors had in mind: "Any education that focuses predominantly on the detailed products of scientific labor-the facts of science-without developing an understanding of how those facts were established or that ignores the many important applications of science in the world misrepresents science and marginalizes the importance of engineering." (National Research Council, 2012, p. 43).

In other words, a superior education will teach students to think and practice like scientists. If we don't plan learning experiences that make that possible, we're giving them a sub-par education.

The After, Where the Final Product is a Model and a Presentation

So if we re-do this unit plan with backward design, we'll need to start by developing an assessment that would measure success with that standard. That means the assessment would not be a test where students merely label the moon phases, but a student-developed model of the moon phases along with some kind of presentation where students use that model to explain lunar phases, eclipses, and seasons.

When designing this final assessment, it's essential that the teacher crafts a rubric that clearly outlines specific, high standards for both the model and presentation. The rubric should list criteria for the accuracy and functionality of the model, plus the quality of the presentation itself. Here's an example of what that might look like:

With a good rubric in place, we then work backwards to determine what lessons students need to do excellent work on the final assessment.

Direct Instruction: Students still need to know the basics of the lunar system. Memorization is not the goal, so we're not grading for that, but students do need to know the information well enough to explain it and use the right vocabulary, so we can keep the lecture or video from the original plan. And having them work with the information a bit on some kind of worksheet or with some kind of online practice is fine, but I wouldn't give points for this work. If you need to motivate students to do it, require them to demonstrate proficiency (like scoring at least 80% on the match game with a set of Quizlet flashcards) before they can move on to the next step.

Active processing with models: Next, give students a chance to work with a model so that they experience the cycle in action. This will deepen their understanding of the earth-sun-moon system, which will better prepare them to give their own presentations. Something like this interactive model from CK-12 allows students to manipulate the time of day and the position of the moon to see how these variables change what we see in the sky. Working in groups, students could use the simulator to answer questions about the moon's appearance depending on what phase it's in and the time of day, then transition into making and checking predictions based on those variables.

Presentation practice: If students are going to do well on the final presentation, they'll need practice in explaining the lunar cycle in their own words. Using an existing model (such as the interactive mentioned in the previous step), have students explain the lunar phases, including information about the seasons and eclipses, to a partner or small group. Ask the listening partners to "coach" the presenter if their description has any holes or inaccuracies. Hearing their peers explain the system, along with attempting the explanation themselves, will help them use the language of the lunar cycle more fluently.

Model development: Now students begin developing their own models. The standard does not specify that this has to be a physical model, so you could offer students choice: The model could very well be made with styrofoam balls, but it could also be a hand-drawn diagram, a slideshow presentation, an animated video, a children's book, or even a short skit they present to the class or record on video. Many of these options, like the children's book, include the "presentation" piece right along with the model. Give students time in class to work on these models; this will ensure that they do their own work and will allow you to give feedback if a student is heading in the wrong direction. Remind them regularly that the explanation of the model is nearly half their grade, so they should consider scripting that out if their presentation is going to be "live."

Model presentations: Finally, students present their models. If you have a lot of students opt to give a "live" presentation this could take several class periods, which could be pretty mind-numbing since the subject matter is exactly the same for everyone. To cut down on that overall time, only have students present to the whole class if the class is actually participating in the model (like in some sort of skit or simulation). Otherwise, students can record their presentations on video or present to you one-on-one while their classmates work on something else independently.

With this "after" version, every lesson is designed to prepare students to give excellent presentations at the end. The whole time, they are using the lunar cycle vocabulary, correcting each other's misconceptions, and just like scientists, thinking about how to explain concepts to other people.

Some Questions About Your Lessons

Okay, so we've looked very closely at one small unit for a middle school science class. Now, take this same process and apply it to the things you teach.

1. What exactly do your standards require? Do they ask students to memorize and identify facts, or do they ask them to describe, explain, analyze, or create? (It's probably the latter.)

2. If it's the latter, how closely do your assessments measure those standards? Do they actually require students to do the describing, explaining, analyzing, or creating (which would likely require them to write, present, or create some product), or do they merely ask them to recognize when someone else does it in the form of an answer on a multiple-choice test?

3. Do you need to adjust your assessments so they more closely align with the standards?

4. If you do, the next step is to rework the lessons that lead up to that assessment. Does every lesson contribute to student success on that assessment? Could some of your lessons be omitted because they don't connect directly to the assessment? Are you missing anything? For example, if your assessment requires students to write in academic language and support their ideas with evidence, you should include some lessons that give students practice with that kind of writing.

5. Finally, will the assessment be weighted heavily in your gradebook? (It should be.)The lessons and activities leading up to the final assessment are there to give students exposure to the knowledge and practice with the skills necessary to perform on that final assessment; ideally, they should receive no grades at all on those activities. If you absolutely must assign some points, be sure the final assessment is worth a heck of a lot more than those smaller tasks.

Like I did, you probably also have some favorite lessons and activities. Some of these might turn out to be not just fun to teach, but also solid in terms of equipping students with knowledge and skills that will last.

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.

Using a process like backward design helps us get better at making these decisions. By making this approach part of our regular practice, we'll be able to look back on a day, a week, or a year of teaching and say with a lot more certainty that when they were under our care, our students learned.
Reference:
National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.

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Are we planning with clear, measurable, meaningful learning goals in to guide us, or are we just keeping students busy?

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Wow, the question stems would be super helpful to have handy during instruction.

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In this blog, the author goes through writing learning goals and objectives. - Niki Perry

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All courses begin with an overarching goal. Assuming that the goal is clear, you build learning objectives to meet the goal. In today's post we'll explore a simple way to create objectives for your course.

Learning Objectives Start with Clear Goals

Make sure that when you work with your clients you have very clear goals. What do they hope the course will accomplish? From that conversation, you'll be able to discern what the learning needs are. This helps you build your objectives.

The main area of focus is to understand where you currently are and where you need to be. Then map out the activities and learning experience to get from one point to the next.

What is the Core Learning Objective?

Start by creating your main objective and then use that to drill down to the additional content you need to meet it. Basically, your objectives are built on three critical questions.

What needs to be learned?

Who needs to learn it?

What do they need to know before they can start?

What needs to be learned? What you teach should be linked to real performance. Essentially it's all about what the learner is going to be able to DO with what they learn from the course. Avoid using words like "understand." That's not clear. Find the basis for understanding and then build your objective around that.

Here's a common type of objective: Understand how to edit time cards.

This is vague because it is not aligned to a real measure. What does "understand" mean? A better objective is to state what the learner will be able to DO with the new information. If they understand something, how would you know it? Build a measurement around that.

Who needs to learn it? Who are your learners? Who is going to take the course? By including this in your objective you are able to qualify potential learners and tell your client who is being taught. Are they new employees? Managers? At this point you don't need to do a full analysis of the learner. You only want to identify the audience for the course and what they'll be able to do after completing it.

What do they need to know before they can start to learn? All elearning courses require some prerequisite understanding or experience. By identifying what that is, you avoid some assumptions about the learner. You can either require it prior to starting the course or you need to create the additional content to get the learner to the prerequisite level.

Think of it this way. I give you a map and tell you to go to Seattle. First you locate Seattle (your goal) and then you figure out where you're at (prerequisite) so that you can chart your course. You can't reach your goal, if you don't know the starting point. In the same sense, it's difficult to teach your learners without knowing where they're at.

Once you have your main objective, you can start to drill down. What assumptions does your objective require you to make? Those assumptions become the foundation for your sub-objectives. Let's look at the example below.

You know who is going to learn (front line managers), what they'll learn (edit time cards), and what they need to know to learn it (ACME payroll system).

Editing time cards assumes that the learner knows how to use the ACME payroll system. Thus, if you want your learners to be successful at editing time cards, they need to know how to use the payroll system. So you can create another objective that includes learning to use the ACME payroll system. From there, the prerequisite might be that the person knows how to collect the time card data. Or perhaps they need to understand the company's time card policies.

The key is to continue to drill down and ask what the learner needs to know prior to learning this new information. At that point, you determine if you make it a requirement to take the course or if you'll teach the additional content in your course. Once you have your objectives, you can begin to collect and sort your content to meet them.

You have a lot of latitude in how you write your objectives. You're not stuck in any particular model. What's critical is that the objective is performance-based and that who the learner is and what she needs to know prior to starting is clear.

By following the approach above, you'll align your course objectives with the overarching goals. You'll also communicate to your client what the course accomplishes. And your learners understand what's in it for them. Once you have your learning objectives, you can begin to build the course.

When you build you courses, what do you do to determine your learning objectives?

Free E-Learning Resources

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Here's an Easy Way to Create Learning Objectives | The Rapid E-Learning Blog

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All courses begin with an overarching goal. Assuming that the goal is clear, you build learning objectives to meet the goal. In today's post we'll explore a simple way to create objectives for your course. Make sure that when you work with your clients you have very clear goals.

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This is a blog I follow! It provides basics in backwards design, looking at the three main areas of planning for backwards design. It also provides audio to her blog, which is a plus for me!
By: Alisha Butler

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ISTE U

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

When I taught seventh grade language arts, one of my favorite things to teach was S.E. Hinton's book The Outsiders. Every year, we began the unit with a discussion about the cliques that formed in students' lives, how these groups interacted, the unwritten rules that governed their behavior, and what happened when groups clashed or people formed relationships across group lines. After we did some reflecting, writing, and talking, we were ready to start the book.

The reading went fine, more or less. Some chapters we did in class (I would read to them, then they would read silently), and others at home. Some students became as absorbed in the novel as I'd hoped they would; others, not so much. Predictably, some fell behind in the book like they did with all assigned reading.

I checked students' progress with occasional quizzes, we did some work on plot and characters, setting and theme, and then, after a unit test over the whole book-containing mostly questions that asked students to identify characters, setting, and key plot points-we spent nearly three class periods watching Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of the book. And I got to drool over Matt Dillon in the movie's opening scene again and again and again. From start to finish, the whole unit took about three weeks.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why it was my favorite. Seriously. I mean, even though I loved the book, my students' response to it was mostly lukewarm. Maybe it was just the idea of teaching it that I loved. Maybe it was the connections I was able to make to the stuff students dealt with on a day-to-day basis. I don't know. I taught that book a few times, and even though I looked forward to it every time, I always finished the unit a little unsatisfied.

And it's only now, years later, that I'm starting to understand that dissatisfaction: I can't say with any confidence that my students actually learned something from that unit. Upon deeper reflection, I'm not confident that any of my students learned anything of lasting value from at least half the lessons I taught.

This is a hard pill to swallow, because I wasn't half bad as a teacher. I had decent relationships with my students and I believe most of them had good experiences in my classroom, but real, durable learning? I can't say how much of that actually happened.

I don't love admitting that.

But at least now I understand why my teaching didn't produce a lot of actual learning: I never set clear, measurable learning targets.

Things would have been so different if I'd known about backward design.

When teachers talk to each other about the stuff they're teaching, they often say things like this:
"What novels do you do in 8th grade?""Oh that'll be perfect. I can use this when I teach the American Revolution!"
"I don't think I can fit that in; we're doing moon phases next month."

We tend to talk about our teaching plans in terms of the broad topics we cover. This shorthand is practical; we're not going to drill down into specific skill and knowledge objectives while waiting our turn at the bagel table. But when I think about the lessons I gave my students, the ones I observed in my colleagues' classrooms, and the work I've seen my own children do, I think this shorthand might be a pretty fair representation of what many of us are still doing: churning out lessons that keep students busy with our content without ever getting clear about what we want them to learn.

Instead of starting with a topic, we'd do better if we start with an end goal, and that's where backward design comes in.

Traditional vs. Backward Planning

Traditional Lesson Design

For many years, teachers have been planning lessons and units of instruction like this:

Step 1: Identify a topic or chunk of content that needs to be covered.

Step 2: Plan a sequence of lessons to teach that content.

Step 3: Create an assessment to measure the learning that should have taken place in those lessons.

Notice that in this approach, the assessment is created after the lessons are planned. Sometimes it isn't created until most of those lessons have already taken place. The assessment is kind of an afterthought, a check to see if students were paying attention to the stuff we taught them.

For most of my teaching career, this is how I planned. It's presumably how most of my colleagues planned. I believe it's still how many teachers plan.

So what's wrong with it? Well, when we plan this way, we're more likely to include content and activities that have questionable value. When teaching the American Revolution, for example, if our goal is just to "teach about the American Revolution," we can throw in anything that has any relation to that topic: a coloring page of the Boston Tea Party, a colonial flag craft project, or a worksheet where students unscramble words like minuteman, independence, and Hancock.

This random approach creates two problems.

The first and most important problem is a lack of durable, transferable learning. One reason so many of us don't remember much of what we learned in school is that we learned it through this haphazard, topic-driven approach. These random activities are taking up precious time that could be spent on much more valuable stuff.

The other is poor student engagement. 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. Sure, many students will do what you ask anyway, because they want good grades and the benefits that come from them. But they're not learning. If you don't believe me, ask them.

Backward Design

In their book Understanding by Design, which was originally published in 1998, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced us to backward design, an approach to instructional planning that starts with the end goal, then works backward from there. The "full" version of Wiggins and McTighe's original approach is pretty complex and can be time-consuming to implement. If you're ready for that, I recommend digging into their book. For now, though, I'm just going to share the most basic version of backward design.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Identify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the learning cycle.

Step 2: Create an assessment to measure that learning.

Step 3: Plan a sequence of lessons that will prepare students to successfully complete the assessment.

The difference in order is significant: Plan the assessment first, then plan only lessons that will contribute to student success on that assessment.

I was first introduced to this concept in my sixth year of teaching, and the genius of it completely blew me away. I used it when planning my next unit and experienced the biggest spike in student success I'd ever seen. On top of that, I was actually excited about teaching the lessons I had planned. For the first time, it felt like none of my class was wasted; everything actually mattered. There was something a lot more satisfying about doing things this way.

Let's take a look at an example to illustrate the difference between a unit planned the traditional, topic-driven way, and the same unit planned with backward design.

Before and After: The Lunar Cycle

The Before, Where the Final Product is a Test

At some point in their school careers, students study the phases of the moon. One pretty typical way to teach this is as follows:

A lecture or video about the phases of the moon, followed by a worksheet to label the phases.

An interactive activity like scraping the filling out of Oreos to represent the lunar phases.

Following a teacher's sample, creating a physical model of the moon phases using something like styrofoam balls.

A unit test that requires labelling the phases of the moon from memory and answering multiple-choice questions about the lunar cycle, eclipses, and seasons.

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.

Following this plan, a teacher would feel pretty satisfied that they "covered" the topic of moon phases. But if we look at the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the standard relating to moon phases says that grade 6-8 students will:

" Develop and use a model of the Earth-sun-moon system to describe the cyclic patterns of lunar phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, and seasons" ( MS-ESS1-1).

Note the language here: Students are meant to develop a model, then use it to describe these patterns. But in the plan above, students merely copied a model, and they didn't use it to describe anything; even if the model required some written captioning to explain what was going on, because the model was a copy, it can't be safely said that students were really the ones describing the system.

Then there's the test. If we assume that a large portion of a student's grade is based on the test, then students are not being measured on their achievement of that standard. The standard does not require students to memorize the phases of the moon. Nor does it ask them to "demonstrate knowledge" of how the whole system works. The standard wants students to develop a model and use it to describe the system.

It would be easy to blow off this distinction, to say Bah, same difference. The test asks students a lot of questions that would show an understanding of these concepts, so we're covered.

But not really. Asking a person to develop a model is a much higher-order task than asking them to copy a model. Describing systems and patterns is way more challenging than selecting the correct description.

Developing models and explaining things is the work of real scientists: They notice phenomena, study it, then figure out how to represent those phenomena in order to make it clear to other people. To say, "Look at this! It's interesting and it explains why things are the way they are!"

And that's exactly what the NGSS authors had in mind: "Any education that focuses predominantly on the detailed products of scientific labor-the facts of science-without developing an understanding of how those facts were established or that ignores the many important applications of science in the world misrepresents science and marginalizes the importance of engineering." (National Research Council, 2012, p. 43).

In other words, a superior education will teach students to think and practice like scientists. If we don't plan learning experiences that make that possible, we're giving them a sub-par education.

The After, Where the Final Product is a Model and a Presentation

So if we re-do this unit plan with backward design, we'll need to start by developing an assessment that would measure success with that standard. That means the assessment would not be a test where students merely label the moon phases, but a student-developed model of the moon phases along with some kind of presentation where students use that model to explain lunar phases, eclipses, and seasons.

When designing this final assessment, it's essential that the teacher crafts a rubric that clearly outlines specific, high standards for both the model and presentation. The rubric should list criteria for the accuracy and functionality of the model, plus the quality of the presentation itself. Here's an example of what that might look like:

With a good rubric in place, we then work backwards to determine what lessons students need to do excellent work on the final assessment.

Direct Instruction: Students still need to know the basics of the lunar system. Memorization is not the goal, so we're not grading for that, but students do need to know the information well enough to explain it and use the right vocabulary, so we can keep the lecture or video from the original plan. And having them work with the information a bit on some kind of worksheet or with some kind of online practice is fine, but I wouldn't give points for this work. If you need to motivate students to do it, require them to demonstrate proficiency (like scoring at least 80% on the match game with a set of Quizlet flashcards) before they can move on to the next step.

Active processing with models: Next, give students a chance to work with a model so that they experience the cycle in action. This will deepen their understanding of the earth-sun-moon system, which will better prepare them to give their own presentations. Something like this interactive model from CK-12 allows students to manipulate the time of day and the position of the moon to see how these variables change what we see in the sky. Working in groups, students could use the simulator to answer questions about the moon's appearance depending on what phase it's in and the time of day, then transition into making and checking predictions based on those variables.

Presentation practice: If students are going to do well on the final presentation, they'll need practice in explaining the lunar cycle in their own words. Using an existing model (such as the interactive mentioned in the previous step), have students explain the lunar phases, including information about the seasons and eclipses, to a partner or small group. Ask the listening partners to "coach" the presenter if their description has any holes or inaccuracies. Hearing their peers explain the system, along with attempting the explanation themselves, will help them use the language of the lunar cycle more fluently.

Model development: Now students begin developing their own models. The standard does not specify that this has to be a physical model, so you could offer students choice: The model could very well be made with styrofoam balls, but it could also be a hand-drawn diagram, a slideshow presentation, an animated video, a children's book, or even a short skit they present to the class or record on video. Many of these options, like the children's book, include the "presentation" piece right along with the model. Give students time in class to work on these models; this will ensure that they do their own work and will allow you to give feedback if a student is heading in the wrong direction. Remind them regularly that the explanation of the model is nearly half their grade, so they should consider scripting that out if their presentation is going to be "live."

Model presentations: Finally, students present their models. If you have a lot of students opt to give a "live" presentation this could take several class periods, which could be pretty mind-numbing since the subject matter is exactly the same for everyone. To cut down on that overall time, only have students present to the whole class if the class is actually participating in the model (like in some sort of skit or simulation). Otherwise, students can record their presentations on video or present to you one-on-one while their classmates work on something else independently.

With this "after" version, every lesson is designed to prepare students to give excellent presentations at the end. The whole time, they are using the lunar cycle vocabulary, correcting each other's misconceptions, and just like scientists, thinking about how to explain concepts to other people.

Some Questions About Your Lessons

Okay, so we've looked very closely at one small unit for a middle school science class. Now, take this same process and apply it to the things you teach.

1. What exactly do your standards require? Do they ask students to memorize and identify facts, or do they ask them to describe, explain, analyze, or create? (It's probably the latter.)

2. If it's the latter, how closely do your assessments measure those standards? Do they actually require students to do the describing, explaining, analyzing, or creating (which would likely require them to write, present, or create some product), or do they merely ask them to recognize when someone else does it in the form of an answer on a multiple-choice test?

3. Do you need to adjust your assessments so they more closely align with the standards?

4. If you do, the next step is to rework the lessons that lead up to that assessment. Does every lesson contribute to student success on that assessment? Could some of your lessons be omitted because they don't connect directly to the assessment? Are you missing anything? For example, if your assessment requires students to write in academic language and support their ideas with evidence, you should include some lessons that give students practice with that kind of writing.

5. Finally, will the assessment be weighted heavily in your gradebook? (It should be.)The lessons and activities leading up to the final assessment are there to give students exposure to the knowledge and practice with the skills necessary to perform on that final assessment; ideally, they should receive no grades at all on those activities. If you absolutely must assign some points, be sure the final assessment is worth a heck of a lot more than those smaller tasks.

Like I did, you probably also have some favorite lessons and activities. Some of these might turn out to be not just fun to teach, but also solid in terms of equipping students with knowledge and skills that will last.

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.

Using a process like backward design helps us get better at making these decisions. By making this approach part of our regular practice, we'll be able to look back on a day, a week, or a year of teaching and say with a lot more certainty that when they were under our care, our students learned.
Reference:
National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.

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Are we planning with clear, measurable, meaningful learning goals in to guide us, or are we just keeping students busy?

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Although very simplistic, I feel this infographic speaks volumes about the assessment piece in backwards design. It is about determining what evidence you need to identify mastery of the skills you picked. There are questions provided below the graphic as well for what to ask yourself in each step.
By: Alisha Butler

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Courses developed in the traditional manner only impart knowledge. They are loaded with definitions and concepts and are probably accompanied by a list of scenarios or situations where these can be applied. The learners are expected to learn these by heart. To impart understanding, you, as an instructional designer, have to design your course around the outcomes or the performance you expect to elicit from the learners. That is, you have to start with the learner. Backward designing approach is unlike how traditional eLearning courses are created where the sole focus is on delivering the content and developers do not consider if the learners can digest what they are gulping down. The Designing eLearning Courses Backwards Infographic presents a Framework to start designing e-courses backwards.

3 Stages of Backward eLearning Design

Backward design is a purely purpose-driven process, and neither you nor your learners will ever be in the dark about the whys, wherefores, and the how-to's of the course. T he design process involves you plan in 3 stages, each with a focusing question:

Stage 1: Identify Desired Outcomes
Key Questions:

What is worthy and requiring of understanding?

What do we expect students to learn?

Backward Design focuses on the needs of the learner. The learner is expected to perform certain tasks or demonstrate a specific skill. The course you develop should help him develop those skills or empower him to perform some specific tasks. These are the learning outcomes or the overarching objectives of the course.

Stage 2: Define Assessment Tasks

Key Questions:

What is evidence of understanding?

How will we know if students have achieved the desired results?

When you design an eLearning course backwards, you strive to create the perfect learner experience. Unlike courses designed the traditional way, backwardly-designed courses contain ample opportunities for the learner to evaluate their learning (and feel assured they are on the right track). Instructional designers create assessment activities to measure the understanding of the learners. Well-designed and "empathetic" courses provide customized learning experiences based on the results of these assessment tasks.

Stage 3: Design the Learning Experience

Key Questions:

What learning experiences promote understanding?

What activities will lead to achievement of the desired results and success at the assessments?

This process is smooth sailing if you carry out the previous two steps diligently. You know the learning outcomes you are striving for. You know how to test the understanding of the learners. So now all that remains is to design the learning activities.

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Designing eLearning Courses Backwards Infographic - e-Learning Infographics

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The Designing eLearning Courses Backwards Infographic presents a Framework to start designing e-courses backwards

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The Resilient Educator not only provides what backwards design actually is and the steps to engage in the practice, but it also gives a real life example of how using Backwards Design changed the way one teacher plans and teaches. - Niki Perry

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There is a perplexing experience that plagues all teachers: After an excellent classroom experience where students seem solid in their understanding and application of content, they leave class, attempt homework, have no idea how to do it, and return the next day with wrong answers or empty papers.

How do students lose knowledge the minute they leave class?

As teachers, we are left scratching our heads, wondering how in the world students' substantial content knowledge flitted out of their brains when the bell rang. Or worse, we confidently send students on to another class or grade, sure in their knowledge of our subject only to find out they seem to have forgotten everything we taught them.

These deeply frustrating occurrences boil down to a failure of students to capably transfer their in-class learning to other scenarios. This remains one of the most difficult aspects of teaching: ensuring that the skills we impart in the classroom are embraced in a student's life and evidenced in subsequent academic endeavors. Unfortunately, the design of some curriculum and textbooks is so steered toward content that application and transfer get minor attention.

Understanding by Design framework offers a solution to vanishing student knowledge

Using Understanding by Design's framework (UbD) can help ensure that curriculum, content, and assessment are aligned with the specific outcomes and transferable skills we seek to impart to our students. UbD is a process of backward curriculum design. There are three important steps to backward design planning:

Identifying the desired outcome

Determining assessment evidence

Planning learning experiences and instruction

Step 1: Identify desired results

Teachers begin with the end in mind: What are the desired results for the lesson, unit, or exercise? Identifying the specific content knowledge or skill set teachers expect from students helps to narrow focus. Textbooks, the Internet, and the world at large provide such rich content options that it can be difficult to hone in on our exact goals for a lesson.

Identifying the educational priorities of a lesson or unit deliberately narrows content into a manageable stream. "Understandings" and "Essential Questions" help articulate and communicate the educational priorities. This, again, narrows focus and ensures that content is the means, and skill acquisition and transfer are the end.

Step 2: Determine a method of assessment

In the second step, teachers decide how to assess learning. This assessment goes much deeper than a simple multiple-choice exam. It should measure a student's ability to attain those educational goals and exhibit high-level learning. Major assessments should examine several of the six key traits of deep learning identified by UbD:

Deliberate assessment may not measure all of these every time, but when significant learning needs to be examined, an assessment that requires a combination of these skills can help instructors to know if students understand material enough to transfer their knowledge outside of the classroom.

Step 3: Plan instruction and learning experiences

Once instructors have created deliberate goals and identified assessment methods, they can plan individual learning experiences aligned to the educational goals and assessment with a deliberate focus on how those individual learning experiences support transfer, meaning making, and skill acquisition.

An important final step can be reflection. After the individual lessons or the unit as a whole, it is incredibly important to revisit that first step and measure how effectively the individual learning experiences aligned with the overall goals.

No more abandoned lessons: How UbD changed my classroom

Introduction to backwards planning changed the foundations of my own instruction. All too often, I would combine course competencies, my class textbook, and previous curriculum to create individual learning experiences. These creations attempted to balance an unwieldy amount of content on top of my desired learning outcomes.

In the classroom, I found that this resulted in far too much focus on content, rather than having students work and exhibit their own understanding. A natural result of that much content was significant "sage on the stage" time, with lectures replacing what should have been active lessons. The result was very nearly always far less transfer and skill acquisition than I wanted. Students often showed a surface understanding of the skills we discussed but failed to exhibit them over the long term.

This fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants planning also resulted in a significant amount of work on my part. When lessons failed, it was difficult to see or understand why. I would deem the lesson a failure and abandon it in favor of new exercises, assessments or lectures.

Understanding by Design allows me to revise lesson plans to keep them aligned with learning goals

Following the UbD steps means that rather than abandoning lessons, I'm able to revisit and tweak them to realign the work toward my educational goals. These clearly articulated end-goals mean it is significantly easier to see where a learning activity may have derailed and then how to fix it. It also reduces my time at the podium and reminds students that their ability to understand, contextualize, explain, and apply content is the true goal of their education.

While we might call Understanding by Design "backwards planning," it doesn't feel backward at all. I don't wait until the final day of the semester to ask my students what their goals are for their time in my course. I ask it in the first five minutes of our initial meeting, because I want them to understand that everything we do together seeks to satisfy those goals. Applying the same process to my own lesson planning just seems like good sense.
Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.
Tags: Assessment Tools, Professional Development

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How Understanding By Design Improves Lesson Plans | Resilient Educator

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There is a perplexing experience that plagues all teachers: After an excellent classroom experience where students seem solid in their understanding and application of content, they leave class, attempt homework, have no idea how to do it, and return the next day with wrong answers or empty papers.

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This page gives simple, yet straightforward instructions on using backward design. - James White

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Backwards Design in Lesson Planning - Model Teaching

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What is backwards design? In this article, learn the three critical steps of backwards design in lesson planning and how best to use it in the classroom.

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This article and video by Grant Wiggins really helped to clarify Backwards Design for me last semester.
Emmy Broussard

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Cite this guide: Bowen, R. S. (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/.

Overview

Understanding by Design is a book written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe that offers a framework for designing courses and content units called "Backward Design." Instructors typically approach course design in a "forward design" manner, meaning they consider the learning activities (how to teach the content), develop assessments around their learning activities, then attempt to draw connections to the learning goals of the course. In contrast, the backward design approach has instructors consider the learning goals of the course first. These learning goals embody the knowledge and skills instructors want their students to have learned when they leave the course. Once the learning goals have been established, the second stage involves consideration of assessment. The backward design framework suggests that instructors should consider these overarching learning goals and how students will be assessed prior to consideration of how to teach the content. For this reason, backward design is considered a much more intentional approach to course design than traditional methods of design.

This teaching guide will explain the benefits of incorporating backward design. Then it will elaborate on the three stages that backward design encompasses. Finally, an overview of a backward design template is provided with links to blank template pages for convenience.

The Benefits of Using Backward Design
"Our lessons, units, and courses should be logically inferred from the results sought, not derived from the methods, books, and activities with which we are most comfortable. Curriculum should lay out the most effective ways of achieving specific results... in short, the best designs derive backward from the learnings sought."
In Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe argue that backward design is focused primarily on student learning and understanding. 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.

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. Therefore, backward design is an effective way of providing guidance for instruction and designing lessons, units, and courses. Once the learning goals, or desired results, have been identified, instructors will have an easier time developing assessments and instruction around grounded learning outcomes.

The incorporation of backward design also lends itself to transparent and explicit instruction. If the teacher has explicitly defined the learning goals of the course, then they have a better idea of what they want the students to get out of learning activities. Furthermore, if done thoroughly, it eliminates the possibility of doing certain activities and tasks for the sake of doing them. Every task and piece of instruction has a purpose that fits in with the overarching goals and goals of the course.

As the quote below highlights, teaching is not just about engaging students in content. It is also about ensuring students have the resources necessary to understand. Student learning and understanding can be gauged more accurately through a backward design approach since it leverages what students will need to know and understand during the design process in order to progress.
"In teaching students for understanding, we must grasp the key idea that we are coaches of their ability to play the 'game' of performing with understanding, not tellers of our understanding to them on the sidelines."
The Three Stages of Backward Design
"Deliberate and focused instructional design requires us as teachers and curriculum writers to make an important shift in our thinking about the nature of our job. The shift involves thinking a great deal, first, about the specific learnings sought, and the evidence of such learnings, before thinking about what we, as the teacher, will do or provide in teaching and learning activities."

The Backward Design Template

A link to the blank backward design template is provided here ( https://jaymctighe.com/resources/), and it is referred to as UbD Template 2.0. The older version (version 1.0) can also be downloaded at that site as well as other resources relevant to Understanding by Design. The template walks individuals through the stages of backward design. However, if you are need of the template with descriptions of each section, please see the table below. There is also a link to the document containing the template with descriptions provided below and can be downloaded for free.

Backward Design Template with Descriptions (click link for template with descriptions).

References

1. Sample, Mark. (2011). Teaching for Enduring Understanding. Retrieved from http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-for-enduring-understanding/35243.

2. Wiggins, Grant, and McTighe, Jay. (1998). Backward Design. In Understanding by Design (pp. 13-34). ASCD.

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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by Ryan S. Bowen Print Version Cite this guide: Bowen, R. S. (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/. Overview The Benefits of Using Backward Design The Three Stages of Backward Design The Backward Design Template Overview Understanding by Design is a book written by Grant Wiggins and Jay...

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Edutopia is always full of great resources! This article provides details about types of assessment and gives fun examples of alternative assessments.
Emmy Broussard

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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objectives vs. outcomes
Emmy Broussard

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Student Learning Outcomes are statements that specify what students will know, be able to do or be able to demonstrate when they have completed or participated in a Course or Program. SLO's specify an action by the student that must be observable, measurable and able to be demonstrated.

Grades are objectives. SLO's are measurable and observable outcomes.

Download a PDF on grades compared to SLO's: SLO's Are Not Grades

Objectives are intendedresults or consequences of instruction, curricula, programs or activities.

Outcomes are achieved results of what was learned - the evidence that learning took place.

Objectives are focused on performances that all studentsare expected to demonstrate at the end of instruction, for example the normal distribution of grades.

Outcomes are single student-centeredand describe what it is that the student should learn. SLOs are not grades, but observable skills.

Objectives define the key elements that must be taught every time the course is delivered.

Outcomes are measurable statements that specify what learners will know or be able to do as a result of successfully completing a course.

Because calculation of a course grade often involves a combination of sources such as class participation and other objectives, the single course grade does not directly represent the student's achievement of a specific learning outcome or skill.

Instead of how many students received A's or D's in the course, the SLO's are geared to describe a specific skill that is acquired which is central to the course.

SLO Examples

Well-written SLO's use action verbs, the present tense, and avoid terms such as "will appreciate" or "become aware" or "understand." How does one measure appreciation or understanding? Good SLO's also exhibit academic rigor, a quality that takes the SLO out of the realm of something that is generally understood by most people, and becomes a measurable outcome of rigorous academic study.

Poor: The student will acquire an appreciation of Spanish language literature.

Uses the future tense. Contains acquire an appreciation, which is inherently not measurable. Spanish language literature is too broad. This SLO lacks academic rigor.

Better: Interpret Spanish poetry in the cultural context of its period.

Interpretation can be measured in a research paper, a test, or an oral presentation. It specifically addresses poetry, and within historical context.

Better: Compare Catalan, Galician, Jewish and Arabic traditions in Spanish literature.

Comparisons can be measured in a research paper, an essay, test or oral presentation. Student must be aware of academically accepted traditions in Spanish literature in the Old World.

Best: Distinguish between Anti-Barroquism, Neoclassicism, and pre-Romanticism of the Spanish Enlightenment.
Student can distinguish between highly specialized movements in Spanish literature at a specific period in history. Could be a research paper or questions on a final. An example of the highest level of academic rigor.

Where Are the SLOs?

Course Student Learning Outcomes (CSLOs) are found in each Course's syllabus.

Program Student Learning Outcomes (PSLOs) are found in the College Catalog and in this Website.

The list of Institutional Student Learning Outcomes is available in this Website and in the Course Catalog.

Oxnard College uses the application to store SLO's and the resulting metrics. Each individual student is assessed on a scorecard according to the rubric for that specific Course SLO. Most rubrics at Oxnard are based on the following Mastery Levels: EXEMPLARY, EXCEEDS STANDARDS, STANDARD, BELOW STANDARD and NO PROFICIENCY. Some rubrics are simply PASS or NO PASS.

Departments create their own Program and Course SLO's and rubrics with input from Faculty, Department Chairs and Deans. Because students are assessed individually, eLumen can break down the reporting based on gender, ethnicity and race. The source of the eLumen data is the Banner grading system.

eLumen SLO Help and Assessment Help

The application is Oxnard College's system of tracking Student Learning Outcomes. Once a term, all faculty are notified that the scorecard assessments are ready for the majority of course sections that he or she has taught in the current term. The first video below is for regular faculty logins and scorecard completion. The second is for Department Chairs or Coordinators who wish to see the progress of completed scorecards.

Faculty Scorecard Video
This video walks Faculty users through the process of scoring the assessments that are sent out towards the end of a term. Please print a copy of the completed scorecard assessment when through.

Discipline Coordinator Video
Faculty can also have a higher-level role if they are also Department Chairs, Deans or Coordinators. Be sure to change from Faculty to Coordinator (upper left) to access the administrative functions, such as seeing what scorecards are completed or running reports. Please note that these higher-level roles cannot see individual scorecards, only the Faculty role can do that.

eLumen Assessment Guide
Downloadable PDF with step-by-step instructions on how to complete the scorecard assessments and how to use an (optional) Excel spreadsheet to upload scores.

SLOs are Not Grades
PDF that outlines the difference between Grades and Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). Links to white papers and approaches to SLO's by nationally recognized institutions.

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Student Learning Outcomes are statements that specify what students will know, be able to do or be able to demonstrate when they have completed or participated in a Course or Program. SLO's specify an action by the student that must be observable, measurable and able to be demonstrated. Grades are objectives.

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Connecting learning objectives to Bloom's Taxonomy
Emmy Broussard

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Most of the graduate aerospace classes are dominated by complex analysis and a plethora of equations. As such, without proper context, it is very easy for a student to lose sight of the big picture, which hinders them from critically thinking about the knowledge they gained and its applicability in the real world. The recent surge of the modern ped...

... IACT was established in 2015 to empower students with the ability to confidently develop the imaginative and creative skills necessary for 'humanity-centered' innovation, e.g. innovation that enables humans to flourish, while impacting today's innovative global force [11]. ...

... But in Sid's class, not only have I been given a strong foundation for aerodynamics, but the handouts and resources we have been provided are ones that I can use in the future if I ever need to review the fundamentals of aerodynamics, and I am very grateful that I have them." -Madeline L Apart from using multiple active learning techniques some of which are detailed in the paper, the integrated teaching pedagogy detailed in Gunasekaran [7] was employed. A brief overview of the pedagogy is described below. ...

... The integrated teaching model was first implemented in a graduate compressible aerodynamics class at the University of Dayton in the Fall of 2016. The challenges of this teaching model was documented in Gunasekaran [7]. One of the major challenge in the first trial was the amount of workload for the students and the instructor. ...

... There are five stages in the SOLO taxonomy which are shown in Figure 3. Figure 3 shows the five stages of SOLO taxonomy [9] dictating the process to achieve deep learning from surface learning. The relational stage of the taxonomy is similar to the prior version of the integrated teaching model (ITM) [7] whereas the modified ITM consists of combination of student-centered and instructed-centered learning. ...

The integrated teaching model was implemented for the second time in the undergraduate fundamental aerodynamics class at the University of Dayton. As with any aerospace classes, the fundamental aerodynamics relies heavily on mathematics. The integrated teaching model is specially designed to let the students think beyond the equations and understand through experience the applications and impact of the concepts and equations in real life. Both student-centered and teacher-centered experiential learning was heavily incorporated in each aspect of the class which made a monumental difference in the students' understanding of the subject. The scaffolding of the class structure and the open-ended homework assignments helped students to acquire multiple technical skillsets in experimental and computational aerodynamics. Some of the skillsets include designing airfoil using Joukowski transformation, performing inviscid flow simulation using panel methods on the airfoil, 3D printing the airfoil and testing it in the wind tunnel, numerically determining vorticity and circulation of wingtip vortex, leading edge vortex, etc. Through the passion project component of the class, students were able to perform experiments on plethora of applications of aerodynamics such as golf drivers, speed chutes, sailboats, golf ball, propellers, drones, delta wings, airplanes, etc. (goo.gl/1vJwGF). Coupled with an assessment technique where the students are required to integrate homework, projects, activities, lectures and independent studies on a single platform (portfolio), the model promotes sustainable learning (long-term learning), communication skills, technical skills and critical thinking skills in a way that a conventional lecture-based model wouldn't. Multiple Likert scale assessments of the modules and qualitative feedback from the students will be shared in this paper along with homework assignments and projects.

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Figure 4 Correlation of learning objectives to Bloom's taxonomy. The...

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Download scientific diagram | Correlation of learning objectives to Bloom's taxonomy. The learning objectives set by the author covers all the different stages of learning. The learning objectives are: from publication: Integrated Teaching Model in Graduate Aerospace Classes: A Trial With Compressible Flow Aerodynamics | Most of the graduate aerospace classes are dominated by complex analysis and a plethora of equations.

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Niki Perry

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This shows the steps to writing a course learning outcome - James White

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Course Learning Outcomes

Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) are central to your course’s curriculum. They articulate to students, faculty, and other stakeholders what students will achieve in each course and how their learning will be measured.

A Learning Outcome (LO) is a measurable, observable, and specific statement that clearly indicates what a student should know and be able to do as a result of learning.

Well-written learning outcomes involve the following parts:

Action verb

Subject content

Level of achievement

Condition of performance (if applicable)

For example:

CLO 1) List areas of consensus and disagreement among publications on global warming

CLO 2) Synthesize learning assignments with vocation-specific expectations using reflective enquiry

Steps to Writing Course Learning Outcomes for Your Course

Step 1

Select an action verb using Bloom’s Taxonomy:

“Linking iPads and Bloom’s Taxonomy” by Danny Maas  See accessible version of this image.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does provide examples of specific verbs that link to different levels of student learning. For a more detailed overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy, see Mohawk’s Learning Outcomes Pamphlet (PDF).

Make sure that you select a verb that you can observe and measure. There are many verbs that, can’t be directly observed and therefore are difficult to assess in the classroom. Do not use the following verbs:

Step 2

Next, select the subject content students are performing that task for. For example, in CLO 1 above, “areas of consensus and disagreement among publications on global warming” is the subject content: this is what the students are listing. Similarly, in the CLO “Develop a business plan for a small business”, the subject content is “a business plan”.

Step 3

Next, decide if your CLO requires either a level of achievement or a condition of performance.

Levels of Achievement

A level of achievement identifies how proficient students need to be in a task. For example, in a Composition course, you might say “Write a literature critique with no grammatical errors”. This tells students the level of achievement that’s expected of them.

Importantly, you don’t need a level of achievement for every CLO. You don’t need to say “effectively”, “accurately”, or “correctly” on a CLO, for example: these are all implied. We expect students to achieve all outcomes in all courses correctly and accurately. Levels of achievement are for specific cases.

Conditions of Performance

A condition of performance identifies if students are only performing this outcome in a specific context. For example, in a Welding course with a field placement, you might say “Demonstrate oxy-fuel-gas cutting techniques with limited supervision”. This tells students that they will be performing this task, but that they will be supervised while they do so.

Again, you don’t need a condition of performance for every CLO. Only include a condition of performance if that information clarifies the specific outcome students will achieve in the course.

Tips and Tricks

CLOs should be SMART outcomes. Use the following chart to see if your outcomes follow SMART principles:

CLOs should have only one verb, and only one area of significant subject content. If your CLO includes multiple verbs, select the one that articulates the highest level of learning students will demonstrate in the course. If your CLO includes multiple topics, select the one that articulates the key outcome

CLOs should align with the other sections of your course outline. See more details about how to develop a course outline.

More information

Doran, G. T. (1981). "There's a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management's Goals and Objectives", Management Review, Vol. 70, Issue 11, pp. 35-36. (Available through the library - login required for off-campus access.)

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How to Write Course Learning Outcomes | Mohawk College

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Course Learning Outcomes Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) are central to your course’s curriculum. They articulate to students, faculty, and other stakeholders what students will achieve in each course and how their learning will be measured. A Learning Outcome (LO) is a measurable, observable, and s…

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John Metoyer

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This article is part of Ditch that Textbook, which has some fantastic resources. The first 2 Tips are to Dream Big and Start with the End in Mind.

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[callout]This post is written by Scott Nunes, a high school ELA teacher in Modesto, CA . He is a speaker, blogger, and graphic designer. Scott is also the co-host of the TNT EdTech podcast. You can connect with him on Twitter @MrNunesTeach.[/callout]

For a couple of years now I have been wondering if there is a better way to do summative assessments. Typically, in my district, we offer standard multiple-choice tests and possibly some writing options for our summative assessments but I didn't feel like it was giving me a clear picture of what my students really knew. This year I got the green light by my admin to go bold and try something different.

I had noticed a large increase in student investment, performance, and outcomes when I choose to ditch homework, so I thought, why not ditch those traditional assessments too? I did and it was a huge success! The investment my students made in themselves with this project was astounding. My students worked hard, were challenged, and were successful in overcoming those challenges, which gave them a real sense of accomplishment.
So how can you get started ditching too?
Here are 7 ways to ditch those traditional assessments

#1: Dream big!

The first step is to DREAM big! DREAM stands for Ditch the fear, be a Risk-taker, Evaluate what standards you want to target, Assess what layers of success look like, and then create M easurable skills. I recommend following these steps for formative assessments first to create an efficient workflow, work out any kinks, and to test your own methods of assessing.

Protip #1: Start small with a few standards when doing formative assessments, and then for summative assessments borrow the best parts of your formative assessments and incorporate them into your summative assessment.
What does this look like?
For me, this looked like developing a series of rubrics to evaluate skills through the grading period, and then grab the most important ones for my summative assessment. I am all about helping my students be career-ready, so I layered on industry standards from successful businesses. I included things like professionalism, sustainability (incorporating the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals #9 and #12), and use of time in class.

#2: Start with the end in mind

I employ UDL ( Universal Design for Learning) and Backwards Design to figure out what my summative assessment should look like before I even start designing it. For my summative assessment, I chose to go the route of PBL (Project Based Learning) in the form of a game. Students were presented with the option to either design and produce a review game or an instructional game on a novel we read in class. The game either had to be digital or analog. Only a small portion chose digital. Most went with analog.

Protip #2: Do the assessment yourself and create an example. I find that most of my questions will be eliminated if I have an example of what a polished finished product will look like. Students will aim to do better than the example, so expect some great student models the next time you give the same summative assessment!

More resources:

#3: Teach Design Thinking

Before this assessment I have my students engage in a variety of similar activities. We play games, tweak existing games, and explore what makes games successful. I start with this in the first stage of the assessment. I have students empathize with other students when approaching how to design their game. They also have to define what game types work best through gameplay and experience. To help them I use Jonathan Spike's Game Storm EDU website and his resources. He does a great job of providing game types, how they work, and when to use those types of game design. He also has resources on how to customize game design. Students use those to create prototypes and test their games before submitting them for review.

More Resources:

#4: Start Small

If you are going to assess many standards as I did, I highly recommend to break them into sections. This reduces your workload at a given time and reduces student anxiety. Having many things to focus on can be daunting.

#5: Feedback, Feedback, Feedback

Always provide many instances for feedback! Have regular check-ins. For my summative assessment, we spent five weeks on it. I offered eight scheduled check-ins. The first five were each focused on a section of the project, the remaining three were fail-safes. These were used to verify that students made suggested changes. I also gave informal feedback while they were working. This helped to steer them in the right direction or offer encouragement and a helping hand in overcoming an obstacle.

I also allowed time for peer feedback, but it was very structured. I gave a checklist of specific things to look out for like spelling errors, typos, or formatting issues. I also provided a list of resources on how to fix those common errors. Students could also frame they type of feedback they wanted to receive-this was especially good in keeping morale high.

More resources:

#6: Anticipate FAILURE

Failure at some point is inevitable, so plan accordingly. Decide how you will aid when challenges seem insurmountable. Rabbi Michael Cohen describes failure as "a process not a destination" on this blog post. He goes on to say that FAILURE stands for: First Attempt In Learning, and adds an important action item: Unless Reflection E xists. I took this to mean that we need to analyze and reflect on our failures to allow them to propel us forward rather than allow them to impede our progress.

More resources:

#7: Give them one more chance

I decided early on in the process that I wanted my students to do their best and have every opportunity for success available. Prior to this, I would hear: "gimme one more chance" (reminds me of the Notorious BIG song). To make things easier on myself and on my students, I embedded that "one more chance" or redo into the assignment. I evaluated each step of the project before assigning a final grade. The only thing students did not receive another shot at was on the presentation itself, but I was not concerned about their performance on this because there was so much preparation beforehand. All they had to do to be successful with that final step was to stay calm and share out their efforts.

Make Student Investment a Reality by Investing in them Early

At the end of the day, the standards do not matter if the people do not matter, therefore I start with Maslow before Bloom's Taxonomy. I was able to get this kind of investment from them because on day one my focus is on rapport. Investing in students early on will pay dividends when it comes to summative assessments later on!
For notifications of new Ditch That Textbook content and helpful links: Interested in having Matt present at your event or school? Contact him by e-mail! Matt is scheduled to present at the following upcoming events:
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7 ways to ditch those traditional assessments

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callout]This post is written by Scott Nunes, a high school ELA teacher in Modesto, CA . He is a speaker, blogger, and graphic designer. Scott is also the co-host of the TNT EdTech podcast. You can connect with him on Twitter @MrNunesTeach.[/callout] For a couple of years now I have been wondering if there is a better way to do summative assessments.

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Just in case you need inspiration.

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A tidy little graphic that explains backward design. Visual aids help me understand processes.

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I think the presenter does a great job of explaining a well written learning outcome.

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This article goes into detail about how to make backward designs more student-centered based on the standards that are used in the classroom.

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Backwards Design in Lesson Planning - Model Teaching

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What is backwards design? In this article, learn the three critical steps of backwards design in lesson planning and how best to use it in the classroom.

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This is something that could help teachers that teach students with disabilities. You are working with students with the end in mind to help them be successful in the general education setting.

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Backwards Design in the Classroom: Planning with the End in Mind

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Are you letting your favorite lessons design your unit instead of designing it around student goals? Are you thinking more about what you want students to do rather than what you want them to learn? In this article, we will take a look at what it means to plan with

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John Metoyer - I know this is written for art teachers, but maybe looking at this through a content-specific lens could be helpful.

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One of the unique challenges of an art room is the amount of scaffolding and learning that must take place before students can effectively perform an artistic task. For example, our students don't come to us knowing how to shade three-dimensional objects without knowing which value is first. The order in which we teach our students new concepts and ideas matters. But, sometimes breaking sequential order is necessary and you might even try teaching a lesson in reverse.

Backward might work better.

Begin with the End in Mind

An architect doesn't just build something immediately. It takes countless conversations and planning with clients and contractors. They look at what they want to build, then form the path to get there. This same scenario can be tied to the way art teachers plan their curriculum.

The methodology is called Backward Design. The Backward Design model, created by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, focuses on the desired result. Instead of starting a new lesson or unit with supporting activities and exercises, you are focusing on what your students should be able to do after instruction. You are beginning with the end in mind by determining where your students should be at the end of instruction, and you are helping forge the path to get there.

Understanding the Backward Design Method in the Art Room

Using this reverse methodology of planning curriculum comes naturally in the art room. We know process and product are both important in artmaking. Although this method of instruction seems to rely on the final product heavily, it is your goal as the facilitator to help show your students the process to reach the desired result.

To better understand how this might look in the art room, we are going to look at a concrete example. In this example, we will be looking at how to achieve the desired outcome using a ceramic lesson that focuses on building a vessel with surface treatment and texture.

How the Backward Design Process Works

Have you ever had your students spend weeks creating a beautiful clay form only to slap on one coat of glaze and call it good? Yes, you gave them proper glazing and coverage instructions, but they are just ready to be done with it. So often this scenario plays out in the art room, ultimately leaving our students dissatisfied by their final results. Which also means you're probably adding to your collection of unclaimed artwork. Let's look at how to solve this problem using reverse planning.

Backward design planning is broken down into the following three stages. Remember, this is not how a lesson is delivered to your students, but this is the order in which you plan your lesson.

Stage 1: Identifying Desired Results

To solve this clay conundrum, you must first identify the desired learning outcome of your lesson. In this example, the end goal is to create a 3-D clay form that has quality surface treatment or texture added to the clay vessel. Think of this method of planning instruction as a logical approach. It is not content-focused, but instead result focused.

Stage 2: Evidence of Student Learning

In this stage, you are asking yourself, "How do I know if students have met the desired result?" This is where you determine how you are going to assess your students. In the art room, this will most often be through formative assessment and performance tasks. In the example of our clay lesson, we know our students have met the result if they have a 3-D form that effectively uses texture or surface treatments and has a quality finish using the glaze or color techniques they've learned.

Stage 3: Plan Activities and Instruction

In this step, it's often helpful to look at the performance of your students in the past. If you've done a lesson before and are looking to revamp it, target the problem areas your students had, and begin finding a way to solve them. Ask yourself, "What are the key concepts and skills my students will need to know to achieve the desired results?"

For example, if you're trying to solve your students lack of effort to add glaze or color to a clay piece, let's address this area first! Instead of teaching your students a hand-building technique to build their clay piece first, begin by focusing on adding color and surface treatments.

An easy way to do this is to create a series of small test tiles that explore different techniques. These small pieces can be used later on as magnets or pins. By allowing your students to practice how they want their finished piece to look, they won't be intimidated to take risks. Many times students have created a nice clay piece, and they are afraid they are going to ruin it.

When they have the opportunity to practice before building their clay piece, they know what to expect. So, even though adding color is typically the last step in finishing a clay piece, by doing this first, your students' desired result will be achieved. We'll call this a double reverse in backward design instruction!

Throughout your time teaching, you've probably come across a few lessons that have failed. These lessons can often be the ones we've spent a lot of time developing content to teach our students, yet they don't yield the desired results. If you find yourself in these situations, try out this backward method of planning.
Do you use the backward planning method to design lessons? How do you ensure your students meet the desired results of a lesson?

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Why You Should Teach Your Lessons Backward - The Art of Education University

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One of the unique challenges of an art room is the amount of scaffolding and learning that must take place before students can effectively perform an artistic task. For example, our students don't come to us knowing how to shade three-dimensional objects without knowing which value is first.

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University of Arizona Backwards Design Guide

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University of Arizona Backwards Design Guide

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John Metoyer - A good general resource for backwards design, complete with links to other helpful resources.

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When planning or revising a course, scholarship tells us to start with the end in mind, i.e., to start with specific and measurable learning outcomes (goals, objectives). The learning outcomes build the foundation of any lesson, course, or program. All other elements are aligned with them, meaning that they are closely related and support progress toward those learning outcomes.

Once we know what specific and observable outcomes we expect from our course, we can design backward, i.e., opposite to the chronology of the students' learning experience. The guiding principle for this process is called backward design and was popularized by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, in Understanding by Design.

The three stages of the backward-design process are illustrated in the diagram below:

This backward design can be applied to a program, course, or single lesson. The design questions that guide each stage of the process are listed below.

Part 1: Measurable Learning Outcomes

Determine Learning Goals

What do you want your students to know (knowledge), do (skills), and feel (values, attitudes) at the end of a [lesson, course, or program]?

Learning goals are interchangeably called learning outcomes or learning objectives in the scholarship. No matter the choice of terminology, the common idea is to identify statements that outline what learning one can observe and measure upon completion of the learning experience, be it a lesson or a whole program. Hence, it is helpful to articulate learning objectives by completing this prompt:

"At the end of the [lesson, course, program], students will/should be able to _____."

It is helpful to use so-called "action verbs" (see resources below) that describe observable/measurable learning behavior in one's learning outcome statements. In turn, it is recommended to avoid verbs such as to understand, to know, or to learn because they describe complex processes within a learner that cannot be observed and measured as such.

To identify our learning goals, we usually draw from the three domains of learning, i.e., cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning. The following two taxonomies are used frequently by instructors to consider the nature and scope of their learning outcomes:

Benjamin Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (cognitive domain): "Revised Bloom's Taxonomy" (Iowa State University, 2020) - Please note the lists of possible action verbs one may use to formulate measurable learning outcomes.

Dee Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning: Fink, L.D. (2005). "Initial Design Phase, Step 2, Learning Goals." In: A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Course for Significant Learning. PDF available on the Dee Fink & Associates Website.

With course-level learning goals in place, consider how to conceptually structure your course, which may be week by week and/or possibly bigger units. Identify module/unit learning outcomes and map them to the overarching course-level learning outcomes. The process of explicitly breaking down end goals into intermediate goals helps students to focus and feel motivated by understanding the rationale behind the work they are asked to complete.

Articulate Learning Goals Consistently

Use your syllabus as a tool for learning and a companion for students as they proceed through your course. It helps students to easily find specific and measurable learning outcomes as well as a list of course assessments that are clearly connected to the learning outcomes.

Consider posting the course and module/learning outcomes in a variety of places in D2L (e.g., course home page; syllabus; D2L module descriptions; course module/unit agendas or instruction pages) to stress the role of learning and learning goals in your course design. Remind yourself and your students explicitly of your unit- and course-level learning outcomes to clarify goals and expectations, uncover the rationale and purpose of materials and activities, and practice accountability.

Part 2: Planning Your Course Using Backward Design

Identify desired results.

What relevant goals (program outcomes, course outcomes, learning objectives) will this design address?

What are the big ideas that you want students to come to understand in this unit?

What will students know and be able to do as a result of this unit?

What will students eventually be able to do as a result of the knowledge and skills they gain in this unit?

What provocative questions will foster inquiry, understanding, and transfer of learning?

Determine acceptable evidence.

Through what tasks (homework assignments, quizzes, in-class activities, projects, exams) will students demonstrate their learning in this unit?

By what criteria will students' performance be evaluated?

How will students be guided to reflect upon and self-assess their learning in this unit?

Plan learning experiences and instruction.

What learning experiences and instruction will enable students to achieve the desired results?

How will the design of the unit

help the instructor to know students' prior knowledge?

help students to know what is expected?

hook students and hold their interest?

help them experience the big ideas and grapple with the content?

provide opportunities to revise their understanding and work?

allow students to evaluate their work?

be organized to maximize student engagement?

Resources:

Backward Design in College Classrooms

Research on the Impact of Backward Design

Winkelmes, M.-A., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., & Weavil, K. H. (2016). A teaching intervention that increases underserved college students' success. Peer Review, 18.

Courses and assignments that are more transparent increase students' sense of confidence and belonging, the quality of student work, and student success in the course. "Transparent" courses and assignments integrate aspects of backwards design, including clear descriptions of the purpose/goals of the assignment, what skills students will practice and what knowledge they will gain from the assignment, what excellence looks like, and how students will be evaluated.

Levine, L. E., Fallahi, C. R., Nicoll-Senft, J. M., Tessier, J. T., Watson, C. L., & Wood, R. M. (2008). Creating significant learning experiences across disciplines. College Teaching, 56, 247-254.

Using Fink's taxonomy to redesign a course is linked to significant improvements in student learning in the areas of foundational knowledge, application, human dimension, and learning how to learn.

Reynolds, H. L., & Kearns, K. D. (2017). A planning tool for incorporating backward design, active learning, and authentic assessment in the college classroom. College Teaching, 65, 17-27.

Using backwards course design in a non-majors college biology course resulted in positive outcomes for instructors (enhanced ability to prioritize content delivery to students, better time management, improved experience of lecture preparation, more frequent feedback on student comprehension) and students (more engagement).

Armbruster, P., Patel, M., Johnson, E., & Weiss, M. (2009). Active learning and student-centered pedagogy improve student attitudes and performance in introductory biology. CBE Life Sciences Education, 8, 203-213.

A course redesign in introductory biology which included aspects of backwards design (creation of learning goals for each lecture, alignment between assessments and learning goals, and reordering the content into broader themes) led to significant improvement of self-reported student engagement and satisfaction and increased academic performance.

Wang, X., Su, Y., Cheung, S., Wong, E., & Kwong, T. (2013). An exploration of Biggs' constructive alignment in course design and its impact on students' learning approaches. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 38, 477-491.

Students in courses where instructors have aligned learning outcomes and assessments, compared to those in less aligned courses, are more likely to adopt deep learning approaches and less likely to use surface learning approaches in the course.

Fulmer, S. M. (2017). Preparing a learning-focused syllabus (Weekly Digest #64). The Learning Scientists Blog.

Students who receive a "learner-centered syllabus" have more positive perceptions of the instructor, course, and syllabus. Findings from several research studies are summarized in the image below - see website for additional information and references.

You are welcome to contact one of our faculty developers to discuss your teaching ideas, concerns, or questions, related to this mini-primer, or any other topic related to teaching and learning. We are happy to work with you via email, phone, or Skype, or meet with you in your office or at the OIA.

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Planning a Course: Learning Outcomes and Backward Design

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When planning or revising a course, scholarship tells us to start with the end in mind, i.e., to start with specific and measurable learning outcomes (goals, objectives). The learning outcomes build the foundation of any lesson, course, or program. All other elements are aligned with them, meaning that they are closely related and support progress toward those learning outcomes.

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How to Align Objectives and Assessments in Your Course

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The author breaks it down into three stages. This makes it easier to understand the backwards design. With this design, teachers can focus on the destination and then plan their route, rather than the other way around.

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As teaching moves further into the 21st century it continues to evolve and change. In order to design lessons with measurable results, teachers need to shift their thinking. Collaboration, along with the integration of content and technology, are the trends that now drive most planning sessions. One useful method for planning meaningful lessons is backwards design. With it, teachers can integrate subject matter with technology and critical thinking activities. The idea behind backwards design is to teach and plan towards the "end goal" or learning point.

The premise of backwards design is simple: planning starts with the focus on the end product. As educators, we cannot decide which materials or methods to utilise during instruction until we have pinpointed specific concepts and skills we want our students to learn. By focusing on the required end result, Backwards design allows the educator to address what the student needs to learn and what data can be collected to show that the "end goal" has been achieved, while thinking about how to ensure students learn effectively.

The process is logical - if teachers focus on the desired learning then the appropriate teaching methods will follow. With backwards design, teachers shift their thinking from a content-focused design to a result-focused approach. In this way, the integration of different subject matter and the use of technology becomes organic in the design of the unit. Backwards design focuses on the destination and then plans the route, rather than the other way around.

There are three stages to the process of backwards design:

1. Identify the desired results

2. Identify evidence of learning

3. Design the instructional plan

Stage 1 - Identify Desired Results

The teacher begins by reviewing the learning standards that students are expected to meet by the end of a course or grade level. The idea is then to create a cross-curricular unit that provides students with meaningful learning opportunities, enhancing their understanding of each topic and the use of technology within both realms. The teacher must first identify the priorities within both subjects, selecting those enduring concepts that need to be attained for the long term.

The next step is to put together a list of the essential knowledge, skills, and concepts that students need to learn during a specific unit. Using this information, the teacher can then create a final assessment, which can be used to measure to what degree students are achieving the desired results.

Stage 2 - Evidence of Learning

In this stage, the teacher asks the question, "How do I know if students have achieved the desired results?" The key is to think as an assessor would and look for meaningful ways to evaluate student achievement. The focus is less on content coverage and more on higher level thinking skills and practical application. Using this approach, the teacher can assess student learning through formative assessments, such as one-on-one interviews, short quizzes, peer evaluation, and individual reflection.

Advocates for backwards design argue that formative assessment is extremely important to effective backward design because teachers need to know what students are or are not learning if they are going to help them achieve the goals of a unit.

Stage 3 - Designing the Content for Instruction

With clear results and methods of assessing understanding in place, the teacher can now tailor the instructional strategies to help students attain new understandings of the content. Also having done backwards design, the teacher isn't bound by the traditional textbook and can pull together different resources, such as Kognity, which does the task for you and presents the information in a better format.

At this stage, a teacher should consider some of the following key questions:

1. What key facts and concepts will students need to understand to achieve the desired results?

2. What key skills will students need in order to perform and achieve the desired results?

As teachers, you want students to learn skills that can equate to great academic results, but that can also be applied in later life. This means that as teachers, we need to focus on content but also on its practical application. Backwards design along with the use of technology within the classroom should be considered as a method for designing and analysing meaningful learning tasks that can help make this happen.

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How to use backwards design for effective lesson planning! - Kognity

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As teaching moves further into the 21st century it continues to evolve and change. In order to design lessons with measurable results, teachers need to shift their thinking. Collaboration, along with the integration of content and technology, are the trends that now drive most planning sessions.

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I like the way the site divides the assessment ideas by subjects.

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40 Alternative Assessment Ideas for Learning - TeachHUB

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Traditional methods of assessing student learning can feel tired and uninspiring. Try these 40 alternative assessment ideas for learning in your classroom.

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What is Understanding by Design (UbD)? | Chalk

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“Understanding by Design” - you have probably heard this phrase before. This is one method to align curriculum, assessment, and instruction in your school.

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This video is a really cool and detailed explanation of backwards design. The speaker addresses some beliefs we may have about curriculum and explains how backward design could change and improve these ideas!

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Backwards Design: A great way to move forward!

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This article is written for college professors, but I found it interesting and helpful. It explains what each letter means and then gives examples of a learning objective prior to using S.M.A.R.T. and after using it.

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There are many ways in which in-class instructional time can seem overwhelming, especially to first time teachers. During my first TA experience I remember opening up a word document with the intention of writing up an agenda for the first week's discussion. I kept staring at the document like it was a vast open prairie, or an empty stage in a sold-out theatre. The time and space I had seemed expansive, full of possibilities and opportunities, but also shapeless and unstructured. In that moment, I found myself wondering: how am I supposed to fill every moment of face-to-face instructional time with meaningful, interesting, and valuable content, and how am I supposed to know after the fact if I've succeeded in this goal? In this post, I'll argue that you can go a long way towards answering these questions for yourself by carefully crafting S.M.A.R.T. learning objectives, and by using these objectives to design and implement daily assessments.

First off, a learning objective is a brief, descriptive statement of one thing that a student will take away from a day's lesson. They are typically determined by (and fit into) the broader "learning goals" that you set in your syllabus at the beginning of the semester, but are more specific, concrete, and active. Examples include: "By the end of class, each student will be able to distinguish between examples of substances and accidents, and to give an intuitive definition of each." You might have just one learning objective for a class period, or, if you have more time or if the objectives are less ambitious, you may break it down into two, three, or even more. (For more helpful information on learning objectives, and the difference between a learning objective and a course goal, see this helpful handout. For a taxonomy of different kinds of learning objectives, and how to incorporate these into your course prep see this handout on class prep from the Kaneb Center.)

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym often associated with productive goal-setting in general, and I forget where I even first came across it (see here, here, and here). The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused, and Time-bound, and I find these criteria immensely helpful in crafting good learning objectives. I won't go through detailed descriptions for each criteria (for such descriptions see the links above), but to get an intuitive sense, consider the following two objectives:

1. By the end of class students will be able to analyze philosophical texts well.

2. By the end of class, students will be able to isolate Singer's "Obligatory Giving" argument and distinguish its major premises, and give one reason why they agree or disagree with each premise.

Objective 2 is clearly better along each of our five dimensions.

S.M.A.R.T. objectives can help structure in-class time in at least two ways. First, they can help you determine what information you need to present and what sorts of activities you need to have your students engage in, and what to prioritize in the distribution of class time for any given meeting. If objective 2 was one of your objectives, for instance, you'd need to make sure to leave time for the students to read and mark-up a paragraph of text (3-5 minutes), share their thoughts with a neighbor (2-4 minutes), and collaborate on reconstructing the argument as a group (5-8 minutes). If you have three or four other objectives for that day, you might think about simplifying the task, or about giving them a little more help along the way.

The second way S.M.A.R.T. objectives can help you structure in-class time is in a more global, semester-level sense. S.M.A.R.T. objectives - if crafted well - naturally give rise to concrete assessment mechanisms (they are, after all, Measurable, Results-focused, and Time-bound). To expand upon our example: you could ask your students to write down the premises and conclusion of Singer's argument on a half-sheet of paper and turn it in. If pressed for time, you could cold call on three students and ask each to offer a premise and a brief reason to agree or disagree with it. If the objective and content are crucial to the course as a whole, and directly related to your overall learning goals, you might hand out a worksheet at the end of class, or have students take an online quiz to ensure that they've attained proficiency. This feedback is an invaluable resource in helping you to determine where to spend valuable future class time.

As college instructors, we get precious little face-to-face instructional time with our students, so it's important that we structure the time we have effectively. S.M.A.R.T. learning objectives can help us to do that, and in a way that isn't overwhelming or overly time consuming. Moreover, I've found that pairing my objectives with daily assessment mechanisms, and even using the process of designing such mechanisms to clarify and evaluate these objectives, allows me to foster a more "communicative" classroom experience; i.e. one in which I'm getting feedback from the students that I can use to create future objective-based learning goals that are responsive to their needs.

Links and citations:

"Goals vs Objectives." University of Iowa Information Technology Services, Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2017. https://teach.its.uiowa.edu/sites/teach.its.uiowa.edu/files/docs/docs/Goals_vs_Objectives_ed.pdf

"Articulating Learning Goals: A Path to Increased Efficiency and Improved Student Performance." University of Notre Dame, Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2017. http://kaneb.nd.edu/assets/75457/learninggoalsho.pdf
Paul Blaschko is the Assistant Director at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. Image byDungdm93 released under Creative Common Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en.

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There are many ways in which in-class instructional time can seem overwhelming, especially to first time teachers. During my first TA experience I remember opening up a word document with the intention of writing up an agenda for the first week's discussion.

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Well-written learning outcomes are concise and clearly expressed, detailed enough to be observable and measurable, and hence assessable. They're wide enough to allow for some flexibility in achieving them, and they're doable given the time and resources available. The foundation of curriculum design and assessment are learning outcomes, which help students focus on what matters most. Learning outcomes can also be considered an inclusive teaching strategy since they can assist students in understanding what is expected of them. - Keithen Smith

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Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at OU

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Goals, Objectives, and Learning Outcomes

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Backward design is the strategy of creating a lesson, unit, or course by first establishing the desired results, planning assessment strategies, and deciding on instructional methods and assignments. It enables educators to design lessons and classes centered on student learning. Backward design, also known as an understanding by design, is a method of developing educational materials by first determining goals and then selecting teaching methods and evaluations. Backward is named because it begins with the end in mind and works backward from there. - Keithen Smith

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Here is my mind map for a unit on The Great Gatsby with a paired short story "The Golden Touch."

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This infographic shows the higher and lower learning levels.

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The Ohio department of education website is a complete and thorough reference for UBD.  It provides explanations, templates, graphics, design tools, discussions of standards, references for unit planning. It can provide a broad overview as well as a step-by-step guide. It also gives examples of key concepts such as authentic resources and formative assessments, as well as clues to incorporating technology.

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What is Backward Design?

Backward Design means planning instruction with the end goals in mind. This framework helps educators implement a proficiency-based language program over a realistic timeline, based on the current program model.

The Backward Design framework was developed by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. Educators can find a concise overview of the backward design process here.
When using backward design to create world language units with functional goals and objectives, the process can be broken down into the following three steps:
1. Identify Learning Outcomes
When planning a thematic unit, the first step is to determine the learning outcomes or goals, i.e., what the students should know and be able to do at the end of the unit. The outcomes are framed in a real-world or authentic context.

2. Determine Acceptable Evidence

Determine what assessments will be given to show evidence that students have understood and achieved the learning outcomes of the unit. A summative Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) scored with rubrics is recommended, as an IPA encompasses authentic cultural resources and performance tasks across the Interpretive, Interpersonal and Presentational modes of communication.

a. Find appropriate authentic resources.
b. Design Interpretive Tasks (listening, reading, viewing).
c. Design an Interpersonal Task (spontaneous oral, written, signed conversation).
d. Design a Presentational Task (speaking; writing; signing)

Use appropriate rubrics to evaluate performance or proficiency.
3. Plan Learning Experiences
Plan and scaffold learning activities that will help the students achieve the goals of the unit. By knowing in advance the learning outcomes and the evidence needed for the unit, content and activities can be targeted in a more relevant and effective way.

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Backward Design means planning instruction with the end goals in mind. This framework helps educators implement a proficiency-based language program over a realistic timeline, based on the current program model. The Backward Design framework was developed by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. Educators can find a concise overview of the backward design process here .

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I found this to be an absolutely clear explanation on backward design and the reasons it all makes sense. In relatively few words the video provides a rationale as well as the three-step process to ensure that you will be able to use UBD. Definitely worth the time to watch

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Backward Design in Designing, Assessing and Evaluating Academic Programs Explained With Example

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Still plan to refine the alignment and details to the assessment pieces.
- Alisha Butler

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This website provides a backwards design model that is clear and easy to understand. It outlines the 7 principles of backwards design and provides a helpful mnemonic (WHERETO) to help users remember those 7 principles. It also examines the "big picture" of backwards design and the stages associated with the process.
Submitted By: Lakeisha Bergeron

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A framework for planning curriculum, instruction, and assessment is provided in Understanding by Design (McTighe), with 2 key ideas:

1. a focus on teaching and assessing for understanding and transfer

2. a design curriculum 'backward' from those ends.

The deliberate use of backward design for planning curriculum units results in:

more clearly defined goals

more appropriate assessments

more tightly aligned lessons, and more purposeful teaching.

The 7 principles

The 7 principles outlined in Understanding by Design (UbD) are encapsulated in W.H.E.R.E.T.O. - a mnemonic that assists in remembering them:

W: Where and why

H: Hook and hold

E: Explore, experience, enable and equip

R: Reflect, rethink, revise

E: Evaluate work and progress

T: Tailor and personalise the work

O: Organise for optimal effectiveness.

What W.H.E.R.E.T.O. means

1. W: Where and why - UbD is a way of thinking purposefully about curriculum planning - it is not a rigid program or prescriptive recipe.

2. H: Hook and hold - the primary goal of UbD is student understanding, that is, the ability to make meaning of 'big ideas' and transfer their learning.

3. E: Explore, experience, enable and equip - understanding is revealed when students autonomously make sense of and transfer their learning through authentic performance. There are 6 facets of understanding which indicate understanding: the capacity to explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empathise, and self-assess.

4. R: Reflect, rethink, revise - effective curriculum is planned 'backward' from long-term desired results through a 3-stage design process: desired results, evidence, and learning plan. This process helps avoid 'textbook coverage' and 'activity-oriented' teaching, in which no clear priorities and purposes are apparent.

5. E: Evaluate work and progress - teachers are coaches of understanding, not just providers of content or activity. They focus on ensuring learning, not just teaching (and assuming that what was taught was learned); they always aim - and check for - successful meaning making and transfer by the learner.

6. T: Tailor and personalise the work - regular reviews of units and curriculum against design standards enhance curricular quality and effectiveness.

7. O: Organise for optimal effectiveness - UbD reflects a continuous improvement approach to achievement where the results of lesson design/ planning, that is student performance, informs teachers of any needed adjustments to curriculum and instruction.

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Explore the 7 key principles and the big picture of backward design outlined in McTighe's Understanding by Design.

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This video is a brief overview of the GRASPS model for assessment design. It serves as a checklist to refer to when designing various forms of assessment.
Submitted By: Lakeisha Bergeron

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This infographic is a simple visual representation of the backwards design process. It refers to 3 main steps - identify desired results, determine assessment evidence, and plan learning experiences.
Submitted By: Lakeisha Bergeron

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Tramble Mindmap- Click here to view

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Week 7: How can technology support all learners?

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Week 7: How can technology support all learners?

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This is a mindmap overview of Week 7's learning outcomes and possible assessment approaches.

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I found this video helpful for learning outcomes!

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Writing Measurable Course Outcomes and Learning Objectives

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQo-5P0K0c

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Backward Design

Backward design is a process for designing courses that entails three steps:

1. Determine the content and skills you want your students to learn in the course.
What are the course learning outcomes?

2. Determine how you will know whether students have learned that content and skills.
What assessment(s) will students complete to demonstrate in a measurable way that they have met the course learning outcomes?

3. Determine what practice will prepare students to succeed on the assessment(s).

1. What will the nature, frequency, and sequence of learning activities be in the course?

2. How will you track student progress, provide feedback to students to guide their efforts, and help students learn to identify where their own learning is and isn't on track?

Using these three steps can help instructors to map their courses and align the course elements. Separate pages in this section address steps one ( learning outcomes) and two ( assessment). For step three (learning activities), consult the learning activities page in the Teaching Your Course section of this website.

See also the PDF version of this image. (CC BY-NC 4.0, Muhlenberg College)

Additional Resources

Backward Design from Muhlenberg College: A simple explanation of backward design.

"Surfacing Backward Design" in Small Teaching Online by Flower Darby and James M. Lang: This short, accessible book chapter offers concrete, practical tips grounded in research.

"Mapping Your Blended Course" in The Blended Course Design Workbook: A Practical Guide by Kathryn E. Linder: Focused on blended (hybrid) courses, this chapter provides short definitions of key concepts and practical charts instructors can use to plan their course.

"Backward Design" in Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe: The classic text for backward design reviews concepts such as the "twin sins" of covering content without purpose and implementing engaging activities without purpose.

"Cognitive Strategies to Support Learners' Thinking" in Effective Online Teaching: Foundations and Strategies for Student Success by Tina Stavredes: This section of the book contains short, practical chapters with useful planning tools on how to scaffold and sequence online courses in four domains: procedural, metacognitive, conceptual, and strategic.

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Backward design is a process for designing courses that entails three steps: Determine the content and skills you want your students to learn in the course. What are the course learning outcomes? Determine how you will know whether students have learned that content and skills.

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Designing Assessments of Student Learning

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As educators, we measure student learning through many means, including assignments, quizzes, and tests. These assessments can be formal or informal, graded or ungraded. But assessment is not simply about awarding points and assigning grades. Learning is a process, not a product, and that process takes place during activities such as recall and practice.

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https://www.rochester.edu/college/cetl/faculty/online/backward.html

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This website gives an overview as well as the benefits of using the backwards design model. It breaks it down into three stages and gives a template for an example.

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Cite this guide: Bowen, R. S. (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/.

Overview

Understanding by Design is a book written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe that offers a framework for designing courses and content units called "Backward Design." Instructors typically approach course design in a "forward design" manner, meaning they consider the learning activities (how to teach the content), develop assessments around their learning activities, then attempt to draw connections to the learning goals of the course. In contrast, the backward design approach has instructors consider the learning goals of the course first. These learning goals embody the knowledge and skills instructors want their students to have learned when they leave the course. Once the learning goals have been established, the second stage involves consideration of assessment. The backward design framework suggests that instructors should consider these overarching learning goals and how students will be assessed prior to consideration of how to teach the content. For this reason, backward design is considered a much more intentional approach to course design than traditional methods of design.

This teaching guide will explain the benefits of incorporating backward design. Then it will elaborate on the three stages that backward design encompasses. Finally, an overview of a backward design template is provided with links to blank template pages for convenience.

The Benefits of Using Backward Design
"Our lessons, units, and courses should be logically inferred from the results sought, not derived from the methods, books, and activities with which we are most comfortable. Curriculum should lay out the most effective ways of achieving specific results... in short, the best designs derive backward from the learnings sought."
In Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe argue that backward design is focused primarily on student learning and understanding. 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.

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. Therefore, backward design is an effective way of providing guidance for instruction and designing lessons, units, and courses. Once the learning goals, or desired results, have been identified, instructors will have an easier time developing assessments and instruction around grounded learning outcomes.

The incorporation of backward design also lends itself to transparent and explicit instruction. If the teacher has explicitly defined the learning goals of the course, then they have a better idea of what they want the students to get out of learning activities. Furthermore, if done thoroughly, it eliminates the possibility of doing certain activities and tasks for the sake of doing them. Every task and piece of instruction has a purpose that fits in with the overarching goals and goals of the course.

As the quote below highlights, teaching is not just about engaging students in content. It is also about ensuring students have the resources necessary to understand. Student learning and understanding can be gauged more accurately through a backward design approach since it leverages what students will need to know and understand during the design process in order to progress.
"In teaching students for understanding, we must grasp the key idea that we are coaches of their ability to play the 'game' of performing with understanding, not tellers of our understanding to them on the sidelines."
The Three Stages of Backward Design
"Deliberate and focused instructional design requires us as teachers and curriculum writers to make an important shift in our thinking about the nature of our job. The shift involves thinking a great deal, first, about the specific learnings sought, and the evidence of such learnings, before thinking about what we, as the teacher, will do or provide in teaching and learning activities."

The Backward Design Template

A link to the blank backward design template is provided here ( https://jaymctighe.com/resources/), and it is referred to as UbD Template 2.0. The older version (version 1.0) can also be downloaded at that site as well as other resources relevant to Understanding by Design. The template walks individuals through the stages of backward design. However, if you are need of the template with descriptions of each section, please see the table below. There is also a link to the document containing the template with descriptions provided below and can be downloaded for free.

Backward Design Template with Descriptions (click link for template with descriptions).

References

1. Sample, Mark. (2011). Teaching for Enduring Understanding. Retrieved from http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-for-enduring-understanding/35243.

2. Wiggins, Grant, and McTighe, Jay. (1998). Backward Design. In Understanding by Design (pp. 13-34). ASCD.

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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by Ryan S. Bowen Print Version Cite this guide: Bowen, R. S. (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/understanding-by-design/. Overview The Benefits of Using Backward Design The Three Stages of Backward Design The Backward Design Template Overview Understanding by Design is a book written by Grant Wiggins and Jay...

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This video gives tips on how to write effective learning outcomes.

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The Teaching Online Channel for Rural EFL Teachers

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Briana Turner

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The Kennesaw State University Digital Learning Innovations site provides a great starting model to use when building a course using backward design. It also includes a downloadable template.

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Table of Contents

The idea of Backward Design (BD) comes from McTighe & Wiggins' (2005) Understanding by Design. The authors suggest that educators should plan learning experiences with the final assessment in mind. In this model, you start with the end - the desired results, goals, or standards - and then grow your curriculum from student learning called for by your assessments and the teaching needed to equip students to perform.

Stage 1: Identify Desired Results: Identify the desired outcomes for your course. In other words, identify the knowledge and skills that students must achieve by the end of the course. Use Bloom's Taxonomy to help you construct learning objectives.

Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence of Learning: Determine how you will evaluate students' performance and the criteria on which students will be evaluated based off the desired results.

Stage 3: Design Learning Experiences & Instruction: Design and develop learning materials and activities that help students to achieve stated learning objectives.

Many instructors begin designing their courses thinking of which materials or favorite activities to use, but that leads to thinking about the teaching first. The goal of BD is to help instructors think about learning outcomes first. Wiggins & McTighe (2005) offer the following example:

"The teacher might base a lesson on a particular topic (e.g., racial prejudice), select a resource (e.g., To Kill a Mocking-bird), choose specific instructional methods based on the resource and topic (e.g., Socratic seminar to discuss the book and cooperative groups to analyze stereotypical images in films and on television), and hope thereby to cause learning (and meet a few English/language arts standards). Finally, the teacher might think up a few essay questions and quizzes for assessing student understanding of the book."

It's a traditional approach, but does it lead to critical thinking/learning? In contrast, the backward design approach has instructors consider the learning goals of the course first. These learning goals embody the knowledge and skills instructors want their students to have learned when they leave the course. Once the learning goals have been established, the second stage involves consideration of assessment. The backward design framework suggests that instructors should consider these overarching learning goals and how students will be assessed prior to consideration of how to teach the content.

For example, if you wanted to adapt the topic of racial prejudice to a backward design framework, you would first decide what you wanted the students to learn about racial prejudice. Then, you would formulate an essential question to guide the assessments, such as, "What is the relationship between morality, behavior, and justice?"

In Stage 2, you would create the assessment based on how a student could show that they have learned the relationship between morality, behavior, and justice and are able to answer the essential question. Using To Kill a Mockingbird, you could have the students write an essay to show comprehension of the concepts within the resource or have them conduct their own mock trial with a similar court case.

In Stage 3, you would finally design and develop materials and activities that help the students achieve the mastery of the essential question so they can participate effectively in the final assessment (either an essay or mock trial for this example).

For this reason, backward design is considered a much more intentional approach to course design than traditional methods of design.

As noted previously, there are three stages to BD. The stages are not prescriptive and do not have to be followed in exact order, but being thorough in completing the template will help you organize your design.

Stage 1 - Identify Desired Results
In Stage 1, consider goals and content standards for your area. Make deliberate choices about what will be necessary for students to learn in your course. You will not be able to address everything, so what stands out? Ask yourself the following questions to help you organize your thoughts:

What essential questions will be considered?
An example could be that you are teaching a course on nutrition: What is healthful eating? Are you a healthful eater? How would you know? How could a healthy diet for one person be unhealthy for another? Why are there so many health problems in the US caused by poor nutrition despite all the available information?

What understandings are desired?
To extend the nutrition example, you may want students to understand a balanced diet contributes to physical and mental health. The USDA food pyramid presents relative guidelines for nutrition. Dietary requirements vary by individual based on age, activity, weight, and overall health, etc.

What knowledge and skills will students acquire as a result of this course?
Students will know key terms (protein, fat, calorie), types of foods in each food group and their nutritional value, the USDA food pyramid guidelines, variables influencing nutritional needs, and general health problems caused by poor nutrition.

Students will be able to read and interpret nutrition information on food labels, analyze diets for nutritional value, plan balanced diets for themselves and others.

Generally, these identified priorities contribute to your learning outcomes.

Stage 2 - Determine Acceptable Evidence
Stage 2 is about refining assessments. Ask yourself the following questions to help you organize your thoughts:

What authentic tasks will students perform to demonstrate the desired understandings? What criteria will I use to judge those performances?
With the nutrition example, students could be asked to create an illustrated menu that features the key elements of a balanced diet.

What other evidence will demonstrate students' understanding?
What quizzes, tests, homework, journals, etc. will work in context of this module/unit.

Stage 3 - Plan Learning Experiences
In this stage, consider the activities and strategies you will use to conduct the course. Bowen (2017) suggests using the following questions to organize your thoughts:

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 materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals?

Backward Design Template
More templates and resources are available at Jay McTighe's website.

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The idea of Backward Design (BD) comes from McTighe & Wiggins' (2005) Understanding by Design. The authors suggest that educators should plan learning experiences with the final assessment in mind. In this model, you start with the end - the desired results, goals, or standards - and then grow your curriculum from student learning called for by your assessments and the teaching needed to equip students to perform.

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Briana Turner

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The primary purpose of assessment is to improve student learning. Assessment of student learning is dependent on student learning outcome statements. Poorly written outcomes make it difficult to produce high-quality test items that measure the outcomes. Low-quality test items lower the validity of decisions about student achievement and course effectiveness. This article considers the role of assessment in a four-step outcomes-based course design model.

Outcome-Based Course Design Steps

Four primary steps must be included in a course design that is outcome based:

Create student learning-outcomes (expectations).

Create assessments that measure the outcomes.

Align instruction to the outcomes and the assessments.

Use assessment results to evaluate students and the course.

Outcome-Based Assessment Model

Step 1. Creating Student Learning Outcomes (Expectations)

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) are what students are expected to know and be able to do at the end of the course (i.e., the end product). To communicate SLOs to students and all stakeholders, student learning outcome statements need to be developed. These are statements that clearly state the knowledge, skills, attitudes, competencies, and habits of mind that students are expected to acquire. Cognitive categories for writing outcome statements typically come from published lists, usually based on Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). The categories include:

Recall knowledge

Comprehend/Understand

Apply

Analyze

Synthesize

Evaluate

Think Critically.

Step 2. Create Assessments That Measure the Outcomes

Assessments are instruments designed to obtain information for evaluating and judging students, courses, programs, and institutions. One way the information is obtained is from formative assessments, where the student can see the assessment results and retake the assessment until a certain degree of mastery is achieved. The expectation is that the formative process will ensure that the student performs well on any summative assessment. A summative assessment is designed to obtain information about the degree to which a student or all students in a class have achieved the expected learning outcomes. Summative assessment results are used to award grades and make instructional decisions.

Assessments can be tests that have selected response items and tests that require students to construct a response such as writing, a performance, or a product. The assessment can also be an observation, a checklist, or a survey.

The absolute requirement for any assessment is that the assessment matches the SLOs.

Step 3. Align Instruction to the Outcomes and the Assessment

There are many classroom organization designs, teaching strategies, and learning strategies that help ensure that students can demonstrate a high degree of attainment of the learning outcomes as measured by assessments. The important point in terms of assessment is that an instructional design needs to be fully aligned with the learning outcomes and the assessments that measure the outcomes in order to have valid information for making decisions about student and course evaluation. The following questions must be answered when implementing an instructional strategy.

Why am I implementing a particular instructional strategy?

Is there valid research to support the use of the strategy for my purposes?

Does the instruction have a direct connection to the intent of the learning outcomes?

Does the instruction align with what I will ask and require on my assessments?

Am I using some form of formative assessment (which is well established in the literature as one of the most effective strategies)?

Step 4. Use Assessment Results to Evaluate Students and the Course

One of the most important roles of assessment for ensuring a successful course design is to provide valid test results for making instructional decisions and evaluating students and the course. To accomplish this, two things are required:

1. Test items must be linked to outcome statements.

2. The measure used to make evaluation decisions must be valid in terms of the degree to which the measure can be used and interpreted as was intended.

The item-to-outcome linking requires some type of code or numbering system so that any data collected from assessments can be associated with outcome statements and with other elements of the course design (such as particular instructional strategies) that were used to help students achieve the outcomes. For example, if it can be shown that items number one and two on a test are measuring outcome two, which was taught with a group-work strategy, then the test results for item one and two can be used to evaluate that instructional element of the course design. If all of these connections are made, then, assuming the test items have been validated as functioning well, a conclusion that the group-work strategy helped the student achieve the outcomes would be warranted. Likewise, if the same connections exist when determining what grade to award a student based on the student's performance on the assessment, the grade awarded to the student would have a high degree of validity.

The three-level model for writing outcomes and assessment recommended in the Developing Outcomes With a 3-level Model article can be used to link outcomes and test items to other elements of course design.

Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York, NY: David McKay Company

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The primary purpose of assessment is to improve student learning. Assessment of student learning is dependent on student learning outcome statements. Poorly written outcomes make it difficult to produce high-quality test items that measure the outcomes. Low-quality test items lower the validity of decisions about student achievement and course effectiveness.

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This video is a great example of how we as educators can have misconceptions when it comes to teaching and how learning from mistakes can be a great starting point for backwards desgn.

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ASCD Author Jay McTighe: Learning from Mistakes

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Briana Turner

I love the fact that it has multiple tabs on the side of the page that talk about Bloom's Taxonomy and the ABCD Method.

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Backwards Design is a method of instructional design which asks users to begin with the "end" - desired results, goals, or standards - and then build a curriculum from the "evidence of learning (performances) called for by the standard and the teaching needed to equip students to perform" (Wiggins and McTighe). In short, it calls on teachers to identify learning outcomes as a first step and then build a lesson plan that works in service toward those goals. This process has three stages:

1. Identify desired results: establish curricular priorities by separating desired outcomes into three categories: (1)"Enduring Understanding," things you want learners to remember after they have forgotten everything else about the course, or concepts that have to be grasped before other knowledge can be gained (2) "Important to Know and Do," skills, methods, principles, and concepts without which learning would be incomplete (3) "Worth Being Familiar With," things that can be covered if there is time, or may be covered adequately through supplementary material, such as tutorials or readings.

2. Determine acceptable evidence: think about the evidence needed to document and validate that the desired learning outcomes have been achieved. Evidence should be collected over time and does not have to be entirely focused on an end of workshop activity. For example, if one of your goals is for students to learn how to problem-solve, give them an assessment that requires a demonstration of problem-solving skills (Vanderbilt University, Center for Teaching).

3. Plan learning experience and instruction: once you have identified outcomes and assessment measures, decide how you will teach the concepts. Focus instruction around the "enduring understanding" concepts and "important to know and do." Only include the "worth being introduced to" when the other two categories are completely satisfied.

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Research Guides: Learning Outcomes: Backwards Design

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Backwards Design is a method of instructional design which asks users to begin with the "end" - desired results, goals, or standards - and then build a curriculum from the "evidence of learning (performances) called for by the standard and the teaching needed to equip students to perform" (Wiggins and McTighe).

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Grant Wiggins- Understanding by Design (1 of 2)

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Grant Wiggins- Understanding by Design (1 of 2)

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Briana Turner

Part two of this is on YouTube as well.

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Grant Wiggins - Understanding by Design (1 of 2)

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How can technology support all learners? EDTL

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How can technology support all learners? EDTL

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Mindmap for potential week 7 lesson and assessments - How can technologies support all learners?  The lesson focuses on technology and differentiation.

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Briana Turner

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This is a blog post I found that helped me better understand the Backwards Design.

Shelbey Allen

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When I taught seventh grade language arts, one of my favorite things to teach was S.E. Hinton's book The Outsiders. Every year, we began the unit with a discussion about the cliques that formed in students' lives, how these groups interacted, the unwritten rules that governed their behavior, and what happened when groups clashed or people formed relationships across group lines. After we did some reflecting, writing, and talking, we were ready to start the book.

The reading went fine, more or less. Some chapters we did in class (I would read to them, then they would read silently), and others at home. Some students became as absorbed in the novel as I'd hoped they would; others, not so much. Predictably, some fell behind in the book like they did with all assigned reading.

I checked students' progress with occasional quizzes, we did some work on plot and characters, setting and theme, and then, after a unit test over the whole book-containing mostly questions that asked students to identify characters, setting, and key plot points-we spent nearly three class periods watching Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of the book. And I got to drool over Matt Dillon in the movie's opening scene again and again and again. From start to finish, the whole unit took about three weeks.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why it was my favorite. Seriously. I mean, even though I loved the book, my students' response to it was mostly lukewarm. Maybe it was just the idea of teaching it that I loved. Maybe it was the connections I was able to make to the stuff students dealt with on a day-to-day basis. I don't know. I taught that book a few times, and even though I looked forward to it every time, I always finished the unit a little unsatisfied.

And it's only now, years later, that I'm starting to understand that dissatisfaction: I can't say with any confidence that my students actually learned something from that unit. Upon deeper reflection, I'm not confident that any of my students learned anything of lasting value from at least half the lessons I taught.

This is a hard pill to swallow, because I wasn't half bad as a teacher. I had decent relationships with my students and I believe most of them had good experiences in my classroom, but real, durable learning? I can't say how much of that actually happened.

I don't love admitting that.

But at least now I understand why my teaching didn't produce a lot of actual learning: I never set clear, measurable learning targets.

Things would have been so different if I'd known about backward design.

When teachers talk to each other about the stuff they're teaching, they often say things like this:
"What novels do you do in 8th grade?""Oh that'll be perfect. I can use this when I teach the American Revolution!"
"I don't think I can fit that in; we're doing moon phases next month."

We tend to talk about our teaching plans in terms of the broad topics we cover. This shorthand is practical; we're not going to drill down into specific skill and knowledge objectives while waiting our turn at the bagel table. But when I think about the lessons I gave my students, the ones I observed in my colleagues' classrooms, and the work I've seen my own children do, I think this shorthand might be a pretty fair representation of what many of us are still doing: churning out lessons that keep students busy with our content without ever getting clear about what we want them to learn.

Instead of starting with a topic, we'd do better if we start with an end goal, and that's where backward design comes in.

Traditional vs. Backward Planning

Traditional Lesson Design

For many years, teachers have been planning lessons and units of instruction like this:

Step 1: Identify a topic or chunk of content that needs to be covered.

Step 2: Plan a sequence of lessons to teach that content.

Step 3: Create an assessment to measure the learning that should have taken place in those lessons.

Notice that in this approach, the assessment is created after the lessons are planned. Sometimes it isn't created until most of those lessons have already taken place. The assessment is kind of an afterthought, a check to see if students were paying attention to the stuff we taught them.

For most of my teaching career, this is how I planned. It's presumably how most of my colleagues planned. I believe it's still how many teachers plan.

So what's wrong with it? Well, when we plan this way, we're more likely to include content and activities that have questionable value. When teaching the American Revolution, for example, if our goal is just to "teach about the American Revolution," we can throw in anything that has any relation to that topic: a coloring page of the Boston Tea Party, a colonial flag craft project, or a worksheet where students unscramble words like minuteman, independence, and Hancock.

This random approach creates two problems.

The first and most important problem is a lack of durable, transferable learning. One reason so many of us don't remember much of what we learned in school is that we learned it through this haphazard, topic-driven approach. These random activities are taking up precious time that could be spent on much more valuable stuff.

The other is poor student engagement. 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. Sure, many students will do what you ask anyway, because they want good grades and the benefits that come from them. But they're not learning. If you don't believe me, ask them.

Backward Design

In their book Understanding by Design, which was originally published in 1998, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced us to backward design, an approach to instructional planning that starts with the end goal, then works backward from there. The "full" version of Wiggins and McTighe's original approach is pretty complex and can be time-consuming to implement. If you're ready for that, I recommend digging into their book. For now, though, I'm just going to share the most basic version of backward design.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Identify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the learning cycle.

Step 2: Create an assessment to measure that learning.

Step 3: Plan a sequence of lessons that will prepare students to successfully complete the assessment.

The difference in order is significant: Plan the assessment first, then plan only lessons that will contribute to student success on that assessment.

I was first introduced to this concept in my sixth year of teaching, and the genius of it completely blew me away. I used it when planning my next unit and experienced the biggest spike in student success I'd ever seen. On top of that, I was actually excited about teaching the lessons I had planned. For the first time, it felt like none of my class was wasted; everything actually mattered. There was something a lot more satisfying about doing things this way.

Let's take a look at an example to illustrate the difference between a unit planned the traditional, topic-driven way, and the same unit planned with backward design.

Before and After: The Lunar Cycle

The Before, Where the Final Product is a Test

At some point in their school careers, students study the phases of the moon. One pretty typical way to teach this is as follows:

A lecture or video about the phases of the moon, followed by a worksheet to label the phases.

An interactive activity like scraping the filling out of Oreos to represent the lunar phases.

Following a teacher's sample, creating a physical model of the moon phases using something like styrofoam balls.

A unit test that requires labelling the phases of the moon from memory and answering multiple-choice questions about the lunar cycle, eclipses, and seasons.

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.

Following this plan, a teacher would feel pretty satisfied that they "covered" the topic of moon phases. But if we look at the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the standard relating to moon phases says that grade 6-8 students will:

" Develop and use a model of the Earth-sun-moon system to describe the cyclic patterns of lunar phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, and seasons" ( MS-ESS1-1).

Note the language here: Students are meant to develop a model, then use it to describe these patterns. But in the plan above, students merely copied a model, and they didn't use it to describe anything; even if the model required some written captioning to explain what was going on, because the model was a copy, it can't be safely said that students were really the ones describing the system.

Then there's the test. If we assume that a large portion of a student's grade is based on the test, then students are not being measured on their achievement of that standard. The standard does not require students to memorize the phases of the moon. Nor does it ask them to "demonstrate knowledge" of how the whole system works. The standard wants students to develop a model and use it to describe the system.

It would be easy to blow off this distinction, to say Bah, same difference. The test asks students a lot of questions that would show an understanding of these concepts, so we're covered.

But not really. Asking a person to develop a model is a much higher-order task than asking them to copy a model. Describing systems and patterns is way more challenging than selecting the correct description.

Developing models and explaining things is the work of real scientists: They notice phenomena, study it, then figure out how to represent those phenomena in order to make it clear to other people. To say, "Look at this! It's interesting and it explains why things are the way they are!"

And that's exactly what the NGSS authors had in mind: "Any education that focuses predominantly on the detailed products of scientific labor-the facts of science-without developing an understanding of how those facts were established or that ignores the many important applications of science in the world misrepresents science and marginalizes the importance of engineering." (National Research Council, 2012, p. 43).

In other words, a superior education will teach students to think and practice like scientists. If we don't plan learning experiences that make that possible, we're giving them a sub-par education.

The After, Where the Final Product is a Model and a Presentation

So if we re-do this unit plan with backward design, we'll need to start by developing an assessment that would measure success with that standard. That means the assessment would not be a test where students merely label the moon phases, but a student-developed model of the moon phases along with some kind of presentation where students use that model to explain lunar phases, eclipses, and seasons.

When designing this final assessment, it's essential that the teacher crafts a rubric that clearly outlines specific, high standards for both the model and presentation. The rubric should list criteria for the accuracy and functionality of the model, plus the quality of the presentation itself. Here's an example of what that might look like:

With a good rubric in place, we then work backwards to determine what lessons students need to do excellent work on the final assessment.

Direct Instruction: Students still need to know the basics of the lunar system. Memorization is not the goal, so we're not grading for that, but students do need to know the information well enough to explain it and use the right vocabulary, so we can keep the lecture or video from the original plan. And having them work with the information a bit on some kind of worksheet or with some kind of online practice is fine, but I wouldn't give points for this work. If you need to motivate students to do it, require them to demonstrate proficiency (like scoring at least 80% on the match game with a set of Quizlet flashcards) before they can move on to the next step.

Active processing with models: Next, give students a chance to work with a model so that they experience the cycle in action. This will deepen their understanding of the earth-sun-moon system, which will better prepare them to give their own presentations. Something like this interactive model from CK-12 allows students to manipulate the time of day and the position of the moon to see how these variables change what we see in the sky. Working in groups, students could use the simulator to answer questions about the moon's appearance depending on what phase it's in and the time of day, then transition into making and checking predictions based on those variables.

Presentation practice: If students are going to do well on the final presentation, they'll need practice in explaining the lunar cycle in their own words. Using an existing model (such as the interactive mentioned in the previous step), have students explain the lunar phases, including information about the seasons and eclipses, to a partner or small group. Ask the listening partners to "coach" the presenter if their description has any holes or inaccuracies. Hearing their peers explain the system, along with attempting the explanation themselves, will help them use the language of the lunar cycle more fluently.

Model development: Now students begin developing their own models. The standard does not specify that this has to be a physical model, so you could offer students choice: The model could very well be made with styrofoam balls, but it could also be a hand-drawn diagram, a slideshow presentation, an animated video, a children's book, or even a short skit they present to the class or record on video. Many of these options, like the children's book, include the "presentation" piece right along with the model. Give students time in class to work on these models; this will ensure that they do their own work and will allow you to give feedback if a student is heading in the wrong direction. Remind them regularly that the explanation of the model is nearly half their grade, so they should consider scripting that out if their presentation is going to be "live."

Model presentations: Finally, students present their models. If you have a lot of students opt to give a "live" presentation this could take several class periods, which could be pretty mind-numbing since the subject matter is exactly the same for everyone. To cut down on that overall time, only have students present to the whole class if the class is actually participating in the model (like in some sort of skit or simulation). Otherwise, students can record their presentations on video or present to you one-on-one while their classmates work on something else independently.

With this "after" version, every lesson is designed to prepare students to give excellent presentations at the end. The whole time, they are using the lunar cycle vocabulary, correcting each other's misconceptions, and just like scientists, thinking about how to explain concepts to other people.

Some Questions About Your Lessons

Okay, so we've looked very closely at one small unit for a middle school science class. Now, take this same process and apply it to the things you teach.

1. What exactly do your standards require? Do they ask students to memorize and identify facts, or do they ask them to describe, explain, analyze, or create? (It's probably the latter.)

2. If it's the latter, how closely do your assessments measure those standards? Do they actually require students to do the describing, explaining, analyzing, or creating (which would likely require them to write, present, or create some product), or do they merely ask them to recognize when someone else does it in the form of an answer on a multiple-choice test?

3. Do you need to adjust your assessments so they more closely align with the standards?

4. If you do, the next step is to rework the lessons that lead up to that assessment. Does every lesson contribute to student success on that assessment? Could some of your lessons be omitted because they don't connect directly to the assessment? Are you missing anything? For example, if your assessment requires students to write in academic language and support their ideas with evidence, you should include some lessons that give students practice with that kind of writing.

5. Finally, will the assessment be weighted heavily in your gradebook? (It should be.)The lessons and activities leading up to the final assessment are there to give students exposure to the knowledge and practice with the skills necessary to perform on that final assessment; ideally, they should receive no grades at all on those activities. If you absolutely must assign some points, be sure the final assessment is worth a heck of a lot more than those smaller tasks.

Like I did, you probably also have some favorite lessons and activities. Some of these might turn out to be not just fun to teach, but also solid in terms of equipping students with knowledge and skills that will last.

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.

Using a process like backward design helps us get better at making these decisions. By making this approach part of our regular practice, we'll be able to look back on a day, a week, or a year of teaching and say with a lot more certainty that when they were under our care, our students learned.
Reference:
National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.

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