5.6 | Backward Design Transcript
Backward Design Process
Hi! Thanks for tuning in to learn a bit about the backward design process over the next five minutes or so. The ideas come from Wiggens and McTighe in their book Understanding By Design. Since backward design is essentially a course planning process let's start with a scenario.
Say I'm planning to teach a course in filmmaking to a group of undergraduates. We'll call it Filmmaking 101. I've talked to some colleagues who've inspired me with suggestions for some great activities like script writing, storyboarding, hey maybe I can even get them to produce a short film. But hang on, this is beginning to sound like a long to-do list. I need to set the stage for learning, not just doing. After all, what is really important to learn about filmmaking is what inspires learners and how can they use that to guide their learning. And can I plan for understanding or does it just happen?
The three-stage backward design process is built on the premise that you can design for understanding when you start with your goals and work backward to uncover what your learner's need to know in order to meet them. In stage one you're envisioning what's important for learners to understand and grapple with to know when to do you're defining your learning outcomes. In stage two you're identifying what evidence you and your learner's need in order to assess progress towards those outcomes. And in stage three you'll be designing the activities that will result in that evidence of understanding. Each stage builds on the other and makes it easier for you to design for meaningful learning. It's called backward because instead of starting with what you'll do in your course you're starting with what you intend for learners to know and understand. Let's see how this works in practice.
Back to our course example, I'm hoping that by the end of my course learners will understand something about the role and meaning of storytelling and be able to apply that understanding to the development of their own projects. Likely an exam won't give me or my learner's the kind of evidence of understanding or look but the development of filmmaking projects will and that will encourage them to draw on their own inspirations or questions and like with all learning they'll need many opportunities to practice and get feedback on the component parts of a larger project so we'll build that in which will include technical aspects and learning how to work together which are important aspects of the discipline of filmmaking. I also want to make space for thinking and discussing about the essential question: what's the role of storytelling? To get a broader perspective on this I want students to connect with a broad range of people with different backgrounds and experiences people outside of class so I'll build that into my plan.
Let's recap what makes backward design effective. Well, starting with a vision for the essential outcomes for learners and defining goals sets you on a path to create an environment for learning. From there are planning opportunities for learners to produce the evidence needed to evaluate progress towards goals, and lastly, careful planning of activities and the use of resources to help them create that evidence results in alignment between goals, assessment, and activities.
Kind of the linchpin of effective learning design of course the kind of careful planning that backward design requires involves thinking and questioning at each stage of the process. When thinking about outcomes what is worthy of understanding what are the essential questions that learners will need to grapple with and what's important for them to know and do. When thinking about assessment evidence what is acceptable evidence what role role will learners have and how much evidence do we need to collect? When thinking about activities, what sort of activities will support our goals? Help build understanding and help learners make meaning.
There are guides to help with that process of thinking through those questions. For example to help you determine what's worthy of understanding when it comes to your course four filters are proposed that it has some kind of an enduring value. Its core to the discipline, requires and coverage, and engages inquiry so I'm going to check that against the goal that I had for understanding which is understand the role of storytelling. I think it meets the criteria. Six facets of understanding help you to define the qualities that might be associated with understanding you can find a rubric online that expresses this in more detail so to sum up backward design supports understanding which is really at the heart of meaningful learning.
Thanks for tuning in.