BACKWARDS DESIGN HOW TO DESIGN GOALS AND BUILD

BACKWARDS DESIGN HOW TO DESIGN GOALS AND BUILD A COURSE AROUND THEM “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? ” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, ” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where, ” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, ” said the Cat. --Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 Kris Stanec 6/7/2015

Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc. Tighe Deliberate and focused instructional design 1. What do I want students to learn? 2. How will students demonstrate they’ve learned it?

Before setting goals – ask WHY… • Why study this topic? • What makes the study of this universal? • If the topic was a story, what’s the moral of the story? • What larger concepts/issues/problems connect to this topic? • What couldn’t we do if we didn’t understand this topic?

Goals Write 3 -5 goals: • What do you want students to learn?

Big Ideas In pedagogical practice, a big idea is typically manifest as a helpful: • Concept (e. g. adaptation, function, perspective…) • Theme (e. g. “good triumphs over evil, ” “coming of age”…) • Ongoing debate and point of view (e. g. nature versus nurture, acceptable • • • margin of error, conservative versus liberal…) Paradox (e. g. freedom must have limits, imaginary numbers, leaving home to find oneself…) Theory (e. g. natural selection versus evolution, fractals for explaining apparent randomness…) Underlying assumption (e. g. texts have meaning, markets are rational, parsimony of explanation in science) Recurring question (e. g. “is that fair? ” How do we know? ” “Can we prove it? ” Principle (e. g. form follows function, correlation does not ensure causality…)

Essential Questions Education is not just about learning “the answer” but about learning how to learn Essential = • Important questions that recur throughout all our lives • Core ideas and inquiries within a discipline • Leads students to effective inquiry that makes sense of complicated ideas • Best engage a specific and diverse set of learners.

1. What do I want them to learn? 2. How will they demonstrate they’ve learned it? 3 Stages in Ub. D 1. Identify desired results (goals and EQs from big ideas) 2. Determine acceptable evidence (collected over time) 3. Plan learning experiences and instruction

Rationales for Ub. D?