Module 10: CE406 UbD and Backward Design

 

So, what's the Big Idea behind Understanding by Design? UbD and Backward Design is a teaching and learning approach that challenges both teachers and students to think differently about what they are teaching and learning.  I grandiose measure of asking valid and valuable questions that decompose realistic answers. 

“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.” —STEPHEN R. COVEY, THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE, 1989

The first step is to structure questions for inquiry and uncover ideas that are essential and relevant to the information that you will be learning. But more than just learning new digestible information for mere regurgitation, to overall find a deeper understanding of that information and apply it to other situations that you have encountered in your life.  As a result, that new understanding and teach others what you have learned and understand.  

The three stages of the UbD and backward design process give context to first identify desired results by asking what participants should hear, read, view, explore or otherwise encounter. Next, determine acceptable evidence which considers the assessments and performance tasks students will complete to demonstrate evidence of understanding and learning. I particularly like and enjoy using group projects that continue to allow students to explore their learning through student engagement and self-identification of their thoughts and relationships.  I am not opposed to traditional testing, but I believe that not all students have the same ability to take assessment tests well.  I do agree that testing should be created so that students have a story or case outlined with the ability to extract what is the overarching result of what they have learned. This concept is further illustrated through the GRASP method. 

To plan performance tasks, Wiggins and McTighe recommend that GRASP are used. G: What is the Goal of the task? What is it designed to assess? R: What real-world Role will the student assume as she is performing the task? A: Who is the Audience for the task? S: What is the Situation that provides the context for the task? P: What is the Product/Performance that is required by the task and what is the purpose? S: What are the standards for the criteria and success? 

Furthermore, UbD and backward design challenge students and teachers to plan learning experiences and instruction. This is when instructional strategies and learning activities should be created. With the learning goals and assessment methods established, the instructor will have a clearer vision of which strategies would work best to provide students with the resources and information necessary to attain the goals of the course. 

I would use the design approach as a way to gain feedback from my students as to what they experience as the best way for them to understand information.  It's really hard to assume that my way of learning is better and that the input of my students is not important.  Class discussions and effective decree of dialogue an essential and often left out aspects of understanding information with the consistent progression of technology usage, especially in a non-traditional classroom.  The information is there, but oftentimes the ability to converse in substantive conversation is lost in the tech. Programs that have a hybrid blending approach of classroom and online asynchronous teaching and learning have a greater ability to dive deeper into the realms of meaningful context and extraction of learning through deliberate conversation. 

Overall, the backward design approach is a valuable tool and has its place in most areas of academic learning. Institutions of higher learning should absolutely use this method for engaging students with the approach that individual learners grasp and understand the reasoning for learning based on their unique ability to gain knowledge from an intrinsic set of motivation factors, in contrast to early learners requiring more external motivation to move their learning through to the end. Early administrators and teachers will need to incorporate that learning theory or model from the beginning or slowly integrate this model of understanding from a smaller pilot valuable integration.