Design and DevelopmentDesign for Learning: Backwards Design

Learning design is best accomplished through a method called Backwards Design. This will allow you to make sure all your content, assignments and assessments align with your learning outcomes.

What is Backwards Design?

The structure of backwards design is something many people are already familiar, just not in an educational perspective - we make plans before diving head first into a project or heading out on vacation. We plan out where we want to end up and then work to determine the supplies and process of labor we need. This is backwards design. Instead of building a coffee table or planning our next vacation, we will be applying this practice to the building of our classes.

Flower Darby, author of Small Teaching Online, begins the backward design process by considering three questions.

Where do we want to go?

"This should form the basis of our thinking around course learning objectives or outcomes. Early in your career you might have taught courses without a clear sense of what the learning objectives listed on the syllabus actually say or mean. Maybe you inherited a syllabus or a course shell from someone else, or maybe you just whipped up some objectives in order to fill a spot on a required course template. When you take a backward approach to designing our course, we think carefully about our destination. Where do we want students to end up?"

How will we know if we have arrived?

"Once we are clear about the course learning objectives, it's essential to measure students' achievement of those objectives to determine whether they attained them. We do this by way of both summative and formative assessments. Summative assessments such as final exams, papers, and project allow students to demonstrate their mastery of our course learning objectives. Formative assessments such as low-stakes quizzes or weekly reflections help us to know whether students are making good progress. Planning intentional measures designed to reveal whether students are achieving the course outcomes forms a critical part of deliberate course design."

What will we need to help us get there?

"After deciding on the destination and effective ways of measuring whether or how well we arrived there, the final core step in backward design is to consider what students will need in order to succeed on our assessments. Here is where we finally select our course materials such as textbooks and other content. We design activities that help students engage with and process new information and concepts. We devise a course schedule with milestones, often in the form of incremental deadlines or formative assessments that keep students accountable and allow us to give feedback on their work along the way. In doing so, we help our students make steady progress toward the destination - that is, achieving the course learning objectives."

How do I put this into practice?

Objectives/SLOs

Review your Course Outline of Record and your syllabus. Are your learning objectives specific and measurable? Does your current content align with the objectives? Finally, are they written in student-centered language making it easy for students to know the meaning?

Final Assessment

Now that you know what you want students to take away at the end of your class, ensure that your final assessment (project, exam, paper) supports this goal. Then consider how your students will prepare for this in week one. Darby writes, "...students receive significant cognitive benefits from trying learning tasks before they are ready. In other words, we often think we must teach content and skills to students, and then give them tasks that will put that knowledge or those skills to use. But research from the learning sciences tells us that when we ask people to complete tasks before they learn something new, they will learn it more effectively (Lang, 2016, pp. 41-62)." Put this into practice by having students preview the final, then complete a writing assignment or post to a discussion sharing their initial thoughts and ask you questions. This will help other students benefit from the varied perspectives as well as bring to your attention student apprehension, allowing you to ease these concerns and strengthen your retention.

Explicit Assignments

The structure of your course is taking shape. You are now ready to fill modules with readings, activities and assessments. As you place this material, keep in mind, students are not in your head. They are unable to intuitively know the reason you are using the items you are including. To reduce cognitive load on students, include instructions with all content. You wouldn't walk into a face-to-face course, start a video and then walk out. You would share with the class your reasoning for having them watch. Repeat this in your online class before videos, audios file, journal articles, etc. Darby provides the following example, which she uses in her instructions:

Here's what I want you to do: I explain the task.
Here's why I want you to do it: I explain the reason this task will contribute to the student's success in class and beyond.
Here 's how to do it: I provide detailed instructions, rubrics, checklists, and exemplars to help students clearly see and understand my expectations.

Reflection

Take the time to build in reflection points through the course. Much like having the students reflect on the final assessment in week one, continuing this reflection process allows students to actively think about what they are learning and why. Alternate the way students provide this feedback - video/audio post, low-stakes survey, digital bulletin board, etc.

Look Back, Look Ahead

As each course progresses, it is important for you reflect as well. What did students respond well too? Are there consistent places in the course where students become stuck? Darby includes her students in this process. "One of my favorite ways to get at this, while also helping students see for themselves the personal value and relevance of the course, is to include a Three Takeaways assignment. Ask students to think about the three most important things they have learned in your course. Ask how they will continue to develop that learning and apply it in a future academic, workplace, volunteer, or family life setting."

Professional Development Opportunity

facilitated: Introduction to Course Design, from @ONE

self-paced: The ABCs of Online Course Design, from @ONE