Watch
Read
Read Chapter 1: Surfacing Backward Design from Small Teaching Online. Come to the next session ready to discuss using the backward design process in redesigning your course with OER.
The link above goes to the e-book chapter in one of our Library databases. Let us know if you have trouble logging in to read the chapter.
Reflect
Post your responses to the following spark questions as a comment below:
- How is backward design different than your current process for designing learning experiences for your students?
- How might you use backward design to redesign learning experiences in your course(s) using open educational resources and other no-cost materials?
- What are your key take-aways from the chapter, “Surfacing Backward Design”?
Bonus
If you have time and interest, here is a podcast episode interviewing the author of Small Teaching Online, Flower Darby.
10 thoughts on “Backward Design”
My current Speech 100 course objectives are drawn from the recommendations of the National Communication Association requiring students to develop competencies in conducting research to prepare and deliver informative and persuasive speeches. So, the content part of the course focuses on general discussions about the expectations for these two types of speeches as they are relevant to an audience. The delivery part focuses on eye contact, vocalics, kinesics, time, etc. Using backward design I intend to redesign the course with a specific goal of guiding students to approach informative and persuasive speeches from an advocacy perspective paying specific attention to their lived experiences of oppression, injustice, discrimination, etc. This approach will open the eyes of students to their prevailing conditions and point them to alternatives that are better than the status quo. Since many of the public speaking textbooks are written by White people there is a notable absence of minority issues. In fact one public speaking textbook acknowledges that the course is designed with a standard White culture and value system being privileged. By using OER texts I have agency in selecting texts and illustrations that help me achieve my objective of subverting the White-centeredness of the course and opening up minority stances on public address.
The key take away from the reading is what I already teach students that to begin working on a speech you need to have a clear, narrow, and ethical goal geared toward a specific audience.
I already use backward design in planning my classes. When I revamp my syllabus with OERs, I will consider how new themes, readings, and assignments will build on literacy and writing skills and inform class discussions. My key take-aways from this particular chapter: figure out the end goals or destination of the class, be transparent with students about the purpose of activities/assignments, and have students reflect on their learning along the way.
1. Backward design versus other approaches.
If I am honest with myself, I have unfortunately often used a mixed approach in which some of my lessons have the end-goal (outcomes and objectives) in mind, while others don’t. The problem with this mixed approach is that my course may be lacking in terms of unity and purpose. I am currently in the process of reworking the course so as to maximize unity and purpose; I am thinking about what objectives or outcomes are central to the class and what content serves the goal of meeting them.
2. Using backward desgin and OER together.
I think backward design and OER go hand-in-hand, in the sense that they come together when teachers bring their own personalized approaches to their courses, both in terms of deciding which materials to use and which outcomes or objectives to emphasize. In other words, both backward design and OER facilitate greater personalization on the part of the instructor, which may lend itself to greater self-understanding about the nature of the course. The hope is that this in turn will ensure a better learning process for students, at least in cases where teachers are transparent to students about their own understanding of the course.
3. Take-aways from the chapter.
a. The authors employ findings from “learning science” to explain that teachers should encourage students to be self-reflexive about their learning, in order to improve their overall learning.
b. Relatedly, teachers do well to refer all topics in the class back to a big picture that can be cashed out in terms of outcomes or objectives.
1. I already use backward design in my Comparative Ethnic Studies course, especially regarding a connection between the beginning and end of class. We start with a reading on racism on college campuses, and finish with a short film about the same topic. In addition, I have incorporated clear learning objectives for each week and listed them on blackboard, after the Resilient Teaching course this summer. I am clear with students that my writing assignments have the goal of being able to articulate an argument and support it – and this is a goal they work on throughout the semester.
2. When adding OER to backward design, I will include more reading away from textbook chapters, and rather (hopefully) find OER material that is both engaging and supports class discussion. I also hope to be more clear, verbally and on blackboard, about why I have chosen each of the readings and why they will be helpful in analyzing current inequality in the U.S. today.
3. The major takeaway I got from the reading was to be intentional; specifically, to make sure that students are aware of the plans we have in our heads as instructors. I think backward design is already incorporated into many of our courses, but making the connections explicit will aid in student participation and understanding.
I’ve had a little bit of experience learning about backward design in a recent ACUE microcredential course. I found it to be extremely helpful in my overall thought process, planning and course goals. It’s also helpful for the students so they don’t feel like we’re ever doing any “busy” work. I myself disliked this in school and so by thinking backwards, I can make sure to eliminate an excess material and stay focused on the goal. Historically speaking, it’s neat to find the parallels between 400 years ago and the modern day, so I think this will be a really neat way to present the course. I’ve mentioned that I’d like to do this for my music history course and so I have thoughts about how to do this but have not yet implemented it, as this is what I’ll be working on here!
I have used backward design before and I find it very helpful to clearly layout the trajectory of the desired outcome. Knowing where you want to go to is helpful in making choices along the way to support that desired goal.
Now after learning ULD and CSD I can now implement activities that support the backward design with knowledge of including the learners to partner with shared experiences that reflect themselves or things they are connected to culturally.
Key take aways are helpful new tools to redesign my course and activities.
Upon further reflection, I would say that the backward design is used for some of the course’s learning outcomes but not for others. I plan to redesign the syllabus to emphasize how each of the weeks relate to the learning outcomes. I plan to use Open Educational resources to provide more engaging and diverse representations to my students. The chapter’s key takeaway is to be transparent about the activities and assignments related to the course’s learning goals.
In the chapter “Surfacing Backward Design” Darby and Lang reference two seminal books (Understanding by Design and Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated approach to designing college courses) that have the same argument : how to create the “goal of enduring understanding”. How can we design a course in which students’ understanding of the material doesn’t vanish, but “endures over time and across cultures because it has proved so important and useful.”
Sometimes I struggle with this since in LIN 101 (Introduction to Linguistics, the course I am teaching and trying to redesign for OER) students often ask what the knowledge gathered in the course will be good for. My answer usually is that hopefully they will be able to observe language and maybe appreciate this unique, human-specific accomplishment. But I feel that it is vague and they don’t understand what I mean (maybe I’m not clear about it either).
Since we had to unify our syllabi when it comes to “learning outcomes”, I didn’t think about them too much, and the measurements I was doing aligned with the required ones anyway, so I didn’t agonize over the wording of the “Student will be able to….” part in my syllabus. In my ESL courses, the end goal was always “to pass the CATW”. Unfortunately, while I often emphasized the importance of being good writers as well, students only kept that ultimate goal in front of their eyes, for passing it meant to overcome a course that prevented them from taking other, more important ones that had the prerequisite of being out of remediation. Therefore, I am a bit conflicted about backward design in this specific case: do we want our students to pass the exam or do we want them to become writers who enjoy the writing process? Ideally, the latter leads to the former, but this seems to contradict the philosophy of backward design.
I feel like it doesn’t come naturally to me; unlike the analogy of planning a road trip, the road to attaining an educational goal is full of bureaucratic road blocks.
I have to be honest. Before this workshop, I had not heard of Backward Course Redesign, Open Educational Resources, etc. All of this is new information has offered a refreshing learning opportunity for me that will hopefully improve my pedagogy and the learning experiences of my students. In order to complete the Backward Redesign task, I decided to focus on my course syllabus and re-write my course learning objectives. In doing so, I was guided by my course purpose and my values (which I had to think deeply about). I took a fresh stab at writing the new course learning objectives, and then compared the new list to my old course learning objectives on the previous syllabus. The new course learning objectives were written with the goal of incorporating two pedagogies that we have covered in this workshop: trauma-informed pedagogy and culturally-sustaining pedagogy. The new learning objectives are also giving me more freedom to include new materials that I have begun searching for in the OER site. More to come…
The class I teach, Introduction to Marketing, has a clear stated objective to learn the different marketing choices and techniques companies may employ in its effort to maximize sales revenues and profits. The end of the semester assessment includes a marketing plan about their business idea and a final exam demonstrating their knowledge acquisition. The final assignments (as well all other assignments) are clearly stated and presented from the first lecture and the marketing plan assignment rubric becomes available then too. Regular reminders are provided during the term.
All the class discussion, the class notes and the weekly assignments build up the different aspects of the business marketing choices so for the students to be able to understand the marketing concepts presented and be able to to describe the different elements of the marketing strategy presented in their marketing plan.
The materials I employ for my lectures are my personal gradually typed notes and in addition utilizing explanatory articles and assignments from Wall Street Journal and NYTimes. All the materials presented are zero cost for students and I hope that through the OER workshop I may be able to identify additional zero cost resources that may complement my teaching materials.
From the book suggestions I may consider introducing a test/quiz ensuring that students have reviewed the course information and requirements in the first lecture