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In the following video, Dr. Stephanie Chasteen and others from the University of Colorado Boulder introduce the concept of backward design with some specific examples of how it can be used in developing curriculum for STEM courses. No matter your teaching modality, Ohio State has a professional learning program designed to support you with course design. Successful completion of each option below also earns you a teaching endorsement for Course Design in Higher Education.
Using Backward Design to Plan Your Course
In contrast, the 3 general ILOs help students understand the course’s scope and aim in a more digestible way. Notice that a general learning outcome (“tease out the laws of electromagnetism…”) is rather non-specific. In conclusion, backwards design planning is a different approach for many of us and will challenge how we traditionally design and build courses by starting with the end goal in mind. Check out this backward design lesson plan template from Vanderbilt University. In that case, make sure that you give your students plenty of time to write notes for your lessons so they can study them and answer you promptly and accurately come test day.
Choosing The Right Assessments For Your Students
Instructional strategies are the methods by which you present new content to your students. This could be through direct instruction, demonstration, or cooperative learning, to name just a few. Instructional activities are the ways in which students will actually interact with the content. Activities can be passive such as listening to a lecture or watching a video, or active such as using manipulatives in math or holding small group discussions.
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Situated Learning Theory (Lave)
These random activities are taking up precious time that could be spent on much more valuable stuff. When I taught seventh grade language arts, one of my favorite things to teach was S.E. After we did some reflecting, writing, and talking, we were ready to start the book. For those new to Backward Design, diving in with an entire curriculum may feel overwhelming. Educational consultant and author Heidi Hayes Jacobs recommends starting with a single unit or even just one lesson.
One criticism of this approach is that is appears to promote “teaching to the test”. Yet despite the negative connotation that comes along with that phrase, arguable teaching to the test is exactly what the role of the instructor should be. But if a known final test or assessment is required, then backward design can be a useful way to prepare learners to perform well on the final assessment. There are many resources, including templates and examples, available to help guide the Backward Design process.
Backward Design Process as a Curriculum Development Model
Traditional or “frontloading” and backwards or “backloading” design models are used to create curriculum, and both have benefits. In schools or districts where aims, goals and objectives are the focus, the traditional model is probably the best choice. In many districts, backwards design is used because there is an expectation that students should attain high test scores.
However, it differs in that the learning process is far less structured, often initiated by a question or problem posed by the students themselves rather than pre-defined learning objectives. So whether you're in a classroom filled with children, a university lecture hall, or a corporate training room, Backward Design offers a structured and effective way to reach your learning goals. This approach is flexible enough to be customized for any educational context. Another foundational theory supporting Backward Design is Bloom's Taxonomy, developed by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues in 1956. This framework categorizes learning objectives into a hierarchy of complexity, ranging from basic knowledge recall to higher-order skills like analysis and creation. Today, Backward Design is not just a trendy term but a key part of curriculum planning in many educational settings.
Instead of starting with a topic, we’d do better if we start with an end goal, and that’s where backward design comes in. Please consider supporting us and gaining full access - click here to become a member. Backward Design Template with Descriptions (click link for template with descriptions).
In this model, traditional classroom activities and homework assignments are reversed. Teachers like Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann have popularized this approach, which often involves students watching lectures at home and engaging in activities during class. While the Flipped Classroom also aims for active learning and engagement, it doesn’t necessarily start with specific outcomes in mind, making it different from Backward Design in its initial focus. Popularized by education reformers like John Dewey, Project-Based Learning focuses on complex questions or challenges that require students to engage in critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration.
Laying out your Course Plan this way will enable you to see the big picture as you work, so you can ensure that all components of your course stay aligned. This common approach to course design looks reasonable at first glance, but it also presents some challenges. As experts in their fields, instructors are not always the best judges of what their more novice students might find engaging. And while some disciplinary traditions exist for good reason, others may have developed by chance or worked better for previous generations than today’s learners.
In other words, by figuring out how you want your students to end up, you’ll be better equipped and prepared to teach them the right things so they achieve those optimal outcomes. Backward design can be useful for professional educators and for anyone who teaches students, both online and in person. The teacher has created an authentic task in which students will design a 3-day meal plan for a camp that uses food pyramid guidelines.
The traditional “frontloading” approach begins with the aims, goals, and objectives as a basis for writing of the curriculum, then developing learning activities and assessments (formative and summative) to assess the curriculum. With the backward design, the teacher or curriculum committee either develops the assessments or relies on evidence from commercial assessments or released items from state tests as a beginning point. In Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe argue that backward design is focused primarily on student learning and understanding. When teachers are designing lessons, units, or courses, they often focus on the activities and instruction rather than the outputs of the instruction. Therefore, it can be stated that teachers often focus more on teaching rather than learning. This perspective can lead to the misconception that learning is the activity when, in fact, learning is derived from a careful consideration of the meaning of the activity.
Traditional design lesson plans review standards or learning objectives (which can be federal, national, or personal). Backward design helps teachers create courses and units that are focused on the goal (learning) rather than the process (teaching). Because “beginning with the end” is often a counterintuitive process, backward design gives educators a structure they can follow when creating a curriculum and planning their instructional process. Advocates of backward design would argue that the instructional process should serve the goals; the goals—and the results for students—should not be determined by the process.
By answering the three questions presented at this stage, instructors will be able to determine the best content for the course. Furthermore, the answers to question #3 regarding enduring understandings can be adapted to form concrete, specific learning goals for the students; thus, identifying the desired results that instructors want their students to achieve. For educators looking to align their teaching methods with desired learning outcomes, Backward Design offers a robust, flexible framework.
Backward design arose in tandem with the concept of learning standards, and it is widely viewed as a practical process for using standards to guide the development of a course, unit, or other learning experience. Like backward designs, learning standards are a way to promote greater consistency and commonality in what gets taught to students from state to state, school to school, grade to grade, and teacher to teacher. When considering these questions and writing your goals, it can be easy to focus on what you want your students to know or understand about the subject matter.
Backward design begins with the objectives of a unit or course—what students are expected to learn and be able to do—and then proceeds “backward” to create lessons that achieve those desired goals. In most public schools, the educational goals of a course or unit will be a given state’s learning standards—i.e., concise, written descriptions of what students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education. Backward Design can be summarized as a process or model for designing instructional materials where the instructor or instructional designer focuses on the desired end results (i.e., the outcome) of a class or course instruction.
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