important concepts that students should know be able to do and understand by the end of the course this refers to the course learning objectives or our intended goals for students to achieve by the end of the course from here you can develop the assessment methods that will help you best determine whether students have reached your learning objectives the assessment tools will comprise the assignments and exams in your course the last step of the backward design process is to plan the learning experiences and instructional methods that you will use to help your students reach the intended learning objectives this process of backward course design will help you effectively design a course to enable transfer of knowledge let’s go through each of the stages the backward design process in more detail the first step of the backward design process is to identify the goals of your course and then you can design everything after that the learning objectives assessment tasks and then the instructional experiences when you are determining the goals of your course think about your students skills knowledge and attitudes in the second step of backward design determine the acceptable evidence for students having met the desired learning objectives the assessments that you choose should be performed at both the beginning of and throughout the course in the third step of backward design you will design the in-class activities and instructional methods to create the necessary learning experiences to help your students meet your learning objectives before you begin thinking about learning objectives you must prioritize the content for your course this exercise will lead into the development of the learning objectives when prioritizing the content for your course start with the big ideas and core tasks that you would like your students to have by the end of the course big ideas are the enduring understanding that connects concepts throughout the course they are the glue that holds everything together big ideas are broad and abstract universal in application apply to many examples when you are planning the course ask yourself the following questions first what understanding about big ideas should students leave with and second how do common misconceptions and form your selection of desired understanding a big idea can be a word phrase sentence or question examples of big ideas from the wiggins and mct reading are evolution and hunter-gatherer societies thinking about the big ideas for your course is very difficult and may take teaching the course more than once to help you identify the big ideas then ask yourself about what you would like your students to know and be able to do by the end of the course this second circle corresponds to your learning objectives which represent the skills knowledge and attitudes that you would like your students to obtain in order to be able to transfer knowledge successfully lastly include content that you would like your students to be familiar with by the end of the course for example this may be the names of historical figures important dates or formulas all of the other content that doesn’t fall into one of these three circles probably shouldn’t be included in your course once the content is prioritized for your course as the instructor you can adjust the assessments and instructional activities appropriately to align with your prioritized content now you’ll have a chance to brainstorm the big ideas in your discipline what are the big ideas within your discipline if possible work with at least one other person from a similar discipline pause the video here while you complete the activity now that you’ve had a chance to brainstorm your ideas on your discipline’s big ideas i will share a few example big ideas for several different disciplines one big idea in physics is energy conservation meaning that energy is conserved and is minimized at equilibrium although it is subject to relevant constraints in biology evolutionary mechanisms is a big idea this big idea is about how natural selection produces evolutionary change and random effects can affect evolutionary history in chemistry the big idea of the relationship between structure and function is about how the structure of molecules determines its function and role in mathematics the big idea of divide and conquer can describe integrals and derivatives when taking the integral of derivative you utilize small intervals in which hardly any change is observed then when taking the integral you add up neighboring pieces and while taking the derivative you divide all of the pieces in systems the big idea of feedback loops focuses on the fact that systems interact with other systems via forces messages or in general via information or signals even though the big ideas listed here are only listed for one discipline they are frequently interdisciplinary in nature for example the relationship between structure and function is relevant to biology as well in that by understanding a protein structure you can understand its function in addition feedback loops are also relevant to biological regulatory networks in this activity you will have the opportunity to prioritize content for a course that you teach or would like to teach first work on your own and identify the underlying concepts in the list of topics that you generated as part of the pre-session assignment then prioritize the content into the categories of content prioritization the big ideas and core tasks important to know and do and then the worth being familiar with once you prioritize the content for your course work with one other person to share and refine your content prioritization pause the video now to complete the activity now that you’ve had a chance to complete two activities to brainstorm big ideas and prioritize content let’s have a discussion on the pre-session readings what were your reactions to the readings do you have any questions about the readings pause the video here while you answer the questions you
Footer
