Transcript Understanding by Design

UbD Peer Training
October 10, 2008
Hilary Evans
Laura Hilton
Bev Moshier
Kristie Schmidt
Sara Wasley
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The big ideas of UbD
UbD big idea
Why
important?
If not…
‘Backward’
Design
Plans need to be
well aligned to be
effective
Aimless activity
& coverage
Understanding:
Transfer
It is the essence of
understanding and
the point of
schooling
Students fail to apply,
poor results on tests
Understanding:
via big ideas
that’s how transfer
happens, makes
learning more
connected
Learning is fragmented,
more difficult,
less engaging
2
2 key ‘understandings’
You must design ‘backward’ from
understanding if you want to achieve
understanding ‘by design’
Without transparent and important
priorities - stated as performance, not
content - neither teacher nor student can
be effective; nor can they make wise
decisions when inevitable adjustments
have to be made.
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Goodlad’s Research
"What do students perceive themselves to
be learning? We asked [them] to write
down the most important thing learned in
school subjects...Most commonly students
listed a fact or topic...
Noticeably absent were responses
implying the realization of having
acquired some intellectual power…
4
Learning vs. teaching
Teaching does not cause
learning. Successful attempts
by the learner to learn and
use what they have learned
to achieve a goal causes
learning.
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3 useful Q’s to ask in class as
kids work:
What are you doing?
Why are we doing it?
What will it help us be able
to understand/do (that
matters)?
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3 different but inter-connected
learning aims
All effective units of study
balance these three goals:
Acquisition of knowledge and skill
Ability to make meaning from
challenging/puzzling facts, texts,
and situations
Transfer of prior learning to new
situations
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Forms of learning
You acquire facts; you figure out what they
mean; you transfer your prior learning to new
challenges
You acquire a skill; you figure out a good
strategy; you apply all your skills to a new task,
in context
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Backward Design:
 I want them to
learn____[content]__________ so
that, in the long run, they will be
able, on their own to __________
[a long-term desired accomplishment, involving
important transfer or extension of learning]
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Transfer defined and
justified
 What is ‘transfer of learning’?
 ‘Transfer of learning’ is the use of knowledge and
skills (acquired in an earlier context) in a new
context. It occurs when a person’s learning in one
situation influences that person’s learning and
performance in other situations.
 When transfer of learning occurs, it is in the form
of meanings, expectations, generalizations,
concepts, or insights that are developed in one
learning situation being employed in others
 Bigge & Shermis, 1992.
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How people learn
 A major goal of schooling is to prepare students for
flexible adaptation to new problems and settings.
The ability of students to transfer provides an
important index of learning that can help teachers
evaluate and improve their instruction.
 Students develop flexible understanding of when,
where, why, and how to use their knowledge to
solve new problems if they learn how to extract
underlying principles and themes from their learning
exercises.
 - How People Learn, Natl Academy of Sciences
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The Transfer Question:
What should the student be able to do
effectively with a repertoire of
knowledge and skill, increasingly on their
own, in future tasks at the heart of true
expertise?
How, then, will transfer ability be
developed over the course of the course?
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example:
getting your driver’s license
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The transfer goal we are
designing backward from:
STAGE 1: Passing the driving test,
I.e. you are now modestly competent
at driving on your own in real-world
conditions, handling key challenges
likely to confront you as a driver.
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Transfer over time: increased –
Autonomy: the student is less and less
reliant on teacher-provided scaffolding
Repertoire: the challenge demands
greater control over a bigger repertoire
Task difficulty: the required tasks
become more and more ‘realistically
messy, noisy, complex’ - in contexts
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Autonomy = ‘gradual release of
responsibility’ as in reading
I do, you watch
I do, you help
You do, I help
You do, I watch
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Note how this goal changes our
view of time use!
What will we do to achieve the
performance goal - given the very
limited time we have?
We do NOT say: sorry, no time for
performance-based learning and assessment there is too much information to cover!
Nor do we make this mistake in the arts,
athletics, writing, speaking a language
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What follows for long-term
planning?
Make clear the goal is autonomous
performance in context
Students need many formative
assessment experiences where they
must
increasingly self-prompt,
with fewer and fewer teacher prompts, cues,
scaffolds, graphic organizers
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Repertoire use
The focus is thus on strategy: can the
student wisely choose from all available
knowledge and skill?
Developing and assessing strategic use of
repertoire requires complex tasks - I.e.
tasks with student decision-making about
various possible approaches & solution
paths
 “Research shows that transfer is especially difficult
when a subject is taught only in a single context.”
 How People Learn, Chapter 3
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Transfer = the real ‘game’ of
using content on your own
Applying prior learning to a novel and increasingly new and unfamiliar-
looking task
An increasingly challenging context & situation
(in terms of purpose, audience, dilemmas,
“noise” etc.)
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We often confuse the drills with
the game
‘Drills’ - test
items
 Short-term objective
 Out of context
 Discrete, isolated
element
 set up and prompted
for initial simplified
learning
 Doesn’t transfer to
new situations on its
own
The ‘game’ - real task
 The point of the drills
 In context, with all its
messiness and interest
value
 Requires a repertoire,
used wisely
 Not prompted: you judge
what to do, when
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We often confuse an exercise
with a problem
‘Exercise’
 Familiar look
 Reinforce your
learning
 Approach should be
obvious
 1 or 2 steps, using only
a targeted skill
 ‘plug and chug’
‘Problem’
 Non-routine look
 Challenge your learning
 Not clear how to proceed -
or even what the right way
to frame the problem is
 Requires drawing wisely
upon a repertoire
 Creative and careful
thought required to clarify
& frame the problem,
check your approach for
efficiency & effectiveness
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So, what follows for the
textbooks?
The textbook CANNOT be the
syllabus
It is a limited resource
It almost never focuses on transfer; rather it
provides mostly ‘logically’ organized content
and drills only
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So? What follows for local
assessment?
“If that is the goal, then local
assessments must regularly find out
if…”
This is the essence of Backward Design
Marching through the indicators in isolation will
not meet these standards, nor prepare
students for the transfer demanded. You are
confusing ‘indicator’ with the goal.
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Irony: that’s what the difficult
problems on state, AP, IB exams are TRANSFER problems
Unfamiliar reading passages and writing
prompts
Unfamiliar-looking versions of math and
science problems
No obvious prompts or ‘clues’ as to
which ‘content’ applies (since there is no
teacher or textbook ‘heads-up’ available
as to what this is about)
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A big idea, framed as an
Essential Question…
Provides a clear priority for teaching and
learning of content
Makes clear that the goal is inquiry not
passive learning of knowledge
Enhances transfer by making clear the
kinds of connections sought to other
content studied
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Transfer based on big ideas
permits future learning
“The first object of any act of learning, over and
beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it should
serve us in the future.... In essence, it consists in
learning initially not a skill but a general idea
which can then be used as a basis for recognizing
subsequent problems.... This type of transfer is at
the heart of the educational process-the continual
broadening and deepening of knowledge in terms
of...ideas.”
Bruner, Process of Education p. 17
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A ‘big idea’ is a working
‘theory’, ‘schema’ or ‘theme’
Think of the detective - and historian or mathematician
- sifting clues to find the best-fit “story” of the
facts
The big idea in Watergate, as recounted in All
the President’s Men: Follow the Money
 Harvard TfU refers to this as the ‘throughline’; we would
say: ‘the overarching understanding’
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Big ideas: 4 examples of
useful year-long ‘theories’
 History is written by the winners
 The key to solving problems is to make the
unfamiliar & complex familiar and manageable.
 Re-grouping, factoring and converting - these are all ways of
making hard problems simpler, using another big idea ‘equivalence’
 You need to “converse with” and “Question”
the text and its author, to understand - even if
the author is not physically present!
 Success in ball games depends upon making
unpredictable or confusing moves
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No big ideas in skill areas? Not
so...
“equivalence” is key to problem
solving in math
“does it work for this audience and
purpose?” in writing
“create space and uncertainty in
your opponent” in sports
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Toward Valid Curriculum: Focus
on Priority outcomes
worth being
familiar with
important
to
know & do
Big ideas
& core transfer
tasks
“nice to know”
important
knowledge & skill
“big ideas”
& core transfer tasks
at the
heart of the subject
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So, how can UbD help?
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‘by design’ it addresses the
problems
Unprioritized ‘coverage’ & state
standards
Aimless activities
No focus on transfer
Drill vs. game focus
Teaching the textbook instead of focus
on learning goals
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How?
Template of questions to change habits
Design tools and resources to re-focus
planning
Powerful strategies to prioritize content
around big ideas and important tasks, to
make learning more engaged, focused,
and long-lasting
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KEY: 3 Stages of
(“Backward”) Design
1. Identify desired accomplishments
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction
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What we typically
(incorrectly) do:
Identify content
Without checking for
alignment
Brainstorm activities & methods
Without checking for
alignment
Come up with an assessment
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UBD Template
Stage 1 - Desired Results
Long-term goals
The Template–
Understandings
Essential Questions
Reflects the
Knowledge & Skills
Other Evidence:
Stage 2 - Assessment
Evidence
Performance Tasks
Other Evidence
logic
Addresses the
problem
Other Evidence:
Stage 3 - Learning
Plan
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pp. 60 ff.
Stage 1 Design Questions
What are the long-term transfer goals? In
the end, students should be able, on
their own, to...
What are the desired understandings?
(What misunderstandings must be
avoided, overcome?)
What are the essential questions to be
continually explored?
What knowledge & skill should they
leave with?
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Stage 2 Design Questions
What evidence for assessment is
required by our Stage 1 goals?
What performances are indicative of
understanding - transfer of learning and
understanding of content via big ideas?
What other evidence is required by the
goals?
What scoring rubrics/criteria/indicators
will be used to assess student work
against the goals?
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Stage 3 - design Qs
If those are the desired results in STAGE 1 and
the tasks of STAGE 2-
 What do they need to acquire?
 What inquiries and meaning making must they actively be made
to engage in?
 What transfer must they practice and get feedback on?
What formative assessments are essential for feedback,
adjustment, meeting goals?
What sequence is optimal for engagement and success?
How will the work be differentiated - without sacrificing goals - to
optimize success of all?
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Key Design ‘moves’
Making content fit under (a few)
key questions
Making skills fit under (a few) key
transfer goals
Thinking through ‘evidence of
understanding’ BEFORE developing
(any old) activities & quizzes
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The big ideas of UbD
UbD big idea
Why
important?
If not…
‘Backward’
Design
Plans need to be
well aligned to be
effective
Aimless activity
& coverage
Understanding:
Transfer
It is the essence of
understanding and
the point of
schooling
Students fail to apply,
poor results on tests
Understanding:
via big ideas
that’s how transfer
happens, makes
learning more
connected
Learning is fragmented,
more difficult,
less engaging
42