Unit 4 – Understanding by Design (UbD)

Overview of the UbD Model

Understanding by Design, or UbD, is an instructional design model focused on first defining learner goals and then working backwards to develop assessments and course materials that promote those goals. There are three steps in the UbD model:

Stage 1: Identify the Desired Results

Stage 1 is to define the results or educational outcome you want your students to achieve at the end of the learning experience. During this process, designers identify the Big Ideas that the student should retain after the course, as well as any knowledge, skills, etc. that they should be exposed to or will need as a prerequisite to accomplishing the desired outcome. By organizing these identified skills and ideas in a hierarchy from nice-to-know through essential for understanding, these big ideas can be used to develop very specific learning goals for your students.

Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence

This stage consists of choosing appropriate assessments and specifying the parameters for them, so that the assessment is a valid proof of the student’s understanding of the Big Ideas developed in Stage 1. During this stage, designers choose the type or types of assessments that best show evidence of learning the desired knowledge, as well as deciding what level of achievement (minimum score, length of paper, conditions under which a task is performed, etc.) will be needed as evidence of understanding or achieving the set goals.

Stage 3: Plan the Learning Experience and Instruction

Stage 3 involves choosing the activities, resources and materials that will be used during the learning experience. During this stage, designers consider not only how to communicate the Big Ideas that learners need to retain, but also how to incorporate the prerequisite knowledge and skills needed to understand the Big Ideas, and how to best present this to the students. This backwards design process ensures that every part of the learning experience remains focused on the desired outcomes previously defined.

Implications for Instructional Design

The UbD method is effective for ensuring that an entire learning experience is focused on supporting the students’ achievement of the desired results or goals. This method makes for a streamlined learning process for students because extraneous material is not included. When a student passes the carefully-designed assessments, that gives confidence to both the student and teacher that true understanding has been achieved. This process may be counter-intuitive as designers often think about instructional methods and materials at the beginning of the process. In this method, the methods and materials are carefully chosen only when they are proven to be useful in achieving these goals.

Strengths and Limitations in Regards to Minicourse

The UbD method would be a great way to guide the design of my minicourse. My course is on a simpler topic of teaching how to do several tasks in Microsoft, so I can clearly define my desired outcomes and then work backwards to find the best assessments and methods to ensure learners can perform these tasks. During this step of defining outcomes, I will also have to consider the wider levels of prerequisite knowledge and skills that a learner will need, as well as any nice-to-know information that may help their performance and overall comfort with Microsoft. The identification of the prerequisite skills and knowledge will assist me in building in targeted scaffolding so that all levels of learners can achieve the course goals.

One weakness of this method for my course is the less-detailed structure of the process. As a new designer I have less experience in knowing which materials and methods may be the most effective. To combat this, I could make use of the resources on the jaymctighe.com site as well as reaching out to colleagues in my workplace to refine my ideas and choices.

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