Saturday, September 25, 2010

Understanding by Design- Chapter 1

In my opinion, the framework explained in chapter 1 of this book provides a very practical tool for curriculum design, one I would certainly use and encourage to be widely used by teachers, book designers and planners.
This chapter describes in depth the 3 major stages of this UbD framework, each one is based on essential elements and questions. Chaper 1 is named “Desired results” in which goals and students understanding should be established. Chaper 2 “Asessment Evidence” has to do with performance tasks that will demonstrate the desired results. In chapter 3 “Learning Plan” learning activities are developed and the “whereto.”
In conclusion, the stages of this framework are coherent and they provide us a way to think purposefully when designing curriculum. By this means, we may contribute a lot to reform our educational workplace.

8 comments:

  1. Again, although I agree with your argument on the level of effectiveness BD has so as to help both students and teacher achieve real goals so as to make English teaching more enduring, I have some issues with this whole long term results...our educational system is not exactly all about waiting for results and evaluating process.

    So, even when BD is a very nice idea, I think it should be at least tried out so as to see whether this approach fits our context and perhaps consider suitable changes for it if it is not entirely for us.

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  2. I agree on the point that this design is seen as a coherent tool for our educational reform and it would be great if we could put into practice this sort of curriclum despite being time-consuming.

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  3. Actually the framework provided in this chapter is an excellent tool. Although it takes time to do it.

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  4. You have identified the main components of the so called Backward Design. Apparently, it will help us design curriculum more effectively. My only experience with such a way of designing was some years ago, I had the time to develop the three-stages but the results were quite good, so now it makes me wonder about the taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing, where understanding is at the very first levels of educational objectives.

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  5. This kind of design is a great tool for teachers but, in my case, when can i do it if I have 46 hours in fron of class?

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  6. I think everythink works perfectly in theory, but when it comes to real classes, it has nothing to do with the described ideal classes.
    We do have a real problem in education and a bigger one in English class. Teaching in schools, institutes or universities is completely different and we need to take some time out to really think and make differences for those contexts.

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  7. The problem with this, is time, the idea of backward design is excellent! but do we really have the time to do it? and the willingness to do it?

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