Backwards design

This is one post in a collection of six, detailing different steps in course planning. See the main Course planning post for links to each of the stages.

Learning design often uses what is called "backwards design". In Set the outcomes, we talked about how we begin with the end in mind by setting the goals. 

1. Goals - What will learners be able to do at the end of the course?

For backwards design, once we've got the goals, the tracing backward continues.

2. Assessment - How can learners show that they have achieved these goals?

3. Practice - What practice/tasks will learners need to prepare for the assessment and allow for feedback?

4. Content - What are the "need to know" concepts?

So, what does this look like in practice?

Here are some common questions we hear when people are thinking about designing a course.

• What topics should we cover?
• What order should the topics go in? What should we start with?
• What do we need to teach to make sure they can pass the assessment?
• What activities should we put in to make sure learners don’t get bored?

However, starting with questions about content tends to focus on the transmission of information. We want to focus on learning.

Here’s what to ask instead.

• What topics should we cover? > What do we want learners to be able to do? (Learning outcomes)
• What order should the topics go in? What should we start with? > What will learners already be able to do that we can build on? (Prior knowledge)
• What do we need to teach to make sure they can pass the assessment? > If learners can do xyz by the end of the course, what does that look like? How will we know they can do those things? (Assessment)
• What activities should we put in to make sure learners don’t get bored? > What practice will learners need before they can show us they can do these things? (Formative assessment)

Now that we’ve talked a bit about the overall process, let’s dive into each part in more detail.

Note: This article assumes you’ve already set the course goals. If you haven’t already, please check out Course planning - Set the outcomes and then pop back.

Assessment

Once you have defined your goals/outcomes, it's time to think about how your learners will be able to show they've met these outcomes.

The good news is, if you've managed to write really good outcomes the assessment falls right out. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Outcome: At the end of this course, learners will be able to describe the carbon cycle between land, oceans, living things and human activities.
Assessment: Learners describe the carbon cycle between land, oceans, living things and human activities (could be described pictorially, textually, or verbally).

Outcome: At the end of this course, learners will be able to use active listening within a workplace mentoring relationship.
Assessment: Video, audio or transcript of active listening being used with a colleague. 

If you find your outcomes don't easily lead to how learners can show they know. Look again at your outcome and ask:

• What does success look like for my learners?
• What can they do?
• Does my outcome match my idea of success?

For instance, in the case of active listening, perhaps some evidence that learners can use active listening would be that they can write about what they did in a conversation with a colleague that showed they were actively listening. 

So if your assessment isn’t obvious from the outcome, pop back to Course planning - Set the outcomes to try to refine your outcomes a tad more.

Practice

After outlining an assessment, it’s time to think about how you can allow learners to practise the skills and concepts in the assessment and get some early feedback on low stakes activities.

We find Bloom’s taxonomy a useful model to use.

Just find the level of your outcome, then create practice tasks from the levels below and up to the same level as your outcome.

For example, if our assessment is to critique a weekly food plan. We see that this fits with the evaluate level. So, we could use these sorts of activities from the different levels.

Analyse

• Break a given diet up into the proportions of different food groups.
• Suggest improvements to a given diet.

Apply

• Give examples of foods that belong to a particular food group.
• Comment on an example food plan to say whether it is balanced or not.
• Write or present a “day in the life of” to show someone following a balanced diet.
• Predict what would happen for a particular unbalanced diet.

Understand

• Make a food pyramid (or similar) to show what a balanced diet it made of.
• Explain why you should eat more of one food group than another.
• Explain why amounts from each food group are needed for a balanced diet.

Remember

• Quick knowledge check questions on how often a particular food group should be eaten in a day.
• Match foods to the groups they belong to.
• Put food groups in order of what should be eaten most often.

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What you might notice is that the borders between these levels can blur easily. That's okay. Just ask yourself:

• What are the key skills learners need to practice?
• If a learner can do this assessment, what other (slightly easier) things can they also do? 

Use this activities that align with assessment sheet as a handy prompt when you're stuck for ideas. Even if you don't use the exact activity, hopefully it acts as a launching point for other creative ideas.

Or for more learning, check out our blog Many ways with tasks and our accompanying iQualify Skills course - Beyond multiple choice. In it you’ll look at a method for coming up with a range of task ideas from a single outcome. The course is chock full of example tasks which hopefully act as a springboard for your own creative ideas.

Content

After assessment and practice tasks comes content. This is where we ask:

• What do we need to teach or show learners to complete the practice tasks and assessment? 
• What are the key concepts they need to know?
• What resources will they need?

Notice in Practice we asked: “What are the key skills they need to be able to do?”
And in Content we ask: “What are the key concepts they need to know?”

This is an important distinction.

As we mentioned when we first introduced backwards design, this way of doing things means you're only including the "need to know". We don't want to over burden learners with things that won't actually help them complete the assessment.

So, let's say we decided to include all of the practice activities above to get our learners ready for their assessment.

What content would we need to cover? What would our "big rocks" be?

Here's what we think we'd need to cover:

• Foods belong to different groups.
• These are the kinds of foods within each group.
• By “balanced” diets we mean certain proportions from each group.
• This is how much of each group you should have in a “balanced” diet.

Notice how these are “principles” rather than “topics”. Again, leading with big ideas/principles is another way to avoid the content/topic trap.

The last step - Alignment

The very last step in backwards design is the most important - alignment. Once you've got your assessment, practice activities and content, you need to check they actually align. In other words, does the content give them enough information to try out the practice activities? Will the practice actually help them to achieve the assessment?

Here's an example of alignment:

• Content: How much of each group you should have in a balanced diet.
• Practice: Put food groups in order of what should be eaten most often.
• Assessment: Create a food pyramid that shows the right balance of food types.

Here's an example of misalignment:

• Content: The kinds of foods in each group.
• Practice: Match food to the different groups they belong with.
• Assessment: Create a balanced diet plan for a week.

In this misalignment example, the content would give them enough information to do the practice, but knowing which foods belong to which group doesn't directly lead to learners being about to create a balanced diet plan. A better-aligned assessment would be: Create a presentation or infographic showing which foods are in which groups.

Note: You are allowed to have more than one content or practice item to reach an assessment. But, breaking it down to very specific assessment tasks can make reaching alignment much easier.

A template to use

We’ve created a Backward design template you can use to record your outcomes, assessment, practice tasks, and then check for alignment. And if you get stuck, it has the questions prompts from this blog right there in the right hand column to help get you unstuck. 

What next?

Often, because this step is relatively detailed, it tends to be finished off after you've identified your audience, defined the flavour and set the outcomes. So if you've not done any of those, dive in and get started.

If you've have already done those steps - check that everything matches up:

• Is your assessment proof that your learners have met the goal?
• Does your content and activities you've got planned follow the flavour you defined?
• Do the activities and way you've decided to present the content match up to what you said your audience's needs were?
• Is the assessment open enough to allow a variety of learner experiences?

Once you've checked that everything lines up, you're probably ready to set the finer details of setting the style.