Understanding By Design Stage #2
Smart Learning Objectives
|
By the end of the session you should be able to:
1. Explain why understanding can be demonstrated by explaining, interpreting, applying, using perspective, demonstrating empathy and having self-knowledge. 2. Summarise why autonomy is necessary to fully demonstrate understanding. 3. Explain how developing criteria to assess a student's work benefits both the instructor and the learner. 4. Compare a holistic rubric with an analytical one. 5. Give examples of how you can judge a product by the following four criteria: impact, content, quality and process. 6. Explain the characteristics that would make an assessment "authentic". 7. Make use of the GRASP framework to evaluate a task. 8. Explain why it is impossible to develop authentic assessments for every goal in a lesson. |
Summary of UbD Stage 2: Looking for Evidence of Learning
The second stage of the UbD curriculum planner developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2011) involved developing assessments to be able to demonstrate understanding of the learning goals using six facets of understanding. Since rote memorization or demonstration of factual knowledge or skills is not the goal here, we need to develop assessments that show that students are able to take the learning that they have done in our courses and apply it in new and novel situations. They can demonstrate this by either applying their knowledge to practical real world problems or applying an abstract concept in a practical way (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
|
Wiggins and McTighe (2011) have proposed six facts of understanding that can be used to demonstrate understanding: the ability to explain, to interpret, to apply and adjust, to have perspective, to show empathy and to demonstrate self-knowledge. All of these facets do not need to be used in a single assessment and, unlike Bloom's criteria, there is no hierarchy (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
|
|
The ultimate goal is for the teacher to set the goals for the course, which are the big ideas, teach the skills and knowledge needed to have a background to work on these goals, ask essential questions that students will work with to develop understanding and then have the student be able to transfer this understanding outside the classroom and be able to apply it. This process can start with teacher involvement, but the goal is autonomy of the student (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
|
|
Wiggins and McTighe (2011) suggest that in order to develop these effective assessments, criterion based evaluations should be used. These criterion should reflect back to the goals of the unit as well as the standards and competencies identified in UbD part 1. Having transparent criteria make the performance goals obvious to everyone involved and allow the student to self-assess their progress as they work through the assessment. Teachers can benefit as well because areas that are unclear or do not map back to the goals will become more obvious. Wiggins and McTighe (2011) advocate for four types of criteria: impact, content, quality and process. These criteria will be used to determine how effective the product was at reaching its goal, whether the content was accurate and complete, the quality of the work and whether the design was appropriate for the task. A rubric can then be developed based on these criterion to provide feedback to the student. All the criterion should be evaluated, but an emphasis should be placed on impact (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
In addition to stressing the alignment of the course and the need for transparent criterion for assessment, Wiggins and McTighe (2011) feel that authentic tasks that are valid measures of understanding are imperative. They feel that an authentic task will feel most "real" and valuable to the student. They used the acronym GRASPS to lay out the composite parts of the tasks. The G is for a real world goal, the R is for the student role in the project, the A is for the audience, S is for the situation which has a real world application, the P is the product the student generates and their performance in the task and finally the second S is for the standards that will be used to judge the success of the student's attempt (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
Peer Instruction
Dr. Erik Mazur (2011) has taken the concepts that understanding and the ability to transfer information and applied them to a learning method he and his colleagues have developed called peer instruction. He said that the usual assessment of the success of a teacher and his course is comprised of their end-of-term evaluation and the final exam. Using those measures, he felt his teaching of introductory physics to pre-med students was successful.
When he was introduced to a 29 question assessment on force physics that was based on conceptual application of physics as opposed to rote memorization, he found that his class was no better or worse than any other. Students were taught procedures and formulas and applied them successfully to the 75% of the problems that fit into this cookbook method, but were unable to do so when they did not.
When he was introduced to a 29 question assessment on force physics that was based on conceptual application of physics as opposed to rote memorization, he found that his class was no better or worse than any other. Students were taught procedures and formulas and applied them successfully to the 75% of the problems that fit into this cookbook method, but were unable to do so when they did not.
|
Over a series of courses, he tried just lecturing, providing notes at the end of class, and providing notes at the beginning of class, none of which seemed to work. He then tried pausing after asking a question and allowing the students to discuss it amongst themselves. This worked and it worked well. Why? When you are learning something new it is much easier for you to recognize conceptual difficulties than it is for someone who is so well acquainted with the material that they cannot understand why a learner would have difficulty with it. Eric Mazur demonstrated continuing success with this method. He determined that final exam scores, as a demonstration of learning, steadily improved as long as the "peer instruction" questions were carefully chosen to be hard enough to stimulate conversation, but easy enough that at least 50% of the class got it right and could explain it to their peers (uwaterloo, 2011).
|
|
Stage 2 Template Overview
Stage 2 of the UbD template starts with performance tasks. These tasks must map back to all of the transfer and understanding goals. These performance tasks should demonstrate that the student truly understands the "big ideas" of the course. This section also includes the criterion which will be used to assess these performance tasks.
The next section is for all of the other evaluative methods. These can be mapped back to the meaning and transfer goals as well as the knowledge and skill goals. This difference between these assessments and the ones in the earlier section is that they may assess factual knowledge and skills that will be a foundation for the understanding that will come later.
The last section of Stage 2 of the UbD framework is the grading rubric you will use to assess that understanding of the "big ideas" has taken place.
UbD Template Form
Video Explaining UbD Stage 2 Template
Below is a video explaining the importance of Stage 2 in the UbD template as well as information on how to complete the template.
UbD Stage 2 Assessment Quiz
References
University of Waterloo. (2011, January, 7). Eric Mazur: Memorization or understanding: are we teaching the right thing?. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnDLFnbGOo#t=20
Wiggins, G. P., and McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Wiggins, G and McTighe J (2012). The understanding by design guide to advanced concepts in creating and reviewing units (2nd
ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Publishing.
Wiggins, G. P., and McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Wiggins, G and McTighe J (2012). The understanding by design guide to advanced concepts in creating and reviewing units (2nd
ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Publishing.
