UBD Stage #3

By the end of the session you should be able to:
1. Describe the purpose of stage 3 curriculum design
2. Design whether an activity is acquisition, meaning making or to facilitate transfer.
3. Discuss some possible ways to differentiate your curriculum's content, process or outcome.
4. Discuss both your role and your reviewer's role in the feedback process.
5. Clearly diagram the organization of your unit so it is easy to follow and reproducible.
6. Contrast the teaching methods used in the acquisition stage, the meaning making stage and the transfer stage of the unit.
7. Explain why learning is an active process not a passive process.
8. Contrast the process of covering content with the process of uncovering content.

In the third stage of the UbD template you will develop your learning plan keeping in mind alignment with the learning goals developed in stage 1 and the assessments developed in stage 2. Stage 1 and 2 are designed and written for and by the instructor. Stage 3 is written by the instructor for the student. Wiggins and McTighe (2012) suggest that all learning goals should be engaging and effective. An engaging assignment or assessment will keep a student interested and thinking throughout the class period. Rote memorization, passive learning and completing worksheets are not engaging work. Effective assignments are ones that lead to better understanding and the ability to transfer these understandings outside of the classroom or apply them in a more abstract way (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

In order to facilitate the design of engaging and effective educational experiences, Wiggins and McTighe developed a helpful acronym:
W- The question words: Where and why? Where are we headed as far as understandings and where have we come from? Why do we need these understandings? Students are much more likely to achieve if they understand, why and how they are going to learn something.
H- In order to develop an engaging assignment there needs to be a hook to hold on to the student's interest.
E- In order for students to most effectively understand and make meaning of their learning and transfer it effectively we need to equip them with the appropriate knowledge and skills and provide experiences that will scaffold them as they make leaps in understanding.

R- The final product is more valuable if it is nor really final. Give students effective and informative feedback and allow them to rethink, revise and reflect based on that feedback.
E- In order to become a life long learner, learners need to develop effective metacognition skills. They must be able to evaluate themselves in terms of academic strengths and weaknesses as well as the depth of their understandings.
T- All learners do not have the same skills and backgrounds, an effective instructor will tailor the learning plan so that it can meet the different levels of understanding of the learners, with an ultimate goal that all learners make meaning and meet the understanding goals as well as be evaluated with equivalent assessment criteria.
O- Organize the learning so that it has a natural progression, makes sense to the learner and leads to understandings (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

There are three distinct types of learning:
Acquisition: These are the facts and skills that the student needs to acquire in order to be prepared for higher stages of learning. Teaching these facts and skills can be in the most efficient way possible.
Meaning-making: In this stage the learner intellectually wrestles with the information they have learned. They learn to categorize this content and determine its implications. Students will form theories that they intellectually test to form connections and patterns.
Transfer: after the learner has made sense of their learning content, they learn learn to apply it to circumstances other than ones in which they originally learned it. In this stage the teacher serves as a coach and gives feedback to the student as they work autonomously (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

Wiggins and McTighe (2012) suggest coding all of the learning activities as A, M or T and they give a list of verbs that instructors can use when writing their learning goals to aid in putting them in the correct category.

Since the ability to transfer is the ultimate goal of UbD course design there are a number of suggestions made by Wiggins and McTighe (2012) to aid in this process. Learners should practice using multiple skills simultaneously with coaching and feedback from the instructor. Students should be encouraged to make use of all of their prior knowledge and constantly relearn, reword and rephrase their understandings.

Differentiating Learning:
As mentioned above the focus of stage 3 is the learner. It helps to think of a class as individual students instead of as a group. Each individual comes to the class with his/her own educational background, goals and skills. It is not practical, nor suggested, to differentiate all aspects of the curriculum. The learning goals should stay the same for all students, but the acquisition knowledge needed and the assessments used to determine competencies may vary. Pre-Assessments can be used to determine student strengths and weaknesses prior to starting a unit. Carol Ann Tomlinson (1999) suggests that instructors can differentiate the content used, the way the students will work with that content and the expected product of their work. An instructor can use the students readiness or background and their learning profile to help guide the need for differentiation (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

Organizing the Learning:
One of the most important aspects of curriculum design is planning the curriculum so it makes sense to the learners. You should evaluate your lesson plan to verify for yourself that it will cause the students to become engaged and will lead to understanding.

The unit is not completed when it is written. You will want to seek feedback from your peers as well as experts in the field to make sure your unit makes sense and it is easy for another educator to follow. During the lesson you will closely watch to make sure that your lesson is meeting your goals for the students as well as seek feedback from the students as they work. Finally you will base the success of you lesson plan on the success of your students since their ability to make meaning and understand content is the reason you developed the lesson plan (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

Just like it is nice to know where you are going on a trip, it is nice for students to know where the unit is headed and why is it headed that way. If students have a clear goal for their learning and it has value to them, they will be much more motivated to pursue the goal. In the goals section instructors will list the SMART learning objectives for the students. These goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, results and time focused. In the next section, the instructor will clearly let the students know how these understanding will benefit them in their life and career and the last section will clearly define the information they are expected to come to the unit with, the information they will leave the unit with and any misconceptions that may be identified along the way (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

Students don't usually start a new unit excited and ready to begin. The instructor will need to get their attention and then hold that attention. Suggested ways of grabbing their attention include: challenging questions, stories, personal connections, and contrasting perspectives or points of view. Technology can be used to aid in getting student attention (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

If you will recall, one of the temptations we are trying to avoid is "covering a unit or a textbook" instead we want students to discover or uncover the material themselves. In this section the instructor will list the experiences that are likely to aid the student in doing this. These experiences should allow the student to make meaning from the content and then be equipped to transfer this information to other settings and scenarios (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

Each time a student recalls information it will be stored in the brain in a slightly different way. This is why our memories change over time. As the unit progresses and the student has more experiences and gathers more perspectives, they should rethink and reformulate their understandings. These revisions should not be considered a summative product, but instead, a path to understanding that deepens over time and with reflection (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

Autonomy and life-long self learning is the goal. Your goals as an instructor is to help students learn to assess their own strengths and weaknesses instead of relying on you to do so. Metacognition is the process of reflecting on your own thinking. Encourage students to seek feedback from others and then take the time to reflect on this feedback and use it to self-evaluate their progress (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

In order for your curriculum to fit all of your learners it must be slightly tailored to fit the different needs, interests and abilities of the learners. On the other hand, not everything in the curriculum should be differentiated, you have set learning goals and all students should strive to reach them. They may need slightly different paths to the goal. Carol Ann Tomlinson feels that the curriculum can be differentiated by altering the content, by allowing a different learning process, by allowing different products to be developed and through a personalized learning environment. The instructor can assess the student's readiness to learn through pretests and work with the student's learning profile to develop these modifications (Tomlinson, 1999).

As you plan your lesson plan, you will need to constantly check to make sure that it is aligned with the goals in stage 1 and the assessments in stage 2. You will want to make sure that the plan makes sense to the learners and will most effectively lead to their ability to uncover the content and make meaning from it. Some things to consider are, do you intend to: help your students develop habits of mind and/or develop their technology skills? Habits of mind are problem solving skills that will help your learners more effectively operate in society. They are the life skills that people learn in a number of different settings. As an instructor you need to determine if it is your goal and responsibility to incorporate them into your content. (Costa & Kallick, 2009). Students use technology, but how strong are their technology skills other than texting and posting? Consider if your unit will help them develop more academically oriented technology skills. In addition, how will you, as the instructor, use technology in the classroom and to analyze your students results. These results will lead to further modification and tailoring of your curriculum (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2009). Learning and leading with habits of mind: 16 essential characteristics for success. Alexandria:
Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. (1999) The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

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.

Understanding By Design Stage #3