Blog about stage 1 and 2 of backward design for your moodle project

Read the resources on backward design in week 6, especially the backward design process and the backward design template.

By Feb. 24th, I'd like you to post to your moodle blog with your answers to the questions asked in stages 1 & 2 of the backward design template: 1) Identify Desired Results and 2) Determine Acceptable Evidence (assessment).  You can paraphrase/combine the questions if you like, you don't have to follow the template exactly.

The Understanding by Design Workbook has some examples of how the Backward Design Template can be filled out, and I'll be discussing this in the video for week 6.

Stage One of Backward Design

Stage one is about big ideas. Why is it important to learn the topic you picked? What's the "big idea"? This is not the same thing as a learning objective. It isn't about what you are covering, it is about why this is important to learn. Often the curriculum standards are helpful in understanding this (see lists of standards below), or speaking with an expert, or finding out what misconceptions people have about a topic, which I asked you to in the Topic for your moodle project assignment.

If you were not able to find a topic with misconceptions, or you do not have a conceptual topic (it shouldn't be something that can just be memorized or just be a procedure to be followed), you can still change your topic before we begin work on the project.

Here are some sites that lists standards - if you can find a standard that matches your topic, and it expresses a 'big idea', that is validation of the importance/need for your topic area, and answers stage 1 of backward design:

• McREL compendium of standards
• K-12 standards
• National Educational Technology Standards
• AECT standards
• ISPI standards
• usually each professional industry has its own set of standards

If you are doing a topic for your current job, that is fine, just try to explain why it is important to learn or if there are guidelines or standards that it follows.

Stage Two of Backward Design - Assessment

This second part involves pre-planning how you will assess student understanding in your moodle module.  It should be linked to what you discussed in the first stage.

See What is backward design, Six facets of understanding, and the Understanding by Design workbook for some guidance & examples.

If you did come up with a topic for which there are misconceptions, it shouldn't be so hard - you'll want to think of an assessment activity that would reveal if students have the misconceptions or not.  Often this might be a quiz, for example, or something students write or create.

Here are some examples of assessment activities / techniques that you could do in moodle:

• Moodle quiz - it does multiple choice, or written answers, or matching and so forth
  • The quiz might be given as a pre-test to see what misconceptions students have coming into the course, or as a post-test (or both), or the questions might be more embedded in the activities or after each activity.
• Come up with a rubric to evaluate something the students do - it might be something they write like a wiki page or blog post or discussion forum, or something the students create, some project they do.
• The students might do a self-assessment or written assessment in their blog or whatever - asking them to explain or interpret or apply something (see the six facets of understanding).