Backward Design Process

The Backward Design Process

Wiggins and McTighe identify "twin sins" of traditional design as (1) engaging learners without specific purpose; and (2) attempting to cover all material related to a topic without considering its value². The missing element is intellectual goals - what do we want the audience to learn? Are there any big ideas guiding the instruction, and is there a plan to ensure that participants learn those big ideas?

Unlike killing werewolves, there's no silver bullet to ensuring that people understand what you want them to understand, but this approach is useful in that it provides a systematic and purposeful way to look at an activity, lecture, or session, to determine if it meets the goals of the learner. 

In this model we first consider the goal of the presentation: what do we want the participant to know or achieve? Secondly, how will we know that the participant has achieved the desired result? And then we plan the learning experience that we believe will facilitate achievement of the desired result.

The learning experience might be based on:

• Enabling knowledge: facts, concepts, principles; and/or
• Skills: processes, procedures, strategies

So we're selecting teaching method, topic sequence, foundational and resource materials only after we identify desired results and how those results could be assessed. If you'd like more details, there's additional information in the section presentation design principles.

The core steps for presentation design using this approach are:

1. Identify Desired results
   1. What participants should know, understand and be able to do
2. Determine acceptable evidence
   1. Identify the process by which you can establish that participants have achieved desired results
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction
   1. Build content to guide participants through the learning experience
   2. Create active learning content where possible to promote reflection and meta-cognition

This is not necessarily a linear process - more an organizing framework than a prescription, so goals and objectives could change as you go. Formulation may start at any stage of the process and clarification in one stage might inform changes to another stage. 

You might be thinking that most of your presentations that are given during a grand rounds or noon conference don't involve assessment, so that doesn't apply to you. Well, that is an easy way out, but it doesn't tell you anything about the effectiveness of those presentations. The section on linking objectives to outcomes will provide more detail, but in general,  you have at your disposal a much better way to measure outcomes than a test, reflective statement, or a "willingness to change" rating [all reasonable indirect methods to assess learning). In the professional environment, you have performance measures. 

Feel free to use this template and example: