Week 5 - Learning to Work Backwards (Instructional Design and Technology)

I found this week's readings both refreshing and very educational - and I wish I had read them as an undergrad, prior to teaching. Teachers must keep their educational goals in mind when planning instruction - and determine what skills or knowledge will be assessed before teaching the students. 

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Analogy

'Backwards Instruction' does make sense; when at a river, you know the end goal is to get across the river. 
Learning Goals: What do you need to do it? A raft. 
Assessment: How are you going to build the raft, and what makes it successful? A rubric might include the raft having wood, oars, rope, no holes, etc. 
Planning Learning Activities: Activities might include swimming lessons, raft-building classes, physics of water or geography lessons... the list goes on.

The final result: the students get across the river.

My Experience

As part of a new magnet school, I have been helping to redesign, and in many cases create, an integrated curriculum that incorporates the arts and technology into the public schools' curriculum. My arts coordinator, a former teacher with years in curriculum design, has been teaching me how this process works and assisting me in the planning. I have seen first hand how it is actually easier to plan instruction when an end goal has been determined. Instead of "I want to teach my students about tempo", backwards instruction requires the teacher to determine "I want my students to be able to differentiate between largo, moderato, and presto tempos". More concrete goals guide the planning process: "I will assess my students by giving them listening examples and asking them to show pictures of a turtle (largo), cat (moderato), and a cheetah (presto)". Then, instruction can be centered around the assessment and learning outcomes.

My undergrad program did not help guide my planning in this way. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I graduated in 2006 (many of the cited resources in these chapters seem to have been printed then or shortly thereafter) and my professors were not familiar with this style of instructional design at that time. Perhaps it is due to too much for us to learn, and not enough time to learn it... that is neither here nor there.

I have often struggled when designing instruction - my first few years teaching general music were simply survival mode, planning activities more than long-term lessons or units. As my teaching has evolved, I have of course developed units of study for each grade. From this year forward, I imagine I will be using more of a backward design model when planning teaching. It is an adjustment - but once you get the hang of it, it is much easier. 

Criticism 

This does sometimes feel a little bit like 'teaching to the test'. There has been recent push back against so much standardized testing, blaming teachers on teaching only the materials and skills that are on the test. But as long as we, as teachers, make sure to teach skills or concepts that will make the students well rounded musicians and critically-thinking learners, I believe that this method of instruction will not only make our teaching more efficient, it will allow us to make the best use of our limited instructional time.