Athena Rayne Anderson

What’s the simplest thing you can do to improve your learning units? Go backwards!

You’re confused. It’s normal. Let me explain…

Backwards Design is a strategy for creating learning units that begins where most educators end: with the Learning Objectives.

Learning units are whatever you’re teaching or training from which you want people to learn something: a single lecture session in a semester-long course, an hour-long public seminar, a 2-hour employee training, etc.

Sadly, few people have heard of Backwards Design, and even fewer actually use it. This is unfortunate, because it guides you through each component of a learning unit and leaves you with an efficient and effective product. You don’t waste your time creating something that won’t be effective, and you don’t subject your learners to yawn-inducing boredom.

How Does it Work?

Start with your end goal: what do you want your learners to know when they finish your unit? From there, you design your assessments, then activities, then choose the content that aligns with all the previous components.

Learning Unit Components & Development Order

The things you want people to learn are your Learning Objectives (LOs). Keep your list of LOs to no more than 5, because people tend to get lost with too many to think about. You can usually condense multiple topics into one LO by rephrasing so it’s broader.

As you think about your LOs, you also need to consider the types of assessments available to you. For instance, do you only have time/staff/interest for an auto-graded multiple choice quiz? Do you have the ability to grade written submissions? Could you grade a presentation or demonstration from your learners? Your LOs must align with the types of assessments available. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to write an LO that requires learners to discuss when the only assessment type available or practical is the auto-graded multiple choice quiz. Learners cannot discuss something through multiple choice questions.

Once you’ve set your LOs and assessment methods, you decide on any number of activities. The point of an activity is to give the learner practice using the content so they can succeed on the assessments, and therefore achieve the LOs. Activities can be all kinds of things, from worksheets, to book reports, to skits, discussions, debates, portfolios, etc.

Once you’ve created your LOs, and assessments to measure success with the LOs, then chosen your activities… THEN you decide on the content of your unit.

Of all the Instructional Design strategies and models, Backwards Design is my favorite, because it reduces wasted time and guides you through creation of an effective and efficient learning unit.

Want to learn more? Stay tuned for future blog posts and the launch of my book, Simple Instructional Design, which covers these topics in detail.

Featured image by Monty Allen on Unsplash