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What is Backward Design and Alignment? Alignment and backward design are instructional
strategies paramount for successful course design.
An alignment is a condition in which all the pieces within a group or relationship work
together. Think of gears that turn together to cause the minute hand to move on a clock.
All the pieces must interlock in order for the clock to keep time.
In course design there are five pieces that must be aligned to ensure student success.
They are: learning objectives, assessments, instructional activities, resources, and course
technology. The way these five pieces work together is
referred to as alignment. The instructional strategy called backward
design stipulates the order of the alignment. Backward design focus on what students need
to learn rather than what we want to teach. If you start at the end goal, meaning you
start with what students should know and work backwards, you are assured that your students
finish your course with an understanding of what is most important for them to learn.
Once course objectives are established, you must next decide how you want to assess student's
ability to successfully complete the objective. In order for the objective and the assessment
to be aligned, they must work together. For instance, if the objective is for the learner
to be able to "demonstrate the ability to make a flaky crust," but the assessment is
a multiple-choice test, the objective is not aligned with the assessment.
Again working backwards, the third counterpart of an alignment map is the instructional activities
that prepare the student to achieve success on the assessment.
Using our pie crust example, aligned activities would be for students to weigh ingredients,
roll pie dough, etc. Because it would not prepare the student to achieve the assessment,
a misaligned activity for this particular objective would be to read an article on the
history of pies. Still working backwards, the fourth step in
our backwards alignment map is to provide resources that will help the student do the
instructional activities. For instance, in order for a student to make a flaky crust,
you may assign text to read and pie crust demonstrations to watch to prepare them to
successfully complete the activity. Lastly, if you use technology in your course,
it must also align. Using our pie crust example, technology, such as a word processing program
requiring a student to write a paper would not align with the objective. But a video
demonstration of the student making the pie would.
Now you have it... backwards design and alignment working together for quality course design.