Restructuring a Science Course Using Backward Design Principles
Kathleen Archer
May 16, 2013
Summary
I describe the “backward design” method of course development which focuses intentionally on what students should know and be able to do when the course is completed. I discuss how I applied backward design principles to my course for non-science majors (Biol. 107 Plants and People), reflect on my experience and discuss how I plan to go forward.
Introduction to Backward Design
Disciplines that are fact-dense or are actively adding to their body of knowledge at great rates present a significant teaching challenge. We can attempt to cover it all for a while, but eventually there is a point at which decisions about what is most essential for students to know must be made. Biology has reached that point, and is in the midst of an important educational reform movement to make undergraduate courses focus less on the abundance of details and more on the key principles and foundational concepts. One strategy of course design aligned with this focus is called “backward design,” because it reverses the typical sequence science instructors follow in organizing a new course.
In conventional course design, the first step taken is usually to plan lectures and activities that introduce the material to students, generally material pre-selected as important by a textbook author. Students are evaluated with exams and sometimes papers or problem sets based on all of the material covered. Any fact or idea covered is fair game for a test question.
In backward design, we begin planning a course by reversing this process. First we ask, what should students know and be able to do once they have completed the course? By thinking through what is key and focusing on foundational knowledge and concepts, the abundance of detail can be pruned to manageable and learnable amounts and permit spending time on difficult ideas so that comprehension is deep. Creating a set of learning objectives is a concrete outcome from this stage.
After decisions about content comes decisions about how to evaluate what students know and can do. What level of understanding is needed? How can the students show they have acquired it? What forms of assessment best reveal what they know? This will vary with discipline and material.
When we have articulated what students should be able to do, then the learning activities that prepare the students are chosen. For some learning objectives, it may be that lecture is still an effective means to provide material they should know. For others, in-class problem solving, small group discussions, clicker questions, etc. may be best at firming up comprehension and removing misconceptions. The key is that activities are purposely selected because they serve well in helping students understand and retain the desired concepts.
Applying backward design principles to Biol. 107. Plants and People
1. What should students know and be able to do?
This course meets the science distribution requirement and is taken primarily by non-science majors. Since for many students the course would be their only exposure to science, I wanted students to understand the basic science process. Since the course is offered out of the Biology Department, I wanted it to address the most foundational concepts of biology – heredity, evolution and ecology – using plants as the vehicle. Lastly, I wanted students to acquire basic knowledge of plant biology, particularly focusing on those aspects that might be useful to them as homeowners, gardeners, and citizens. I found making decisions about what to include and what to leave out to be challenging, and expect that I will revise the topics list before the course is taught again.
I divided the course into 5 main sections, and for each created a set of learning objectives that I provided to the students. In this way I shared with them what I thought they should be able to do, and I used the learning objectives as the basis for preparing the quizzes. I found this to be really helpful to me in crafting the quiz questions – it kept me focused on the important concepts and removed any mystery about what I expected of the students.
2. How will I evaluate what they know and are able to do?
The enrollment is capped at 60, which I had to keep in mind when planning how I would assess the students. I decided to continue using quizzes as I have in the past, but added several projects that served both as learning activities (see below) and as a means of evaluation. With the quizzes, I could target important concepts and construct questions that demonstrated conceptual understanding. In addition, the projects described below as part of the learning experiences were also graded, so they served a dual purpose. I also retained a couple of projects used previously that had already functioned well in illustrating important ideas.
3. What learning experiences will best prepare the students?
I continued to use lecture as the primary in-class activity. The plant biology textbooks for non-science majors are still too focused on minute details that are not relevant for this audience, and lecture was the way I could control the level of detail. To help the students better understand how scientists collect, analyze and interpret data, I incorporated two major new activities. One was an experiment that they set up in class and then took home to their rooms to observe and make measurements. I made the collective class data available to all the students, and they were required to determine the means for each treatment at each timepoint and to create a graph of the means over time. They then were required to interpret the data and explain what the numbers meant. We had some difficulties with the experimental set- up but I think the activity has promise. I want to re-visit the specific experiment I used, but having the students collect their own quantitative data and analyze it gave them a more realistic and personal experience with the scientific process.
The second project was a month long observation of assigned plants on campus – recording information about buds, leaf out dates and flowering dates. The project illustrated the notion of observational data and gave them experience keeping precise records. The data collected was to be contributed to a citizen science site keeping track of flowering and leaf out times across the U.S. This project had the benefit of integrating material on climate change, which is affecting bloom times and leaf out times globally. The students could see how their own data collection was becoming a part of a larger and significant project. A second benefit of this project is that it forced students to examine two plants very closely for an extended period of time – something that could connect them more personally to the plants in their immediate environment and improve their awareness of the changes plants pass through in spring.
To help me know more objectively whether the students have a clearer sense of the process of science I have incorporated a pre- and post- survey on science attitudes. The students took the survey at the beginning of the course and will take it again at the end. The survey is managed independently by Dr. David Lopato at Grinnell College, who will provide me with the data once the final survey is taken and the grades are submitted.
4. The Future
I see clear advantages to articulating what students should know and be able to do, although it did take me a fair amount of time to do that. I’m already thinking about my course next fall for biology majors, and planning to implement the use of explicit learning objectives for that. I’m not sure how much I will change my assessment of learning – quizzes and exams are pretty effective – but certainly the kinds of questions I ask will focus more deliberately on key concepts and ideas. The projects I used I think have promise, but they do need some tweaking. In a more general sense, this project has made me more acutely aware of what exactly an activity is doing (or not doing) to improve the learning experience for students.
Annotated Bibliography
Allen, D., & Tanner, K. (2007). Putting the horse back in front of the cart: Using visions and decisions about high-quality learning experiences to drive course design. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 6(2), 85-89.
Allen and Tanner describe backward design and discuss a related course design strategy called integrated design.
Carlson, D. L., & Marshall, P. A. (2009). Learning the science of research, learning the art of teaching: Planning backwards in a college genetics course. Bioscience Education, 13(2009), 4.
Carlson and Marshal’s paper does a nice job of showing how they implemented backward design in a genetics course. A pragmatic approach.
Kizlik, B. (2012). Examples of Behavioral Verbs and Student Activities. http://www.adprima.com/examples.htm#Examples of Activities: Science.
A very useful site in constructing learning objectives that are action oriented. Kizlik has 4 different sets of what he calls “behavioral verbs”, one each for English, Math, Social Science, and Science.
Roth, D. (2007). Understanding by design: A framework for effecting curricular development and assessment. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 6(2), 95-97.
Roth’s paper gives a nice and brief introduction to backward design.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design, expanded 2nd edition Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 1703 North Beauregard Street, Alexandria, VA 22311-1714. Web site: http://www.ascd.org.
Wiggins and McTighe’s book is probably the best known in laying out how to use backward design. A good resource.
University of Washington (unknown). How to Write Learning Objectives. http://depts.washington.edu/eproject/objectives.htm
This website comes from the distance learning program at the University of Washington. I found it helpful in writing learning objectives.