Moving Forward in Understanding by Design

What were your desired results? Why did you choose these results? (Backward Design 1/14)

When I conduct workshops, I start by putting the key points of the presentation on the white board. Although, I generally provide the audience with a copy of my Powerpoint presentation, I find that this gives the audience a chance to know up front all of the areas that will be covered, but more importantly, it gives them time to think about how it relates to them, formulate any questions, comments or concerns that they may. This in essence is communicating the goals up front, providing them the "end result" of our time together, so that the audience understand the value of our time and what they will walk away with.

(Goals & Essential Questions 1/21 -1/28)

Recently at the F2F meeting in Orlando we had a number of sessions with our OMET professors. In each of the meetings, the expectations of the day were presented to us prior to the day’s activities. The problem was in some of the activities there was still confusion. Clearly the concept of backward design was not present. Confusion stemmed from contradictory information given by different participants in the process, of course then chaos ensues, confusion, and time wasted. Interestingly what I noticed is that some people checked out (disengaged) from the experience. I think as learners, since the goals of the experience were not clear, it distracted from the experience and ultimately the value of the experience.