Understanding By Design (UbD)

Understanding By Design (UbD) is a framework developed by two educators, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, to assist educators with designing effective curriculum based on their “backward design.” It is used in over 400 school districts and used by over 500,000 educators. It is supported by a book, workbook, and websites. (Grant Wiggins 2004)
UbD is based on three stages of “backward design.” The first stage , Identify Desired Results, suggests the development of clear goals’ and focuses on your desired results. The second stage, Determine Acceptable Evidence, focuses on the evidence needed to assess the information you want your students to gain. The third stage, Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction Accordingly, prepares educators to instruct their students for optimal understanding and develops learning activities.
This framework avoids starting at the beginning of the textbook and trying to cover the entire material straight to the end of the book. Instead, the focus is finding the most valuable content you want your students to learn, incorporate real life experiences, and then develop your activities last.
This Understanding by Design model suggests that in order to develop your curriculum, you should first ask yourself the following three questions: 1) What should students hear, read, view, explore or otherwise encounter? 2) What knowledge and skills should your students master? 3) What are “big ideas” and “important understandings” students should retain?
Wiggins and McTighe also suggest seeking feedback from students and complete regular reviews of the curriculum to increase its effectiveness. The goal is to have students really understand the content instead of just memorizing material and forgetting about it later. They provide a suggestions to help students not to forget the material they may need to apply real world applications.
According to Wiggins and McTighe, “By actively evaluating our work against established criteria, we make it far more likely that learners engage, learn, and achieve at high levels that they understand by design, not by good luck.”
For additional information, worksheets and examples for download check out the following websites: www.ascd.org/downloads or www.ascd.org.