Instructional design/Backward Design/Selecting the Evidence

Selecting the Evidence

Even when designing backwards it is important to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning. In addition to offering multiple opportunities, it is also necessary to provide multiple methods for the students to demonstrate their learning. Providing multiple methods and multiple opportunities for the students to demonstrate their learning reduces the chance students will be unable to demonstrate what they have learned. For example, if a test is the only form of assessment, students who have test anxiety or those who may have studied different material will be adversely impacted because they are not prepared. Another example would be relying solely on a project because some students may have difficulty understanding the scope of the project and may not be able to fully demonstrate what they have learned.

In the previous example of the Health and Wellness class, with the goal of: Students will apply their knowledge of healthy practices to develop and track their own personal health goal, it would be possible to develop several different forms of evidence of student learning. The evidence the students could create would be a health journal they could use to track their progress of their goal. The students could include things such as exercise logs, food logs, even emotional logs to identify different times of stress and other emotional factors. The journal could also include periodic reflections of how the different factors impacted their progress and any changes they need to make in the future to reach their goal.

Knowledge Check

Given the previous Personal Finance goal of Students will use their knowledge to manage money effectively by developing financial goals and budgets. Which of the following forms of evidence would not be useful as evidence of student learning?

	Identifying the negative impact of bankruptcy.
	Creating a plan for saving for retirement.
	Identifying a short-term financial goal and tracking their progress towards reaching it.
	Creating and maintaining a budget.

Navigation

• Stages of Backward Design
• Selecting the Goals
• Selecting the Evidence
• Selecting the Activities
• Summary
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