Understanding By Design
Ill-structured
A term used to describe a question, problem, or task that lacks a recipe or obvious formula to answer or solve it.
Standardized
A term used to describe a test or assessment in which the administrative conditions and protocol are uniform for all students.
Open-ended question
A term used to describe tasks or questions that do not lead to a single right answer.
Indirect test
A test that measures performance out of its normal context.
Facet, facet of understanding
A way in which a person's understanding manifests itself.
WHERETO
W- Where is the work headed? H- Hook the student. E- Explore and Equip R - Rethink and revise E - Evaluate understanding. T - Tailor the work to maximum interest and achievement. O - Organize and sequence the learning for maximal engagement and effectiveness, given the desired results.
Design Standards
Used to evaluate the quality of unit designs. Dual purpose to guide self-assessment and peer reviews to idenitify design strengths and needed improvements, and to prove mechanism for quality control, a means of validating curricular designs.
Project
A complex set of intellectual challenges, typically occuring over lengthy periods of time.
Rubric
A criterion-based scoring guide that enables judges to make reliable judgements about student work and enables students to self-assess
Template
A guide for designers.
Concept
A mental construct or category represented by a word or phrase. Including tangible objects and abstract ideas.
Leading Question
A question used to teach, clarify, or assess for knowledge.
Holistic Scoring
A representation of an overall impression of the quality of a performance or product.
Portfolio
A representative collection of one's work
Entry Question
A simple, thought-provoking question that opens a lesson or unit.
Desired Result
A specific educational goal or achievement target.
Coverage
A teaching approach that superficially teaches and tests content knowledge irrespective of student understanding or engagement. Has a negative connotation.
Explanation
Able to explain why it is so, not just state the facts.
Self-knowledge
Accuracy of self-assessment and awareness of biases in one's understanding because of favored styles of inquiry, habitual ways of thinking, and unexamined beliefs.
Sampling
All unit and test design involves the act of ___ from a vast domain of possible knowledge, skills, and tasks.
Backwards design
An approach to designing a curriculum or unit that begins with the end in mind and designs toward the end.
Authentic assessment
An assessment composed of performance tasks and activities designed to stimulate or replicate important real-world challenges. Realistic performance based testing - asking the student to use knowledge in real-world ways, with genuine purposes, audiences, and situational variables.
Scoring scale
An equally divided continuum (number line) used to evaluating performance.
Understanding
An insight into ideas, people, situations, and processes manifested in various appropriate performances.
Stage 2
Evidence
Longitudinal assessment
Assessment of the same performances over numerous times, using a fixed scoring continuum to track progress toward a standard.
Curriculum
Explicit and comprehensive plan developed to honor a framework based on content and performance standards.
Prerequisite knowledge and skill
The knowledge and skill required to successfully perform a culminating performance task or achieve a targeted understanding.
Stage 1
Desired Results
Benchmark
In an assessment system, a developmentally appropriate standard; sometimes called a "milepost" standard. For example, many district wide systems set these for 4,8, 10, and 12. They provide further concrete indicators for the standards. - they serve as sub-standards.
Reliability
In measurement and testing, the accuracy of the score
Standard
Is to question how well the student must perform, at what kind of tasks, based on what content, to be considered proficient or effective.
Stage 3
Learning Plan
Concepts
Overarching understandings are derived from
Anchors
Samples of work or performance used to set the specific performance standard for each level of a rubric.
Performance Task
Task that uses one's knowledge to effectively act or bring a fruition a complex product that reveals one's knowledge and expertise.
Empathy
The ability to "walk in anothers' shoes"
Perspective
The ability to see other plausible points of view
Transferability
The ability to use knowledge appropriately and fruitfully in a new or different context from that in which it was initially learned.
Bloom's Taxonomy
The common name of a system that classifies and clarifies the range of possible intellectual objectives, from cognitively easy to the difficult.
Process
The intermediate steps the student takes in reaching the final performance or end-product specified by the assessment.
Criteria
The qualities that must be met for work to measure up to a standard. "What should we look for when examining students' products or performances to know if they were successful? How will we determine acceptable work?"
Product
The tangible and stable result of a performance and the processes that led to it.
Application
Time-honored indicator of understanding. The ability to apply knowledge and skill in diverse situations provides important evidence of the learner's understanding.
Interpretation
To find meaning, significance, sense, or value in human experience, data, and texts.
Design
To plan the form and structure of something or the pattern or motif a work of art.
Assess
To thoroughly and methodically analyze student accomplishment against specific goals and criteria
Big Ideas
Transferable beyond the scope of a particular unit. They are the building blocks of materials for understanding. They can be thought of as the meaningful patterns that enable one to connect the dots of otherwise fragmented knowledge.
Outcome
desired result
Resultant knowledge and skill
knowledge and skill that are meant to result from a unit of study.