Backwards Design

Or:

How I learned to stop worrying and focus on student outcomes

There's a lot of ground to cover.

Stages of Backwards Design

1. Identify desired results
   • Program goal
   • Learning objectives
2. Determine assessment evidence
   • Mastery evaluations
   • Interactive quizzes
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction
   • Content
   • Formative assessments

(i.e. drills, mini-projects, etc)

1. Identify desired results

Program goal: Get hired as a data scientist/web developer/etc

Learning Objectives

• Learning objectives should follow the SMART model:

  • Specific: describe the knowledge and skills that a student should be able to demonstrate

  • Measurable: achievement can be measured by various assessment and evaluation methods

  • Actionable: the objective includes an action that the student takes to demonstrate the acquisition of skills or knowledge.

  • Reasonable: reflects realistic expectations for knowledge/skill acquisition within the scope of the progra

  • Time-bound: the objective is tied to a set timeframe for knowledge/skills acquisition

Learning Objectives

Students can understand variable scope.

Is this a solid learning objective?

Learning Objectives

Students can understand variable scope.

should be:

By the end of the lesson, students can create examples of differently scoped variables.

Mastery Evaluations

• Mock interview
  • Soft skills
  • Conceptual questions
  • Live coding
  • Project demo
• Capstone review

2. Determine assessment evidence

Why does this matter?

Problems with our current evaluations:

• For WEB-DEV-001: 70% of current eval questions focus on just 33% of learning objectives
• Some learning objectives aren't covered at all
• No clear path for students who don't pass the eval

New mastery evaluations will allow us to:

• Communicate to students and mentors what to expect on the eval
• Provide students with remediation resources when necessary
• Track areas of the curriculum that need to be improved

Next steps:

• Complete mastery evaluations for all bootcamp curricula
• Roll out lesson-level interactive quizzes
• Audit learning objectives for all bootcamp curricula
• Define process for content-creation by SME's