Understanding by design (UbD) is a theory developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe for educational planning based on ‘teaching for understanding’.

1. UNDERSTANDING
BY DESIGN (UbD)
Prepared by: ArnelI. Salting
Emerson Capa
Camille Cacho

3. UNDERSTANDING BY
DESIGN
• Understanding by design (UbD) is a theory
developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
for educational planning based on ‘teaching for
understanding’.

4. • They wrote a book with the same
name ‘Understanding by Design’,
published by the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum
Development in 1998.
• The key terms of the UbD are
‘backward design’, understanding ,
‘six facets of understanding’,
performance assessments, design
meaningful curriculum and instruction.

5. UNDERSTANDING BY
DESIGN
• Its ultimate aim is
 to increase students’ achievement and
 the teachers are regarded as the designers of the
students’ learning.
• According to Wiggins and McTighe, it is a framework
for;
 designing curriculum and
 instructions to engage students in exploring and
 to deep their understanding of important ideas, the
content you teach, and also
 designing performance assessments to reveal the extent of
their understanding.

6. • Wiggins and McTighe have played important
roles in the growth and maturation of
performance assessment.
• They have seemed as source of hope in the field
of education, especially performance assessment,
curriculum and instruction when the field of
education had troubled times because of the
inadequacy of tests used to assess student
learning.

7. Following consideration when
designing and delivering
instruction UbD in classroom:
A. Students learn best when they actively construct meaning
through experience-based learning activities.
B. A student's culture, experiences, and previous knowledge
(i.e., cognitive schema) shape all new learning.
C. Learning depends on three dominant brain functions:
 (1) an innate search for meaning and purpose when learning;
 (2) an ongoing connection between emotion and cognition,
including a tendency to slip into lower brain functions and
structures when threatened; and
 (3) an innate predisposition to find patterns in the learning
environment, beginning with wholes rather than parts.

8. D. Learning is heavily situated; students' application and
transfer of learning to new situations and contexts does
not occur automatically. Teachers must help students to
scaffold knowledge and skills; they plan for transfer by
helping the learner move from modeling to guided
practice to independent application.
E. Knowing or being able to do something does not
guarantee that the learner understands it.
F. Students learn best when studying a curriculum that
replaces simple coverage with an in-depth inquiry and
with independent application experiences.
G. Students benefit from a curriculum that cues them into
big ideas, enduring understandings, and essential questions.

9. How it does explain the
meaning of curriculum and
assessment?
• Curriculum
 is more than the content of courses (syllabus) and stating the
topics and materials, it focuses on the activities, assignments
and assessments are used in order to achieve intended learning
outcomes.
• Assessment
 determining to what extent students understand, depend on
stated learning outcomes, collecting evidence about
understanding. It is not only formal assessment like end of the
teaching tests. Both informal and formal assessment during a
course including observations, performance tasks and projects,
dialogues, traditional tests and quizzes and also self-
assessments of the students about their own learning
experiences.

10. Continuum of assessment
methods
Informal checks for
understanding
Observation& Dialogue
Quiz & Test
Academic prompt
Performance task & Project

11. How it does explain the
meaning of
understanding?
• The starting point of them is Bloom’s Taxonomy in Cognitive
Domain. Bloom classified the range of possible intellectual
objectives (learning outcomes) from the cognitively easy to the
difficult. Each level requires different thinking skills.

12. How it does explain the
meaning of
understanding?
In Bloom’s Taxonomy ‘understanding
(comprehension)’ is the second level and Bloom
refers to ‘understanding’ as a commonly sought but
ill-defined objective.
To start with Bloom’s Taxonomy, Wiggins and
McTighe said that ‘‘Knowing the facts and doing
well on tests of knowledge do not mean that we
understand.’’
They regarded this misconception as a universal
problem and to solve this problem they have
developed a multifaceted view of mature
understanding. (Six Facets of Understanding)

13. 6 facets of UbD

14. Six facets of understanding
According to Wiggins and McTighe, when we truly understand,
we can explain, can interpret, can apply, have perspective, can
empathize and finally have self-knowledge so for a complete
and mature understanding all of these six facets are required.

15. 1. Explanation: The ability to demonstrate, derive, describe,
design, justify, or prove something using evidence.
2. Interpretation: The creation of something new from learned
knowledge, including the ability to critique, create analogies
and metaphors, draw inferences, construct meaning, translate,
predict, and hypothesize.
3. Application: The ability to use learned knowledge in new,
unique, or unpredictable situations and contexts, including the
ability to build, create, invent, perform, produce, solve, and test.
4. Perspective: The ability to analyze and draw conclusions about
contrasting viewpoints concerning the same event, topic, or
situation.

16. 5. Empathy: The capacity to walk in another's
shoes, including participating in role-play,
describing another's emotions, and analyzing
and justifying someone else's reactions.
6. Self-Knowledge: The ability to self-examine,
self-reflect, self-evaluate, and express reflective
insight, particularly the capacity for monitoring
and modifying one's own comprehension of
information and events.

17. Six facets of
understanding

18. Effective monitoring of a student's progress
should incorporate many assessment tools
and processes, including these:
Tests and quizzes with constructed-response
(performance-based) items, rather than exclusive use of
selected-response items (true-false, fill-in-the-blank,
multiple choices).
– Reflective assessments, such as journals, logs, listen-
think-pair-share activities, interviews, self-
evaluation activities, and peer response groups.
– Academic prompts that clearly specify performance
task elements, such as format, audience, topic, and
purpose.
– Culminating assessment projects that allow for
student choice and independent application.

19. Culminating performance-based projects
(what Wiggins and McTighe refer to as
GRASPS), therefore, should include the
following core elements:
– G = Goals from the real world.
– R = Roles that are authentic and based in reality.
– A = Audiences to whom students will present final
products and performances.
– S = Situations involving a real-world conflict to be
resolved, decision to be made, investigation to be
completed, or invention to be created.
– P = Products and performances culminating from
the study.
– S = Standards for evaluating project-based
products and performances.

20. Wiggins and McTighe identify seven core
design principles for teaching in an
understanding-based classroom in a template
they call WHERETO
– W = How will you help your students to know where they are
headed, why they are going there, and what ways they will be evaluated
along the way?
– H = How will you hook and engage students' interest and enthusiasm
through thought-provoking experiences at the beginning of each
instructional episode?
– E = what experiences will you provide to help students make their
understandings real and to equip all learners for success throughout your
unit or course?
– R = How will you cause students to reflect, revisit, revise, and rethink?
– E = How will students express their understandings and engage in
meaningful self-evaluation?
– T = How will you tailor (differentiate) your instruction to address the
unique strengths and needs of every learner?
– O = How will you organize learning experiences so that students move
from teacher-guided and concrete activities to independent applications
that emphasize growing conceptual understandings?

21.  Understanding by Design is not a program to be implemented;
rather, it represents a synthesis of research-based best
practices that are associated with improving student
achievement. Successful UbD learning organizations are
collaborative communities that emphasize practitioner inquiry,
including the following:
 Peer Coaching: Professional colleagues support one
another by scripting lessons, providing focused feedback,
and engaging in cognitive coaching (i.e., shared inquiry
designed to align staff members' perceptions and
judgments).
 Study Groups: Colleagues study a text or explore an issue
together and pool their experiences, reflections, and
resources for understanding.

22.  Inquiry Teams: Colleagues focus their study on a
shared student achievement issue or an
organizational problem that they wish to investigate
together as an extension of their initial study group
discussions.
 Action Research Cohorts: Colleagues identify a
research problem, hypothesis, or inquiry question
concerning their learning organization; collect,
analyze, and present available data; develop and
implement an action plan related to identified
solutions and interventions; and revise and modify
their plan to reinforce a commitment to continuous
improvement.

23. What is design &
backward design?
• According to Oxford English Dictionary,
Design
 is to have purposes and intentions; to plan and execute.
In educational perspective; teachers are the designers of
curriculum, learning and assessment by considering the
needs of students, developmental levels, prior knowledge
and learning styles.
But what is backward design?
What makes it different from the other designs?

24. Backward Design

25. According to Wiggins and McTighe,
Backward design
 is the most effective curricular design. They declared the
reasons of it as following; “We do so because many
teachers begin with textbooks, favored lessons, and time
honored activities rather than deriving those tools from
targeted goals or standards. We are advocating the
reverse: One starts with the end-the desired results (goals
or standards) and then derives the curriculum from the
evidence of learning (performances) called for by the
standard and teaching needed to equip students to
perform.”

26. 3 stages of UbD

28. Big picture of a design
approach

33. Sample of UbD lesson plan

34. References:
 Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educatioal
Objectives: Classification of Educational
Goals. New York.
 Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998).
Understanding by Design. Virginia, USA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development.

35. Do you have any questions?