Kristin Gustafson presents Backward Course Design

IAS faculty member Kristin Gustafson focused on Backward Design with two audiences recently. Backward Course Design begins with where you want students to end the class. It is a process that helps you identify how to get there. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, who wrote Understanding by Design and are credited for developing Backward Design, describe teachers as “designers.”

The first audience was UW’s Teaching Technology Fellowship in August. The Backward Design online teaching module was part of a weeklong fellowship for faculty on three UW campuses and coordinated by UW’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

The second audience was the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s newsletter readership in October. The “Beginning with the End” column published in the AEJMC newsletter. It is one of the quarterly Teaching Tips Corner columns produced by the organization’s Standing Committee on Teaching members.