Developing Assessments
The second stage of the UbD curriculum planner developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2011) involves developing assessments to demonstrate an understanding of the learning goals using the six facets of understanding. Since rote memorization or demonstration of factual knowledge or skills is not the goal, we develop assessments that show that students can take the learning that they have accomplished in our courses and apply it in new and novel situations. They can show this by either using their knowledge to solve practical, real-world problems or by practically applying an abstract concept.
Six facets of understanding
Wiggins and McTighe (2011) have proposed six facts of understanding that can be used to demonstrate understanding: the ability to explain, to interpret, to apply and adjust, to have perspective, to show empathy, and to demonstrate self-knowledge. These facets do not need to be used in a single assessment, and, unlike Bloom’s criteria, there is no hierarchy (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
The ultimate goal is for the teacher is to do the following:
- set the goals for the course, which are the big ideas,
- teach the skills and knowledge necessary to have the required background to work on these goals,
- ask essential questions that students will work with to develop understanding,
- enable the student to transfer this understanding outside the classroom and apply it.
This process can start with teacher involvement, but the goal is the autonomy of the student (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
Wiggins and McTighe (2011) suggest that to develop these practical assessments, instructors should use criterion-based evaluations. These criteria should reflect on the goals of the unit as well as the standards and competencies identified in UbD part 1. Having transparent criteria makes the performance goals evident to everyone involved and allows the student to self-assess their progress as they work through the assessment.
Teachers can benefit from tracking criteria as well because areas that are unclear or do not map back to the goals will become more evident. Wiggins and McTighe (2011) advocate for using four types of criteria; impact, content, quality, and process. These criteria are used to determine how effective the product was at reaching its goal, whether the content was accurate and complete, the quality of the work, and whether the design was appropriate for the task. After the criteria are identified, a rubric should be developed to provide feedback to students. All the criteria should be evaluated, but the emphasis should be placed on impact.
In addition to stressing the alignment of the course and the need for a transparent criterion for assessment Wiggins, and McTighe (2011) feel that authentic tasks that are valid measures of understanding are imperative. They stress that an authentic task will feel most “real” and valuable to the student.
Wiggins and McTighe (2011) used the acronym GRASPS to layout the composite parts of the tasks.
G
G is for a real-world goal.
R
R is for the student role in the project.
A
A is for the audience,
S
S is for the situation which has a real-world application.
P
P is the product the student generates and their performance in the task.
S
S is for the standards that will be used to judge the success of the student’s attempt.
Stage 2 Template Overview
The next section is for all the other evaluative methods. These can be mapped back to the meaning and transfer goals, as well as the knowledge and skill goals. This difference between these assessments and the ones in the earlier section is that they may assess factual knowledge and skills that will be a foundation for the understanding that will come later.
The last section of Stage 2 of the UbD framework is the grading rubric you will use to assess that understanding of the “big ideas” has taken place.
References
Wiggins, G. P., and McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Wiggins, G and McTighe J (2012). The understanding by design guide to advanced concepts in creating and reviewing units (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Publishing.
