Following its mandate to improve the country's curriculum for Basic Education in order to equip the youth with the skills and knowledge needed in this Information Age, the Department of Education (DepEd) deemed it wise to utilize the teaching-learning paradigm proposed by Grant Wiggins and Jay Mctighe (2002).

The authors call it "Understanding by Design, now popularly called UbD.

1. UNDERSTANDING by DESIGN (UbD)

Q1: In essence, what is UbD?

It is a proposed design for a curriculum framework, a course program, a unit plan, a learning system and the like. It can simply be described as an instructional design.

Q2: What are the major components of all instructional designs?

All instructional designs, including UbD, have: (a) educational goals/objec-tives and content, (b) teaching-learning strategies, and (c) assessment.

1.1 Goals/Objectives and Content

Educational psychologists group the general goals of education into three:

a. Knowledge (cognitive goal)

b. Skills, both cognitive and manipulative (behavioral goal)

c. Attitudes (affective goal)

Some educators express objectives as learning competencies. For lesson plans, some educators recommend that these be stated as behavioral objectives, since behavior is easiest to detect if the objectives have been attained.

Content includes the main topics and major ideas per chapter.

1.2 Teaching Strategies and Techniques

All instructional designs encourage teachers to use varied instructional activities that are relevant to the students' daily life and cater to their learning styles and multiple intelligences.

The strategies and techniques that teachers use vary depending on various factors-LEARNER factors (their characteristics, SES, readiness, etc.); LEARNING ENVIRONMENT factors (school facilities and equipment, books and other learning resources, etc.); and TEACHER factors (their academic background, trainings attended, teaching experience, etc.).

The teaching strategies also vary among the various academic disciplines. In science, for instance, found to be most effective are: (a) the inquiry approach and (b) hands-on learning or learning by doing, where the learner employs as many senses as possible in the learning process-touch, sight, hearing, smell. On the other hand, very effective in a skill subject are: (a) learning by doing and (b) drill/repetition.

1.3 Assessment

Assessment is used to monitor learning, to find out if the students are achieving the objectives. It tells the teacher if the students understood what he/she taught them.

Very helpful to instruction is formative evaluation. The results of formative evaluation are the teacher's guide in identifying the topics and skills where the students did not have meaningful learning and, therefore, need to be reinforced. Formative evaluation is usually short and addresses specific topics/concepts and skills.

Summative evaluation is less useful to instruction since it is given at the end of the quarter/unit and very little remedial work can be done, if ever.

Then there is the issue of traditional versus alternative tests. Traditional tests (e.g., multiple choice, matching, filling the blanks, etc.) are characterized by the fact that the answers to the questions are already found in the test, and the students simply choose or predict them. These tests are easy to check, but the thinking skills they involve are generally lower than those of alternative tests.

Alternative tests, also called performance-based assessment or performance tasks, are characterized by the fact that the outputs or the answers to certain questions in the task are "constructed" by the students, borrowing the term from constructivism.

The outputs of performance tasks are not graded the same way as the results of traditional tests. They are graded based on a set of criteria that is unique to each output. Thus, performance tasks are accompanied by rubrics.

Q3: In simple terms, what do these basic components of an instructional design mean to the classroom teacher?

When a teacher is given a course assignment at the beginning of the school year, he/she has three questions in mind. These are:

a. What will my students learn from the course?......................................................I. CONTENT

b. How will I teach it so that it will be understood by the students?........................II. STRATEGIES

c. How will I know if indeed the students understood it?.........................................III. ASSESSMENT

2. Implementation Strategies of the Proposed Design

Q4: In terms of the basic components of an instructional design, what are the contributions of UbD?

The major contributions of UbD are in the areas of content and assessment.

2.1 Content

Content is the structural base of the knowledge goal of education in school.

a. UbD recommends that, from the start, the teacher should identify the main idea, or what UbD calls 'big idea' or 'enduring understanding' and what DepEd calls 'essential understanding' (EU). The idea is that, as far as content is concerned, the EU should serve as the focus of all the instructional activities in each chapter or unit or quarter.

b. UbD also recommends that, to arrive at the EU, the teacher should initiate the discussion by means of a question, what UbD and DepEd call 'essential questions' (EQ). The answer to the EQ is the EU. Sometimes, several EQ are answered by one EU. And sometimes, one EQ is answered by several EU.

2.2 Assessment

a. UbD recommends that, right after the identification of the EU, the teacher should think of the appropriate performance task that will depict students understanding of the EU and supporting concept(s) and, at the same time, promote lifelong learning.

The reason is that, since the teacher has a goal, he/she must have the appropriate tool, or instrument, to determine attainment of said goal.

b. Once the students' performance task has been identified, the teacher may now choose instructional activities that will help the students understand the EU and EQ and, at the same time, give them the knowledge and skills that will enable them to successfully accomplish the identified performance assessment.

3. Classroom Instruction 

Q5: What does UbD say about the importance of teaching strategies and learning activities in the classroom?

Q6: Is there a place for lesson plans in UbD?

The following text answers both Q5 and Q6.

a. UbD recognizes the importance of having a vast repertoire of strategies and activities to attain the educational goals.

The choice of learning activities should, of course, take into consideration the various factors cited in section 1.2, aside from the special curricular features that DepEd requires such as integration of values and environmental education.

b. It goes without saying that management of instructional activities is achieved through a lesson plan. However, with UbD, the lesson plan may cover an entire quarter or unit or chapter. But if the classroom teacher feels more comfortable if he/she also has a daily lesson plan, so be it.

c. In this regard, all that UbD reminds the teacher of is this: before designing the lesson plan, go back to the CONTENT and the ASSESSMENT pre-viously identified.

4. Back to the Overall Design

Q7: How may this sequence of the components of an instructional design proposed by UbD be visualized?

a. The diagram above answers Q7. The sequence of the three major components of the design is presented as Stage 1, 2 and 3.

b. The diagram above also answers Q5 and Q6. Yes, there is a place for lesson plans in UbD. There is also a place for various assessment strategies to monitor learning-short quizzes, vocabulary exercises, drills, problem sets, etc. But for overall assessment of learning or understanding the big idea or EU, UbD recommends a performance task, which is an alternative assess-ment or what DepEd refers to as authentic assessment.

c. In constructing the students' performance task in Stage 2, UbD recom-mends that the teacher makes the students do one or more of the following, which reflect(s) six levels of understanding: explain, interpret, apply, deve-lop perspective, show empathy and manifest self-knowledge.

It might be noted that the first four in the list of 'levels of understanding' or 'facets of learning' overlap with the familiar cognitive skills like analyzing, interpreting, applying, comparing, etc. But the last two differ from the rest in that these two are affective and reflective.

5. Back to the Teaching-Learning Plan

5.1 Alignment of Instructional Activities with Goal (EU) and Assessment

Of primary consideration in making the teaching-learning plan (Stage 3) is that it must be aligned with the content (Stage 1) and assessment (Stage 2) components of the plan. This means that the plan should have appropriate ac-tivities and learning resources that would ensure understanding of the EU.

5.2 Thoughts from Constructivism

Basically, constructivism is a theory on how a person learns. The following ideas from this theory are very helpful to the classroom teacher:

a. A learner constructs his own understanding and knowledge of his surroundings.

b. He/She does this through two means: (1) by experiencing things and (2) by reflecting on said experiences.

c. When the learner meets a new information or idea from a learning activity, he examines his prior knowledge and tries to reconcile the new with the previous ideas and experiences. He asks questions, tries to answer the questions, explores implications, and assesses both his prior knowledge and the new idea. If he cannot reconcile them, two things may happen: (1) If the prior knowledge leaves many unanswered questions (meaning, it is indefensible), he may accept the new idea and even change (or give up) his previous belief. (2) On the other hand, if he finds the new idea indefensible, he may judge it as irrelevant and, thus, reject it.

Q8: What is the teacher's role in the classroom described in item c above?

d. The teacher's role is (1) to provide learning activities/experiences aligned with the big idea he is teaching; (2) to discover the student's prior knowledge; and (3) to guide the student through the learning and reflection process. When the student succeeds in this learning experience, up to the point of changing his earlier belief in favor of the new idea, that student is said to have had a 'meaningful learning'; he has 'constructed his own understanding and knowledge'.

5.3 Teaching Guide for Stage 3

DepEd recommends four steps for developing a lesson parallel to the learning process discussed in section 5.2. These are: (a) EXPLORE, (b) FIRM UP, (c) DEEPEN and (d) TRANSFER/APPLY the learning. These are illustrated by the lesson exemplars in Part Two of this publication.