Preparing to Teach

What is Backward Design?    

• Chapter 1 from Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design.

The Course Design Triangle   (Wiley Education Services)

• Learning outcomes, assessments, and instructional activities are the three points that comprise the course design triangle. Find helpful resources for each component here.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Action Verb Examples

• Verbs to help you write precise, scaffolded learning outcomes.

* EPIC Resource: Backward Design Alignment Practice Worksheet

Podcast: Everything You Need to Know About Backward Design & Curriculum Mapping 

• Backwards Podcast transcript    (featuring Jay McTighe)

Video: Alignment and Backward Design   (Maryann Nestor)

Video: Backward Design Process   (Cindy Underhill)

* EPIC Resource:  UCLA Alternative Assessment Approaches 

Formative and Summative Assessments — Recommendations and Examples  (Yale)

Rubric Types   (Cult of Pedagogy) 

• Examples of holistic, analytic, and single-point rubrics.

Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners   (Allen & Tanner)

Sample Rubrics   (Carnegie Mellon) 

• Rubrics for papers, projects, presentations, and participation.

So Your Instructor is Using Contract Grading  

• An explanation of contract grading for students

Sample Grading Contracts   (SUNY Cortland)

Ungrading Resources  (PSU Open CoLab)

Carol Dweck, Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential – available online 

• Fostering a growth mindset in the classroom can improve student resolve.

Susan D. Blum, ed., Ungrading : Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (And What to Do Instead) – available online

Video: The power of believing that you can improve   (Carol Dweck) 

Video: Specs Grading from a Professor’s Perspective  (Humboldt State University)

Podcast: Dead Ideas in Teaching & Learning Podcast:  Ungrading with Jesse Stommel (Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning)

• Ungrading episode transcript 

* EPIC Resource: Sample human-centered syllabus resources

• Syllabus resources that affirm students’ identities and needs. 

* EPIC Resource:  Sample syllabus accessibility statement

• Unlike an accommodations statement, an accessibility statement welcomes all students–regardless of disability status–to advocate for their access needs.

Accessible Syllabus 

• Accessible images, text, rhetoric, and policies.  

Your Syllabus Doesn’t Have to Look Like a Contract   (David Gooblar) 

Student Impressions of Syllabus Design: Engaging Versus Contractual Syllabus 

Canva

• Graphic design platform with a free membership tier that makes design easy with templates, fonts, and stock photos. 

USC Center for Urban Education Syllabus Review

• Comprehensive review tool for considering equity-minded syllabus design.

Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast: Syllabus Resources, with Angela Jenks 

• Syllabus resources episode transcript

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)   (CAST)

• Strategies for promoting multiple means of representation, action, expression, and engagement to foster strategic, resourceful, and motivated learners.

UDL Guidelines Graphic Organizer

* EPIC Resource: Accessibility Game Plan

Week-by-week considerations before and during the quarter for implementing accessibility throughout the course design process.

* EPIC Resource: EPIC’s Accessible Bruin Learn Sandbox

Practice Bruin Learn’s accessibility tools with this sample course sandbox

For access, please send us an email at epic@humnet.ucla.edu with your UCLA logon ID.

Podcast:  Think UDL Podcast

• Transcripts for all episodes available

Accessibility:

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights: 

“Accessible means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally and independently as a person without a disability. 

Although this might not result in identical ease of use compared to that of persons without disabilities, it still must ensure equal opportunity to the educational benefits and opportunities afforded by the technology and equal treatment in the use of such technology.”

Access needs:

Anything you require of your community or environment in order to participate fully, healthfully, and meaningfully. Regardless of disability status, we all have access needs. 

Some examples include:

• Patience while learning names and faces

• Frequent stretching or snacking breaks

• Time to process before responding

• Visual descriptions that don’t only rely on color

• Distance from scented products or certain foods (e.g. tree nuts)

Accommodation:

From UCLA’s Center for Accessible Education (CAE): 

“An accommodation is a legally mandated modification or service designed to mitigate the functional limitations associated with a student’s disability. Accommodations can be:

• Changes to a classroom environment or task that permit a student with a disability to participate in the educational process,

• Reasonable modifications to policies, practices or procedures, etc.”

Alt text:

Alternative text—or alt text—describes visuals. Embedded in code, alt text is not visible; screen readers voice this image description aloud to blind and low-vision users. Folks with certain cognitive disabilities also benefit from screen readers.

Alt text is different from a caption, which appears near an image, and from longer image descriptions, which are also visible to sighted people. 

Audio description:

Audio description is spoken narration of visual elements during live performances and pre-recorded television and film.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR):

Optical character recognition is the process by which images of handwritten or printed text is converted into a digital format that allows it to be selected, copied, read aloud by screen readers, and  searched.

Disability:

Legal definition from the Americans with Disabilities Act: 

• “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual; a record of such an impairment; or being regarded as having such an impairment.”

Throughout history, disability has been considered:

• A tragedy

• A punishment

• A crime (learn about the “ugly laws”)

• A divine intervention

• An inspiration

• A cultural identity

How do you describe disabled people… or people with disabilities?

Like proper name pronunciation and personal pronouns, it’s best to ask people how they identify instead of making assumptions. Trends change, and there’s no consensus around describing identities. 

Some folks argue for people-first language to prioritize the person over their physical or mental conditions. People-first language tends to reflect a medical model of disability. Examples of people-first language include:

• “People with disabilities”

• “Individual who is blind”

• “Student with autism”

However, other folks argue for identity-first language and consider disability as a cultural identity. Members of the signing Deaf community and autistic people tend to use identity-first language. 

Examples of identity-first language include:

• “Disabled people”

• “Blind individual”

• “Autistic student”

Here at UCLA, the student organization is called the Disabled Student Union (DSU) and not the Students with Disabilities Union.

Here are some additional guidelines to consider:

“Disabled” is not offensive. Use it rather than euphemisms like “differently-abled” or “handi-capable.” 

Use: Disabled or accessible parking space; accessible restroom stall

Not: Handicapped 

Not: Crippled

Use: Deaf and hard of hearing

Not: Hearing-impaired or challenged

Not: deaf and dumb

Not: deaf mute

Not: afflicted by

Not: suffers from

Not: wheelchair-bound or confined to a wheelchair

Talk to the person directly and not to their aid or interpreter

For more, see Identity-First Language by Lydia X. Z. Brown