This week felt a bit like déjà vu. To be completing an Understanding by Design 2 Template and discussing how I will assess my students for a module where they are in the process of creating a UbD Template, learning about assessment, and determining how they will, in turn, assess their students is a bit of a circular trip. I didn’t plan it that way, as it honestly worked best with my already scheduled modules, but it’s been interesting to wrap my head around for sure.

I think what I struggled most with this week was how to build differentiation in an online asynchronous course that’s already being taught. Beyond simply losing the face-to-face time you would generally have with students, the online nature of the course makes real change mid-semester difficult as most courses follow specific templated designs (in the sense that each module has distinct items, follows a similar flow, etc.). Additionally, as most higher education courses have a defined syllabus set out at the beginning of the semester, change has to be done in the parameters for grades and course participation that are set forth from the beginning. Taking this one step further, I’m working with adult learners who prefer meaningful learning experiences and not work for the sake of work. Taking all of that into consideration, I needed to create a differentiated unit without changing the basic structure of my course, without requiring any work that was not already reflected in the syllabus, and ensuring anything I asked of them was meaningful. While I managed to make the module look good on paper, we’ll see how they felt when the presentations and reflections start rolling in…

Aside from the work I completed on the UbD, I was able to interact with several of my peers around their work on their UbDs and differentiated instruction. Mariah and I were able to interact around the concept of flexibility in teaching. When I taught K-12, I was easily frustrated by the rigidity of the state standards and district practices I encountered. Gerald and I have discussed this offline recently, so I shared a few rhetorical questions that I debate about the less-than-optimally-flexible system we (America, not we locally) have created; Mariah responded that, living in rural Alaska, she actually has the support to be a bit more flexible in her teaching, with the support of her Administration, which I think is great. I encouraged Kendra to consider rethinking the specificity of her Essential Questions as Wiggins and McTighe encourage questions that are broader by nature to allow students to make relevant and lasting connections across their content knowledge and experiences.

I encouraged Gerald, as an experienced teacher, to consider all the things he does on a daily basis for his students to make their learning more successful as differentiation. Often times we are so caught up in new terms or new concepts, we don’t realize that we’ve likely been doing aspects of the process all along. We also interacted on my blog, discussing how we can limit the amount of reading required for our students while still ensuring they get the content needed to be successful.

Finally, I shared with Jim that I really like his classroom management practices and his flexibility in allowing students to work in ways most beneficial to them. I believe thinking outside of the “traditional classroom” box is the best thing we can do for our students who, as we all know by now, don’t come in a one-size-fits-all model!