Backward Design: Starting at the Finish 

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Let’s take a moment and think about this statement: 

“Our flight is at 5 AM.”  

As you think about it, consider the various questions you must answer to be on that plane at 5 AM. What questions would you ask yourself to prepare? Here are some that I have on my list: 

• What time do you have to leave? Do you need to budget time for TSA? Or did you precheck? 
• Did you pack? How long are you staying? Did you pack enough? Did you pack appropriate items for your destination? 
• Do you need things on the flight? Snacks, a book, noise-cancelling headphones?  
• Do you have your boarding pass? 

You may have similar questions or ones that I didn’t ask (or maybe fewer questions…my hamartia is overplanning), but hopefully you see that those questions need to be answered before you show up at the airport. You may also need to qualify how well they’re answered: Did you pack well or throw everything at the suitcase and hope whatever landed works? Do you have the correct boarding pass? Are your headphones charged?  

The important takeaway from this thought exercise is that you started with the finish in mind. You saw the end goal (flight at 5 AM), and you prepared the necessary steps to complete and questions to answer to meet your goal and not be racing through the airport a la every comedic movie in which the protagonist must catch a flight.  

There’s an educational framework called “Backward Design” that also starts with the finish in mind. If you have been around CTL’s offices long enough, you’ve probably heard about it. It’s the basis for a lot of our course design. Backward Design originated from the book Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. In it, Wiggins and McTighe encourage instructors to plan their courses intentionally and start with the end in mind. This involves designing your course objectives to be valid, measurable, and clear (more on that in a later series), determining evidence that would show mastering those objectives, and then planning the learning experiences and instruction to prepare students to complete those evidence pieces. 

If Backward Design interests you, Vanderbilt has provided a good jumping-off point, including a video from Grant Wiggins. Check it out! You could also come and hang out with us at CTL. We love talking about course design! 

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