Date:
Location:
Led by:
Adam Beaver, Director of Pedagogy
How do you plan a section or a syllabus? Where should you start as you look at the material you want to cover as a teacher, learner, or scholar? This workshop introduces a method of curriculum planning called backwards design. The idea is simple: you can’t start planning how you’re going to teach (or learn, or write) until you know what your goals are. What should students be able to do at the end of a section? At the end of a course? Backward design can help you articulate your goals and objectives and decide on appropriate methods of instruction and assessment. In this session, we will learn the foundational elements of backward design and reflect on how they can help us think about goals and how to measure progress towards them. By the end of the session, you will understand the importance of setting goals and have some tools for designing your own sections, evaluating what happened in a section, or even planning your own course. We will also think about ways in which backward design can help us as learners and in our scholarship.
This workshop is being offered as part of Winter Teaching Week and is designed for GSAS PhD students and others at similar career stages engaged in the teaching of Harvard College undergraduates. Pre-registration is required.