Plan results first, then evidence, then activities, and check alignment with a simple matrix.
Why it matters
The usual way to build a course is to collect content, arrange it into slides, and write a quiz at the end. The result is often a course that covers a lot but does not prepare people for the job, and a quiz that tests whatever was easy to ask about. Backward design flips the order: decide what learners must be able to do, decide how you will know they can do it, and only then plan the teaching.
Understanding by Design
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe described backward design in Understanding by Design (1998). It has three stages:
- Identify desired results. What should learners understand and be able to do? (Your objectives from the last lesson.)
- Determine acceptable evidence. What would convince you they have got there? Design the assessment now.
- Plan learning experiences and instruction. What activities, examples and explanations will get them ready for that evidence?
John Biggs described a closely related idea in higher education: constructive alignment (1996). Objectives, teaching activities and assessment should all point at the same performance. If the objective says "resolve a conflict" but the test asks learners to define "conflict", the course is misaligned.
Stage 2 comes before stage 3
This is the step people skip. Writing the assessment before the lessons forces you to make the objective concrete. For the Git workshop:
| Objective | Evidence (assessment) |
|---|---|
| Create a branch and commit a change to it | Practical task: in a fresh practice repo, create feature-x, change a file, commit; checked with git log --oneline --all |
| Resolve a merge conflict so tests pass | Practical task: a provided repo with a conflict; done when the merge completes and npm test passes |
| Recover from a commit to the wrong branch | Scenario question plus a short practical: move the commit to a new branch |
| Explain what a pull request is for | Two-sentence answer, compared with a model answer |
Notice that most evidence is performance: doing the thing in a realistic setting. Wiggins called these authentic tasks. Multiple-choice questions still have a place (quick checks, misconceptions), but they should not be the only evidence for a practical skill.
Then plan the learning
Now each activity must earn its place by preparing learners for the evidence:
- Pre-training: terms (commit, branch, HEAD), five minutes.
- Worked example: branch and commit, with subgoal labels.
- Faded practice: two branches in the practice repo.
- Demo: creating and resolving a conflict, narrated.
- Paired practice: resolve a conflict, swap roles.
- Scenario: committed to the wrong branch; groups find the fix.
- Assessment tasks from stage 2.
Content that does not serve any objective, such as the history of version control or a tour of Git's object database, goes into an optional handout or is cut.
An alignment check
A simple alignment matrix catches problems early. List objectives as rows and mark which activities practise them and which items assess them. An objective with no practice is unfair to learners. An objective with no assessment is unverified. An activity that maps to no objective is a candidate for cutting.
| Objective | Practised in | Assessed by |
|---|---|---|
| Branch and commit | Steps 2, 3 | Task 1 |
| Resolve conflict | Steps 4, 5 | Task 2 |
| Wrong-branch recovery | Step 6 | Task 3 |
| Explain pull requests | (none!) | Question 4 |
The empty cell shows a gap: either add a short pull request activity or drop the objective.
Formative and summative evidence
Stage 2 is not only the final test. Formative assessment happens during learning to guide the next step: a poll after the demo, watching pairs work, a quick "show me your git log". Summative assessment checks the result at the end. Plan both. Formative checks are also retrieval practice, so they help learning as well as measure it.
Common mistakes
- Writing the assessment last, from whatever was covered.
- Testing recall when the objective is a skill.
- Keeping favorite content that serves no objective.
- Practising with help and assessing without it, without a step in between.
Quick recap
- Backward design: results, then evidence, then instruction.
- Align objectives, activities and assessments (constructive alignment).
- Prefer authentic performance tasks for practical skills.
- Use an alignment matrix to find gaps and padding.
Try it
On the Do tab, take your objectives from the previous lesson and design the evidence before the activities.