Understanding by Design and Fink's 3 Column Table     

 

     Understanding by Design, written by Wiggins and McTighe, focuses on a backwards design with an emphasis on learning not teaching. The approach incorporates three phases that start with identifying the desired results. Student learning is always the top priority, and it is important for educators to specifically identify what content should be learned and skills acquired by the end of the unit. The desired content learning and skills should act as the guide for our assessments and learning activities, which are the next two steps in the UbD template. 

   UbD is a useful unit design for beginning teachers and classes that are driven by strict state standards. Beginning teachers are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of tasks and responsibilities, and it is easy to slip into survival mode of just filling the day with an activity without a clear purpose in mind. The details required by this design help focus the learning activities to specifically identified content goals and skills. Writing down higher level questions for the unit also helps ensure that questions for specific learning activities do not stay at the bottom tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy of understanding and remembering.

     On the other hand, Fink's 3 Column Table is an excellent tool for creating a well rounded outcome based education. Designing a unit around an authentic learning project is intimidating, but the 3 Column table gives structure and purpose with flexibility to a unit. It does a better job at aligning the goals, assessments and learning activities because they are all being created as one connected row instead of a completely different stage like in UbD. I also appreciate how the 3 Column Table focuses on the whole learner with goals including human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn. 

     After creating a lesson in both the Understanding by Design template and Fink's 3 Column Table, I do not think that one necessarily is better than the other. They are used for two completely different types of teaching, competency vs outcomes based. Most teachers in public education are required to teach specific standards, and students will then be required to take a high stakes test over those standards. A competency based education and UbD is the most effective way to ensure the learning activities and assessments align with the standards. However, there are always opportunities throughout every course where educators can create authentic outcome based learning experiences. Students and educators will be challenged by the change in design and focus, but with the structure and guidance of the 3 Column Table design, the opportunity to allow students the freedom to explore and become better learners is worth the struggle. 

     

Below is the UbD plan I created for the Reconstruction Unit. Please click on the link below to see my Reconstruction Unit created in Fink's 3 Column Table design.