Comparing Understanding by Design (UbD) and Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (RBT)

Abridged Understanding by Design

Understanding by design is an instructional design method developed by Wiggins and McTighe (1998) which encourages the instructor to begin planning his or her course with the end in mind. Specifically backwards design promotes the formulation of broad learning goals, followed by the articulation of learning outcomes, chased with an assessment plan, ending with the development of content.

RBT Active Verbs   http://bit.ly/1To3w2P

Abridged Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is a two-dimensional (types of knowledge and cognitive processes) instructional design tool that helps instructors to formulate meaningful and measurable learning outcomes. There are four types of knowledge including factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. The cognitive processes are on a spectrum with the higher order thinking skills of analyzing, evaluating, and creating on the opposite end of remembering, understanding, and applying.

Critical Assessment of UbD 

UbD forces the instructor to step back and consider the big picture before focusing in on content and delivery. By requiring that the instructor create a broad learning goal and learning outcomes, it is nearly impossible for them to steer off course as they create their assessments and content as long as everything is informed by those established learning outcomes. For some instructors this method of organization and design is essential for establishing and maintaining direction and momentum. Moreover, UbD is the institutional researcher’s dream in that a plan for assessment is built into the structure of the design. A drawback of UbD is that this three-step method is prescriptive; each of the steps has to be following in a particular order when designing a course. This could be problematic in that there is not much freedom for learners to make meaning out of their experiences if those experiences are designed to produce one to three outcomes. Instructors are essentially “teaching to the test” which can make the design feel rigid and make learners less curious over time. This drawback can certainly be avoided with intentionality on the part of the designer, but is worth mentioning. Also lacking from this model is an intentional reflection piece for the learners. Without the built-in reflection piece there could be missed opportunities for learning.

Critical Assessment of RBT

RBT encourages instructors to design outcomes that require students to engage in both lower and higher order thinking skills, but the way the model is designed it does not guarantee this. There is nothing to stop an instructor from creating all of his or her learning outcomes for a unit by requiring the student to remember factual knowledge. To help combat this, instructors who diligently plan their units or courses to encompass all of RBT can take advantage of the RBT table which allows them to plot their learning outcomes by types of knowledge and cognitive processes. This is useful in that it allows instructors to see areas of the taxonomy that they may not be addressing, paying extra attention to the learning outcomes in the blocks representing metacognitive knowledge that requires the learners to practice analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

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Comparing and Contrasting UbD and RBT

While both of these instructional design processes can stand alone, they are also complementary and work together very well. Both designs focus on teaching and learning skills and opportunities rather than on the specific content. This is important since instructors should be helping students learn to succeed outside of the classroom. Students will certainly find the skills and thought-processes more useful in their lives beyond the classroom than the content they probably have already forgotten. 

The first step in the UbD process is to “identify desired results.” This is achieved through the creation of a course goal or learning outcomes. RBT can serve as a guide for creating these learning outcomes. In this way the two models pair together effectively. RBT can be said to enhance UbD. There are a few differences between these two designs. Backwards design is prescriptive in that learning outcomes are determined at the beginning of the planning process. Whereas RBT is not as stringent when it comes to design. For example, an instructor could build his or her course in a less than pedagogically sound way (choose a textbook, develop tests, etc.) then use RBT to craft the learning outcomes to fit the plan that's already been determined. In this way RBT does not serve as a guiding design principle. Another way these two differ, in my opinion, is in ease of first time use. Presented with the UbD model and the RBT for the first time, I would imagine that UbD would be easier to grasp. The two-dimensional RBT is better understood with examples of outcomes.

Similarities	Differences
Both focus on teaching and learning over content	UbD is more structured than RBT
Both have the creation of learning outcomes at their cores	UbD may be easier to interpret than RBT without examples or background explanations
Both help to clarify what is expected of the learner and of the teacher
Both focus on what a learner can do, think, or make

For more information on UbD and RBT visit this document created by Saint Mary's Press (2011).

References

Topic 3: Developing goals and objectives. Retrieved June 15, 2015 from http://pixel.fhda.edu/id/six_facets.html

Wiggins, G., & McTighe. J. (1998). Understanding by design; chapters 1 and 3 (Expanded 2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.