Backwards Design for Integrated College Curriculum

I've been working with five college faculty teams around the country to refine and focus the outcomes-based, integrated curriculum work that is a part of the Project DEgree (PDE) model. After 18 months, the teams are getting really good at it and have successfully developed some relevant, rigorous curriculum integrating developmental reading, writing, math and college success.



In the process that has evolved over the last year-and-a-half the faculty teams have mastered designing backwards, starting with rest-of-life outcomes that lead to a big picture view of an authentic student project. Moving backwards from the final student project, the teams then develop an investigative question to drive student inquiry down the road to the project's end. Only then do they create the individual, integrated assignments that are scaffolded components of the final student product.

If you've been reading the last few weeks you know about my passion for metaphors in teaching and training. One piece that has helped faculty get their arms around this backwards design process for integrating curriculum is a journey metaphor in which there is an explicit one-to-one correlation between each element of the metaphor and what faculty need to do. Making the process concrete through this metaphor has helped make the work feel more manageable.

Using the refined and focused process, here is what the Portland Community College Project DEgree team created. What I love about their work is that it addresses the sticky points around which all of the faculty teams have struggled. This team has successfully created a project that accomplishes the following:

1. It is focused and doesn't try to integrate every assignment across all courses.

2. It names just two PDE outcomes and those outcomes CLEARLY drive this project.

3. In response to my urging that the integrated project not be an add-on but a relevant, authentic vehicle for meeting existing course outcomes, this project explicitly lists the relevant course outcomes. The connection is clear and is an anxiety reducer for faculty. They can see that the project does what they need it to do and can relax and enjoy it, getting rid of redundant, non-integrated assignments that they used BIC (Before Integrating Curriculum).

4. The project is engaging to students and integrates service learning in an important and authentic assessment task for students, that of creating a campus club to meet student-identified needs.

5.The project is now visually represented in a one-page graphic organizer that can be introduced to students at orientation. It can be used by students and faculty as a "you are here" road map for relating parts to the whole for the life of the project. The numbers next to each assignment show the flow of how the final student product is created. So everything with a "1" for example is assigned first and at the same time as other "1's" in other courses.

The faculty team at Portland Community College SE Center has done an amazing job of designing rigorous, authentic, integrated and outcomes based curriculum for their developmental students in Project DEgree. Check here for their integrated project and their one-page graphic organizer.