How has this teaching framework informed your development of two or more authentic artifacts?
As a student, I found it helpful to know why I am learning what I am learning and if I know that these courses tie to a tangible goal in life, the courses seem more worth taking and learning becomes easier. Now, I tend to take the same approach as an instructor. I want to lay out the end goals for students, what they should learn from a specific topic and building what I should provide in order for them to reach that goal makes the course more substantial. For example, I wanted the students in my course “Research Methods” to understand the importance of the replication crisis in the field of Psychology and many other fields of science. As a researcher, it is important for us to keep in mind the transient nature of science. What we find today could be disproven tomorrow, however for truly valid claims replication is important. Keeping that goal in mind, I designed a replication assignment where I would ask students to read an original paper and its replication to understand how replication studies are done practically. Then, I asked them to fill out a replication worksheet to write down their thoughts and comparisons regarding the two papers. Lastly, we had a class discussion to encourage students to share their ideas and notions about replication studies. This is one example of many, the backward design really helped me make my assessment plan, lesson plan and my inclusion strategies list too. Further, the backward design approach is what made me interested in my research question since my end goal is to make my classroom a fun and stimulating environment. I am interested to see new and innovative ways to achieve that goal. Looking at these various articles using video games or real life examples encourages me to try to include such applicable ideas into my course plan.