I’ve been fortunate to be part of the Understanding by Design (UbD) family for a long time, originally as part of a team organized by the UbD authors Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins to help develop the program. Once the program was developed, I also became a member of the ASCD UbD faculty that conducted training across the country and even in several countries around the world.
I am proud of what has been and is being accomplished through UbD, one of the best curriculum design programs that exists today. But my experiences as a developer and trainer also exposed me to what I consider to be some problems and challenges facing UbD designers. In this blogpost, I suggest five ways that I think teachers and schools that are already familiar with and using UbD can strengthen the design model and make it more powerful, relevant and different from traditional curriculum design. Read more