As the quote below highlights, teaching is not just about engaging students in content. It is also about ensuring students have the resources necessary to understand. Student learning and understanding can be gauged more accurately through a backward design approach since it leverages what students will need to know and understand during the design process in order to progress. “In teaching students for understanding, we must grasp the key idea that we are coaches of their ability to play the ‘game’ of performing with understanding, not tellers of our understanding to them on the sidelines.”

Backward Design can be summarized as a process or model for designing instructional materials where the instructor or instructional designer focuses on the desired end results (i.e., the outcome) of a class or course instruction. Rather than beginning the planning process with a focus on supporting exercises, resources or long-used textbooks, the designer focuses on the learners and begins the design process by asking what learners should be able to understand and do after the provided instruction.