Executive Summary
During my fifth semester in graduate school in the Spring of 2020, I had the opportunity to study more about Curriculum & Instruction Models and the Implementation of said models. Instead of developing instructional content, which would be instructional design, we learned how to design actual curriculum. If instructional design is creating the hammers, nails, and boards of a construction project, curriculum design is creating the plans that tell the builders how to use the hammers, nails, and boards to construct a house. In this class, we learned about different curriculum development and instructional development. One of the projects for this class was to develop a curriculum map for a specific subject and audience. I based my curriculum map on the Understanding by Design model by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. The curriculum map was constructed for a 6th grade Introduction to Computers class and is aimed at exploring the world of computers and their related technologies. The reason for selecting UbD is the backwards design philosophy employed by the model. It reminds me of the old adage, “Begin with the end in mind.” UbD and backwards design makes you think about the end product and work backwards from there. I enjoyed planning my fictious 6th grade Introduction to Computers class. Since my background is not in K-12 education, developing a curriculum seemed daunting at first, but got easier with time. Overall, I was happy with the result.
Personal Reflection
As previously stated, I do not have a background in K-12 education so this exercise stretched me a bit. In my line of work, I don’t have to align my training initiatives with state mandated standards. I have created many Traceability Matrix documents which traces functional and non-functional requirements back to higher level business objectives, so I understood the concept, but never considered it from a curriculum perspective. Learning how to develop curriculum maps based on standards got me thinking how it could be applied in a corporate setting. This project really pushed me to leverage multiple technologies and practices of online and distance learning. It really forced me to see how online and distance learning is very different from traditional, in-classroom learning. It also let me dream a little as to what I wish could be done in online learning.