Learning Model
The Backbone of Transformational Change
Learning at Rocky View Schools is guided by an evidence-based learning model designed to improve learning for all learners - students, teachers, principals, support staff, Education Centre staff, parents, and trustees.
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The blue ring identifies three main educational approaches that research shows to be most effective in advancing learning:
The Understanding by Design (UbD) approach guides the planning process.
The Universal Design for Learning approach ensures learning is accessible for all learners.
The Balanced Assessment approach enhances learning through continuous feedback and checks to ensure understanding is in place.
Understanding by Design® (UbD)
Understanding by Design emphasizes the teacher’s role as a designer of learning. The Understanding by Design process helps teachers clarify learning goals, develop assessment tools, and craft deep learning experiences aligned with Alberta Education’s standards-driven curriculum.
Understanding by Design is based on research into the types of learning that engage all the learning centres of the brain and result in deep, lasting knowledge. With this approach, teachers build on the learner’s existing understanding, tie learning to meaningful real-world experiences, and structure learning around essential questions. This learning process builds life-long problem-solving, creative, and critical thinking skills.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach that recognizes diversity is the norm, not the exception, and helps meet the challenge of diversity by suggesting flexible instructional materials, techniques, and strategies. A universally designed curriculum meets the needs of the greatest number of users, making costly, time-consuming, and after-the-fact changes to curriculum unnecessary.
Recognizing the individual nature of learning, the UDL approach creates curriculum that provides:
Multiple means of representation to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge
Multiple means of expression to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know
Multiple means of engagement to tap into learners’ interests, and challenge and motivate them appropriately
Balanced Assessment is a system of feedback to help learners improve throughout the learning process. A meaningful assessment collects a body of evidence of learning rather than a test of learning at one point in time. It is much like building a photo album of trip instead of relying on a single snapshot to convey the experience.
Finally, the green ring of the model shows current research-based instructional approaches. Mindtools, for example, help engage pupils in critical, creative, and complex thinking while using technology, rather than technology being an activity on the side. A metacognitive instructional approach helps students learn about themselves as learners, which helps them take active control of their learning.