The focus of this third workshop was to provide the teacher participants with a structure to assist them as they began to design original LEGACY cycles. We began the workshop by briefly revisiting the optics unit. Cherie McCollough presented the teachers with a newly added Challenge, and after a brief review of the content, the teachers were prompted to share their reactions to the Optics LEGACY Cycle as a whole and to discuss their feelings regarding implementation and development of LEGACY cycles in general.

The workshop continued with a presentation (download PowerPoint) by graduate research assistant Barbara Austin on curriculum design for understanding. She began by presenting four vignettes that highlight how intentions on the part of curriculum designers may not always be aligned with student understanding. Barbara later introduced a framework for curriculum design that considers the types of knowledge and the levels of understandings desired by the curriculum designer for the learners and future users of the curriculum (Understanding By Design by Wiggins & McTighe).

The workshop concluded with an opportunity for the teachers to begin generating ideas for their own LEGACY Cycle units. With the help of research assistants Richard Vath, Cherie McCollough, and Shelly Rodriguez, the teachers began to develop specific challenges related to mathematics and science content issues that they currently face in their classrooms. It is our hope that the teachers will continue this process of development and design in future PER workshops to be held in April and June of 2003.