---
title: 'How to Teach with Projects: A Backward Design Approach'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=YHQWuLG78Hw'
video_id: 'YHQWuLG78Hw'
date: 2026-08-12
duration_sec: 42
---

# How to Teach with Projects: A Backward Design Approach

> Source: [How to Teach with Projects: A Backward Design Approach](https://youtube.com/watch?v=YHQWuLG78Hw)

## Summary

The speaker discusses their approach to teaching, emphasizing a project-oriented methodology where students are first shown the end goal before learning the necessary content. This method is presented as a way to motivate students and structure courses around practical outcomes.

### Key Points

- **Project-Oriented Teaching** [00:00] — The speaker centers all courses around a group of projects, rather than relying on dynamic lectures to engage students.
- **Content Presentation** [00:12] — While content must be presented, the speaker always lets students know the goal first, such as building X, Y, or Z.
- **Backward Design** [00:26] — The teaching approach works backward from the goal: identify what needs to be done, then determine what knowledge is required to accomplish those tasks.

### Conclusion

The speaker's preferred teaching method is project-based, where students are motivated by a clear end goal and learn content as a means to achieve it.

## Transcript

What are some ways that you've introduced project-oriented teaching into your teaching over the years? I'm not dynamic enough to, I think, really get the students to want to learn just from
hearing me. So I pretty much center all of my courses around a group of projects. And of course, there is content that I have to present, but I almost always let the students
know the goal first, right? We're building X, Y, or Z. Okay, so how do we go about doing that? Well, we have to do this and we have to do that. So what do we have to know in order to do those things? That I think for sure is, that's definitely my preferred way of teaching.