Transcript Creating Significant Learning Experiences

Creating Significant
Learning Experiences
L. Dee Fink
Significant Learning
(It’s more than just the course material.)
1. Foundational Knowledge
• Basic understanding
• Necessary for other kinds of learning
2. Application
• Knowledge and how it’s applied
• Skills
3. Integration
• Making connections (other courses,
work, life)
• Power: the wholemore than the sum
of the parts
Significant Learning
(It’s more than just the course material.)
4. Human Dimension
• Human significance of topic
• Learning about self, others
5. Caring
• Caring engenders energy for learning
• Nothing significant happens without
caring
6. Learning How to Learn
• Learning more effectively
• Life-long learning
Creating Significant
Learning
Experiences
(How?)
• Learning Goals
• Feedback and Assessment
• Teaching and Learning
Activities
Learning Goals
(In terms of significant learning outcomes.)
• Backward Design
• What’s important now & years after the
course?
• What should students do in the course to
succeed?
• Example (CS 705)
• Learning Outcomes
• Activities support learning outcomes
• Class activities
• Out-of-class activities
• (Suggestions for improvement)
Feedback and
Assessment
• Forward looking assessment
• Imagine students in a situation where
they would use knowledge K, could they?
• Focus learning on realistic meaningful
tasks.
• Ask: “What am I preparing students to
do?”
• Good assessment needs a rubric.
• Criteria and standards
• Communicated and used consistently
Feedback and
Assessment
• Opportunities to engage in self
assessment
• Can they define their own rubric for
quality work?
• Can they use their rubric on their own and
other students’ work?
• Reflection: on the subject matter, on the
learning process
Teaching and Learning
Activities
• Doing Experience
• Direct: Real doing, in authentic settings
• Indirect: case studies, simulations, …
• Observing Experience
• Direct: seeing the phenomena to be
observed
• Indirect: stories, film, …
Teaching and Learning
Activities
• Getting Information and Ideas
• (To be most effective, students must
want to get …)
• Sources
• Direct: original information & data
• Indirect: lectures & textbooks
• Reflecting
• Classroom discussion
• Term papers
• In-depth reflective dialogue and writing
on the learning process
Good courses are
courses that …
• Challenge students to significant kinds of
learning.
• Use active forms of learning.
• Have teachers who care 
• about the subject,
• their students, and
• about teaching and learning.
• Have teachers who interact well with
students.
• Have a good system of feedback,
assessment, and grading.
-- L.D. Fink