DEVELOP SIGNIFICANT LEARNING EXPERIENCES

In May 2007, Dr. L. Dee Fink facilitated a workshop in NKU's Professional, Organizational Development center focused on course design to incorporate active learning and rich learning experiences, enabling students to learn more from explicit learning goals and assessment.

Dr. Fink provided a significant resource to the faculty in attendance and we are encouraging all faculty on campus to aspire to the model presented in the Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning. We encourage you to download the Guide and utilize the information to enhance your course syllabi and transform your teaching into learning experiences.

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Fink's most recent publication, "Creating Significant Learning Experiences" and provides rationale for movement away from the traditional modes of teaching (i.e. lecture, midterm, final exam) to significant modes of learning through his unique taxonomy (p 29-32).

"Major Categories in the Taxonomy of Significant Learning

Each category of significant learning contains several more specific kinds of learning that are related in some way and have a distinct value for the learner.

Foundational Knowledge. At the base of most other kinds of learning is the need for students to know something. Knowing, as used here, refers to students' ability to understand and remember specific information and ideas. It is important for people today to have some valid basic knowledge, for example, about science, history, literature, geography, and other aspects of their world. They also need to understand major ideas or perspectives, for example, what evolution is (and what it is not), what capitalism is (and is not), and so forth.

Special value: Foundational knowledge provides the basic understanding that is necessary for other kind sof learning.

Application. Besides picking up facts and ideas, students often learn how to engage in some new kind of action, which may be intellectual, physical, or social. Learning how to engage in various kinds of thinking (critical, creative, practical) is an important form of application learning. But this category of significant learning also includes developing certain skills (such as communication or playing the piano) or learning how to manage complex projects.

Special value: Application learning allows other kinds of learning to become useful.

Integration. When students are able to see and understand the connections between different things, an important kind of learning has occurred. Sometimes they make connections between specific ideas, between whole realms of ideas, between people, or between different realms of life (say, between school and work or between school and leisure life).

Special value: The act of making new connections gives learners a new form of power, especially intellectual power.

Human Dimension. When students learn something important about themselves or about others, it enables them to function and interact more effectively. They discover the personal and social implications of what they have learned. What they learn or the way in which they learn sometimes gives students a new understanding of others: how and why others act the way they do, or how the learner can interact more effectively with others.

Special value: This kind of learning informs students about the human significance of what they are learning.

Caring. Sometimes a learning experience changes the degree to which students care about something. This may be reflectied in the form of new feelings, interests, or values. Any of these changes means students now care about something to a greater degree than they did before, or in a different way.

Special value: When students care about something, they then have the energy they need for learning more about it and making it a part of their lives. Without the energy for learning, nothing significant happens.

Learning How to Learn. In the course of their studies, students can also learn something about the process of learning itself. They may be learning how to be a better student, how to engage in a particular kind of inquiry (such as the scientific method), or how to become a self-directing learner. All of these constitute important forms of learning how to learn.

Special value: This kind of learning enables students to continue learning in the future and do so with greater effectiveness. "

Source: Fink, L.D. (2003) Creating Significant Learning Experiences. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.