Book Review of Creating Significant Learning Experiences by L. Dee Fink

Abstract

Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. By L. Dee Fink. 2013. Jossey-Bass: Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-118-12425-3

What makes a book about education good? For me, it's when I continually catch myself staring into space after reading something in the book that causes me to image how I can use the information to improve my teaching or courses, or makes me reflect on what I've been doing as an instructor and how I can be more effective in helping students learn. This book prompted a number of “staring sessions,” and I'm really excited about using what I learned from it.

Creating Significant Learning Experiences by L. Dee Fink was a book I picked up from the library at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning while trying to figure out how to improve my online distance education courses. I wanted to figure out how to better integrate the course project into the course content so that the project could be a more effective teaching and learning tool for course concepts. And this book explains how to create the kind of learning experience I want my students to have.

Creating Significant Learning Experiences defines a significant learning experience as one that engage students, makes them enthusiastic about the subject, promotes long-term learning, and helps students see the value of material in the world around them. That sounds like something every instructor wants for his or her students! The biggest challenge is designing those experiences. Significant learning experiences sit at the intersection of six categories of learning (Figure 1): foundational knowledge, application of knowledge, integration of concepts, the “human dimension” (students learn about themselves or others), caring (about something), and learning how to learn. Typically, course projects focus on the first two categories, with more complex projects also including integration of concepts. To hit all six categories successfully, significant learning experiences have to be designed into the course. In other words, the course itself needs to be a significant learning experience.

Fink proposed a three-part process, with 12 total steps, for designing courses that are significant learning experiences. In the first part of the process, the instructor builds primary concepts for the course. This includes developing course learning goals, assessments, activities, as well as integrating these course components into a cohesive whole. Integration is key to the success of the learning experience: everything needs to be in alignment for proper evaluation of learning. After checking the alignment of these fundamental course pieces, the course concepts are assembled into a coherent whole in next part of the process. This second part of course development involves designing a course structure and teaching strategy. Just as it was important to check alignment among learning goals, assessments, and activities, course structure and teaching strategy also need to be aligned and integrated. The final part of the course development process is dedicated to completing key remaining tasks, such as developing a grading system, troubleshooting potential problems, writing the course syllabus, and creating course evaluations.

Needless to say, this is quite a lengthy process! But there are a few things that any instructor can do to check if their course is providing a significant learning experience. The first is to check the alignment between their learning goals, assessments, and activities. A mismatch among any of the three can result in frustrated students and instructors, since the students aren't learning what the instructor wants them to and they don't understand why they're doing poorly. Instructors can also check for alignment between course material, course format, and their teaching style. This can make the difference between clear explanations and demonstrations of course concepts and a general confusion about what the course concepts are and how they work. Both of these alignment checks are relatively quick. And small changes, such as using learning outcomes to write exams, can make a big difference in the learning experience.

One additional thing that instructors can do quickly, which is actually the first step in creating significant learning experiences, is check the assumptions they're making about their students, the content, and the course. I really like this process. It makes me think about what I actually have to work with versus what I wish I had to work with. While I would love to teach Food Engineering to students with a strong foundation in calculus and quantitative reasoning, the reality is that many of my students are underprepared in these skills (not to mention they are quite rusty in solving equations after at least two years of using little to no math in their courses!). So I need to account for this fact to ensure students have a learning experience that is challenging and thought provoking, rather than frustrating. This is really another alignment exercise: are the instructor's expectations aligned with reality?

Overall, this book is a great guide for any instructor looking to revise their course or create a new course to provide students with a learning experience that makes them not only remember the content but see the relevance of the content to their own lives and see the connection of the content to other courses. I'm looking forward to reworking my own courses to create more significant learning experiences for my students. Since I teach mainly applied and math-oriented courses, I'm hoping that significant learning experiences will turn these courses from dreaded math class into ones that students are excited to take.

For a summary of the process, including worksheets to fill out as you (re)design a course, see https://www.deefinkandassociates.com/GuidetoCourseDesignAug05.pdf