Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses

by L. Dee Fink (Jossey-Bass, 2013)

Dimensions of Significant Learning

Creating Significant Learning Experiences posits that college students seek transformation at the intersection of foundational knowledge, learning how to learn, application and integration of knowledge, motivation (caring), and a human dimension. The human dimension describes how a body of knowledge interacts with students personally, with those around them, and with society.

Integrated Course Design

Instructors want learning to be meaningful rather than rote or instantly forgotten. Fink names this "significant learning" and urges teachers to design courses that support it. He contrasts intentional design with two typical approaches: matching a list of topics to a calendar, and the "list of activities" approach, which adds student-centered activities to that calendar. Instead, he advocates "integrated course design," in which "learning goals, the feedback and assessment, and the teaching and learning activities" are planned as interwoven, mutually supporting pieces. After identifying learning goals, the next step is not scheduling lessons but planning feedback and assessment; activities come last, designed to help students arrive prepared.

Context and Cohesion

Fink anticipates that different contexts call for different approaches, so airing out these "situational factors" is the first step of his process. Student resistance is still expected, and he advises enlisting students to think about the course's goals and how to make it most effective for them, freeing them from conventional expectations. He also recommends a "common theme or graphic" that captures a course's major aspects as words or phrases and shows how they relate. From situational factors to a unifying graphic, every element of Fink's process asks the instructor to design the course as a connected whole rather than a sequence of topics.

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