Monday, October 8, 2007

L. Dee Fink, an educator, professional development expert and author of "Creating Significant Learning Experiences," says great courses should include experiences that promote:

• Learning how to learn: when teachers provide explicit attention to the learning process and help students become self-directed learners who can inquire and construct knowledge.

• Caring: when teachers find ways to increase the degree to which students care about what they learning.

• The human dimension: when teachers find ways to help students become more self-aware and other-aware in relation to the subject they are studying.

• Integration: when teachers help students see connections between different subjects.

• Application: when teachers devise ways for students to engage in one or more kinds of thinking (creative, critical and practical), developing an important skill or managing a complex project.

• Foundational knowledge: when teachers go beyond their focused subject matter and help teach how to use the content.

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Selected courses that promote significant learning:

• "Biology for Science Literacy": Students work in small groups on term-long investigations including analyses of socially important scientific issues, using scientific concepts, reasoning and their own values.

• "Geology-Applied Hydrology": Students use fieldwork and other data to investigate a real drainage basin and eventually present a paper at a statewide hydrology conference.

• "Business -- Integrated Business Core": In a practicum course (one of four courses in the core), beginning business majors create and run a real business with real dollars during one semester.

• "English -- Seeking the Meaning of Shakespeare": Students use psychodrama and the ideas of multiple intelligences to pursue an emotional as well as a cognitive understanding of Shakespeare's plays.

• "English -- Linking World Problems and Literature": Students learn about a foreign region and raise funds for relief work in that region by compiling and marketing an anthology of contemporary authors.

-- Valerie Strauss