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

I never taught. Well I did, but not for long. Teaching was too hard for me. Hence, my profound respect—even awe—for great teachers. One of the great privileges of my presidencies has been the opportunity to support and encourage such teachers.

Having read Creating Significant Learning Experiences, I now want to try teaching again. L. Dee Fink has created an inspiring yet eminently practical strategy for teachers that might work for me, too. Its focus is why and how to move from a content-centered approach to a learning-centered approach.

The book motivates me in two ways. First, the vision of coursework is more interactive and process-oriented than the one I learned long ago, providing a very different and more enjoyable experience for the participants. Yet the approach is not at all unfocused or undirected. Teaching and learning remain structured, content-rich, purposeful activities in Fink's vision, but he turns them—and the teaching role—sideways. In so doing, he shows us how flat the content-based model is, compared to the multi-dimensional possibilities of "significant" learning. Second, the book itself is so exquisitely organized, illustrated, sequenced, and articulated that it can enable anyone to develop and lead a significant learning experience.

Fink concludes from the research that change is needed because college students lack basic knowledge and "there is no significant difference between students who take courses and students who do not" in terms of content knowledge (p. 4). He cites a number of authorities who support learning-centered reform. The book presents the reform that Fink proposes based on many years of thoughtful experience as a teacher and instructional consultant to teachers.

Fink defines "significant learning experiences" as those with these qualities: students are engaged in their learning, the class has a high energy level, the learning makes a lasting change in the students, and it has a high potential for being of value in their lives after the course is over. He repeatedly encourages teachers to pursue their dreams of achieving this kind of impact with students.

The book explains significant learning, presents concepts and tools for integrated course design that will produce significant learning experiences, and outlines the organizational support required to make it happen. Significant learning has six dimensions: foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn. It is not a teaching strategy, but a context for instruction that can encompass a host of diverse teaching strategies in any discipline. Integrated course design encompasses learning goals, feedback and assessment, and teaching and learning activities. Twelve steps in accomplishing integrated course design are fully explained.

Most of the book presents, charts, and provides examples of significant learning and integrated course design. The charts are useful visual depictions of the text, keeping the reader well-anchored at all times in the narrative flow. The language and the examples are so direct, real, numerous, and appropriate to the point that the book may well be one of the most lively and interesting teaching texts on the market.

Is it important to reform teaching so as to provide significant learning experiences? Perhaps this is just another interesting approach that will not make a difference in student outcomes. This approach arose from extensive experience, and it has a good deal of face validity. However, the evidence of its effectiveness is anecdotal. It seems reasonable to expect that conscientious teachers and students who try it will have a positive experience. Whether it will improve the outcomes of teaching and learning remains to be seen.

One chapter addresses the need for better organizational support for faculty, citing faculty's need for awareness, encouragement, time, resources, cooperative students, and recognition and rewards. Fink suggests that institutions create a set of educational goals...