Assignment 1: Fink Steps 1 and 2

Due Week 4 and worth 330 points

For this first paper, you will work through the first two steps of Fink’s Initial Design Phase using A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning, L. Dee Fink, PhD.

First, select a short unit of study for the grade level that you teach or would like to teach. The unit should be about 3-5 lessons long. Select a classroom/in-person course that is at least 20 hours long (2.5 days). Briefly describe your unit of 5th grade math and the intended grade level or audience for training (2 pages).

Then briefly describe the education technology that you want to incorporate into your lessons. You can replace existing ED tech with new ED tech or you can add in ED tech where there was none. For example, instead of using an interactive whiteboard like a SMART board, you could have students work on interactive tablets instead. At this point, you do not have to be specific, but you should have a general idea of what you would like to do (2 pages).

Next, work through the first two steps of Fink’s Initial Design Phase, found on pages 6-12 (listed below )of the Self-Directed Guide. Answer all of the questions on the page 7 worksheet for Step 1 (listed below ). For Step 2, answer the questions as noted in the outline provided on page 8, (listed below) and pages 11-12 (3-5 pages total).

Step 1: Situational Factors to Consider

Answer all the questions in the Step 1 Worksheet, “Situational Factors to Consider,” on page 7 of Fink’s guide. Your answers must be in complete sentences and in paragraph form, except when it would make sense to use a bulleted list for items in a sequence. You will have to copy each question into your document in order to answer it.

For question 1 of the worksheet on page 7, do the following activity and include your results in your analysis:

Using the survey in the EdTech Global Survey, analyze the state of technology at your school or place of work.

Where is it?

Where do you want it to be?

For question 4 of the worksheet on page 7 of Fink’s guide, include the following information:

Using the National Education Technology Plan as a guide, describe the digital divide that exists in your situation.

For question 5 of the worksheet on page 7 of Fink’s guide, include the following information:

Incorporate the information that you shared in the Week 1 discussion question on NETS standards.

Step 2: Identify Important Learning Goals

For Step 2 of your paper, you must include the following:

Answer the following questions from page 8 of Fink’s guide (approximately 1-2 paragraphs each):

What would I like the impact of this course (unit or training) to be on students 6 months to a year after the course is over? (Note: this is different from what Fink says of 2-3 years because you are working with either K-12 students or adult students who need to demonstrate their skills immediately.)

What would distinguish students who have taken this course (unit or training) from students who have not?

Define your unit or training goals and how students will meet them.

From the outcome of the EdTech survey you completed for Step 1, how will the technology help you achieve these goals?

Work through the worksheet on pages 11-12 of Fink’s guide.

Expand upon the goals that you have already defined and either map them to the following goals or create new goals to address these points:

Foundational Knowledge

Application Goals

Integrational Goals

Learn-How-to-Learn Goals

It would be a good idea to work through the entire worksheet and include all of the types of goals.

Refer to the responsible use policy that you created for the Week 3 discussion question.

How does the responsible use policy help students achieve the learning goals?

To help you get ideas for this part of your paper, refer to the Week 2 discussion question on updating a lesson with learning technology.

Include the following two items in the appendix. These do not count towards the total page count:

Your results of the EdTech Global Survey (save your results as a PDF)

Responsible Use Policy that you developed as part of the Week 3 Discussion question

Use at least 2 peer-reviewed sources besides your textbook and the reports provided to support your use of technology. A good place to start is the Strayer library at research.strayer.edu.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date.

Include a reference page of all citations used, including the textbook and the reports provided.

Include an appendix with the required information.

The cover page, the reference page, and the appendix are not included in the required assignment page length.

A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning

L. Dee Fink, PhD Director, Instructional Development Program University of Oklahoma

Step 1. Situational Factors

The first thing to do when designing a course is to size up the situation carefully. This means reviewing information already known about the teaching and learning situation and, in some cases, gathering additional information. This information will be used to make important decisions about the course.

There are several potentially important situational factors affecting a course. The general categories I have found useful to consider are the following:

· Specific Context of the Teaching/Learning Situation

· General Context of the Learning Situation

· Nature of the Subject Characteristics of the Learners

· Characteristics of the Teacher

The specific context factors are always important. The other factors are sometimes important, sometimes not. But it’s always useful to review all of them.

The general categories (and the specific factors associated with each category) are shown in the Step 1 Worksheet. Review each of these factors with regards to your specific course. If you have information about any factor, write it down. If you don’t have information, but think it could be important, write down ideas about how you might obtain it.

Step 1. Worksheet

SITUATIONAL FACTORS TO CONSIDER

1. Specific Context of the Teaching/Learning Situation

How many students are in the class? Is the course lower division, upper division, or graduate level? How long and frequent are the class meetings? How will the course be delivered: live, online, or in a classroom or lab? What physical elements of the learning environment will affect the class?

2. General Context of the Learning

Situation What learning expectations are placed on this course or curriculum by: the university, college and/or department? the profession? society?

3. Nature of the Subject

Is this subject primarily theoretical, practical, or a combination? Is the subject primarily convergent or divergent? Are there important changes or controversies occurring within the field?

4. Characteristics of the Learners

What is the life situation of the learners (e.g., working, family, professional goals)? What prior knowledge, experiences, and initial feelings do students usually have about this subject? What are their learning goals, expectations, and preferred learning styles?

5. Characteristics of the Teacher

What beliefs and values does the teacher have about teaching and learning? What is his/her attitude toward: the subject? students? What level of knowledge or familiarity does s/he have with this subject? What are his/her strengths in teaching?

Step 2. Learning Goals

After you have reviewed the situational factors, decide what you want students to get out of the course. Many people take a content-centered approach to this task: “I want students to learn about topic X, topic Y, and topic Z.” This is an easy, natural approach but it generally results in an overemphasis on “understand and remember” kinds of learning. These are important. But when teachers take a learning-centered approach, they usually identify several additional kinds of significant learning.

I recommend that teachers ask themselves: “What would I like the impact of this course to be on students, 2-3 years after the course is over? What would distinguish students who have taken this course from students who have not?”

When students and teachers think about what students can learn that is truly significant, their answers usually include, but do not focus on, “understand and remember” kinds of learning. More often they emphasize such things as critical thinking, learning how to creatively use knowledge from the course, learning to solve real-world problems, changing the way students think about themselves and others, realizing the importance of life-long learning, etc.

After many years of studying people’s responses to the question of what constitutes significant learning, I have proposed a taxonomy of significant learning. It consists of six major types of significant learning, with a number of sub-categories. This taxonomy is shown in Figure 1 (next page). The taxonomy identifies significant kinds of learning that you may want to include as important learning goals for your course.

One important feature of this particular taxonomy is that each kind of learning is interactive, as illustrated in Figure 2 (next page). This means that each kind of learning can stimulate other kinds of learning. This has major implications for the selection of learning goals for your course. It may seem intimidating to include all six kinds of significant learning. But the more you can realistically include, the more the goals will support each other—and the more valuable will be your students’ learning.

INTERACTIVE NATURE OF SIGNIFICANT LEARNING

Step 2. Worksheet Questions for Formulating Significant Learning Goals

“A year (or more) after this course is over, I want and hope that students will _____________________ .”

Foundational Knowledge

· What key information (e.g., facts, terms, formulae, concepts, principles, relationships, etc.) is/are important for students to understand and remember in the future?

· What key ideas (or perspectives) are important for students to understand in this course?

Application Goals

· What kinds of thinking are important for students to learn?

· Critical thinking, in which students analyze and evaluate

· Creative thinking, in which students imagine and create

· Practical thinking, in which students solve problems and make decisions

· What important skills do students need to gain?

· Do students need to learn how to manage complex projects?

Integration Goals

· What connections (similarities and interactions) should students recognize and make…:

· Among ideas within this course?

· Among the information, ideas, and perspectives in this course and those in other courses or areas?

· Among material in this course and the students’ own personal, social, and/or work life?

Human Dimensions Goals

· What could or should students learn about themselves?

· What could or should students learn about understanding others and/or interacting with them?

Caring Goals

· What changes/values do you hope students will adopt?

· Feelings?

· Interests?

· Ideas?

“Learning-How-to-Learn” Goals

· What would you like for students to learn about:

· how to be good students in a course like this?

· how to learn about this particular subject?

· how to become a self-directed learner of this subject, i.e., having a learning agenda of what they need/want to learn, and a plan for learning it?