Significant Learning

Denise Domizi November 6th, 2009

When I began my graduate program in Instructional Technology (soon to be more aptly named, Learning, Design, and Technology), I remember being somewhat uneasy in one of my first classes when I learned that, instead of being taught by my professor, we would each be choosing a topic to learn more about and then teaching this topic to the class. I distinctly remember thinking, “but the professors are the experts. I want to learn from them, not a bunch of people who know no more about it than I do.”

It took me a while to get away from this orientation, but this program was (for the most part) fiercely constructivist, and I got used to this paradigm and even came to embrace it. I learned that my professors were continuing to learn just like I was, and this was a decided shift in the way that I had previously understood what professors were all about (and a shift to how I was taught as an undergrad). I also learned that I was engaging with the material in a much deeper way than I would have if I was being lectured to, and more importantly, I was learning how to learn the material on my own.

In Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning, “Learning how to learn” is one of his six categories. Unlike Bloom’s Taxonomy, Fink’s is not hierarchical, and he sees each of these “different kinds of learning” as interactive. In Fink’s words,

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.

Maryellen Weimer’s blog post today excerpts C. Roland Christensen, whose statement also seems to support Fink’s ideas:

I believe that what my students become is as important as what they learn. The endpoint of teaching is as much human as intellectual growth. Where qualities of person are as central as qualities of mind … we must engage the whole being of students so that they become open and receptive to multiple levels of understanding. And we must engage our whole selves as well. I not only teach what I know, but what I am.

When you think about the courses you teach, where do your Big Dreams for your students fit in the taxonomy?

Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning

Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning

For more about Fink’s Taxonomy and designing courses for significant learning, download this pdf from his website.

Paul Quick November 5th, 2009

At the risk of further exposing my lack of creativity (come on, it’s 5:45 on Thursday!), I offer up another blog posting from Maryelen Weimer found at http://www.teachingprofessor.com/blog.

The truth is this is better than anything I could come up, but it also “names” a way of responding to students during discussion that, while implicit, is helpful in concretizing (to use one of Ron Balthazor’s favorite words) practice. Do you explore, extend, or challenge a student’s comment or answer? I think the only addition that I would add to those options is that I sometime reiterate answers to see if I understand what the student is saying. When I do that, I often then do what the other option is that Christensen offers up which is sending the student’s answer or comment out to the class for evaluation. I do this when I think the student is probably wrong and allow his classmates to challenge him. I think this keeps me from being the heavy in a conversation and give students the change for more ownership of the discussion. In the end, I think this gives some great guidelines for managing what is otherwise the art of leading a discussion.

PSQ
________________________________________
How to Respond to a Student’s Answer
Posted: 29 Oct 2009 07:42 AM PDT

In a chapter on discussion written by a teacher recognized as a master of the discussion technique, C. Roland Christensen walks us through the options a teacher has when figuring out how to respond to a student’s answer. He uses a “decision tree” (developed by systems researchers) to help him sort through the various options.

Christensen says the tree has two main branches, each with several limbs. He can continue the teacher-student interaction, either with that student or another, or he can shift to student-to-student dialogue.

If he opts to continue with the same student, he identifies three main ways to respond to what has been said. He can explore the ideas the student has shared. This might mean clarifying assumptions; it might mean checking the quality of the analysis or testing the reasonableness of the conclusions. Secondly, he can respond by working to extend what the student has said. This might mean trying to add breadth and depth to the comments. It might mean getting the student to relate his or her comments to what has been said previously in the discussion. Finally, the instructor can challenge what the student has said. This might mean citing other, conflicting evidence. It might mean offering an interpretation or asking the student to defend the conclusion.

Opting to shift to student-to-student dialogue can also be directed in several different (and I would add rarely used) ways. One option, according to Christensen, is to simply step back and turn the discussion over to the class. Let them respond to what the student has said. Or, he might repeat the question or ask a related question in the interest of generating a larger pool of possible answers. Finally, sometimes he defers to the class asking for two different views on the primary issues and then a discussion of those.

In another chapter Christensen writes that “finding time to reflect on the discussion as it unfolded in class was … like trying to meditate on a speeding fire engine.” (p. 103) He’s right, but somewhere he has found the time to do the kind of thoughtful reflection about discussion that allows him to dissect what happens in great detail and with careful precision. Reading his description generates respect for the complexity involved in these dynamic interactions.

Reference: Christensen, C. R. “The Discussion Teacher in Action.” In C. R. Christensen, D. A. Garvin, and A. Sweet, eds. Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1991.

delicious.com

Sherry November 4th, 2009

delicious_logo
Have you ever bookmarked a Web site on your computer, then needed it when you were on a different computer? Have you ever found a great Web site and wondered if anyone else knows about it? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, then you might like using delicious.com.

delicious.com is a social bookmarking tool. It’s not just about keeping your bookmarks online, although that is very handy. It is also about sharing bookmarks with others and categorizing, or tagging, those bookmarks so others can find the most popular sites in a particular category.

You don’ t need to have an account to use existing delicious.com bookmarks, but you do have to sign up if you want to keep your own bookmarks there.

Give it a try. Check out  delicious.com/tag/cool. This will show you the most-recently posted bookmarks where people used “cool” as one of the tags. Or, if you want to see what bookmarks I’ve posted lately, go to delicious.com/sherryclouser. We’ve even started an account for the CTL.

I’m interested if you are already using delicious.com or other social bookmarking tools. Let’s network!

>>Sherry

Drink deep, or tafte not …

Nelson November 3rd, 2009

Our blog’s title prompts a refreshing drink from its source in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism, 1711,  here with original italics and capitalization, though, alas, no “long s” (the one that looked somewhat like ‘f’ ["tafte"]).  One of items about Pope’s couplets that has impressed me from back in the day (Pope being one of those absolute verbal geniuses who, as he says, “lisped in numbers for the numbers came”) is the way the couplet rhymes usually involve different parts of speech (”Thing” and “Spring” is the notable exception in the excerpt).

     A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir’d with the Charms fair Science does impart,
In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Art,
While from the bounded Level of our Mind,
Short Views we take, nor see the Lengths behind,
But more advanc’d, behold with strange Surprise
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise!
So pleas’d at first, the tow’ring Alps we try,
Mount o’er the Vales, and seem to tread the Sky;
Th’ Eternal Snows appear already past,
And the first Clouds and Mountains seem the last;
But those attain’d, we tremble to survey
The growing Labours of the lengthen’d Way,
Th’ increasing Prospect tires our wand’ring Eyes,
Hills peep o’er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
–also nicely reminds us how “science” once embraced all knowledge (Lt. scio).

What’s a life long learner to do?

David Noah November 2nd, 2009

All I really need to know … I learned in kindergarten. R. Fulghum

Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten. W. Kaminer

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. J. Dewey


How would our culture be changed if we truly thought learning was life’s long endeavor? Schools would be smaller and shorter, would mirror with greater precision the passages aging demands. Still schools for early and middle and late youth, sure—but also the option of classes designed for the midlife professional, schools for the soon to retire, and colleges tuned to the harmonies of old age.


Not to stop there. We can imagine a nuanced progression of learning occasions, of teaching tailored to parents of newborns (curriculum? Cognitive sciences, health and nutrition, the origins of the state), of schools for the just married, the just divorced, the just in time, the just and the unjust, schools for those letting go and those hanging on, schools for the penniless penitent and the reckless rich, a class for every class, and all the seven stages of man and woman awarded each and every one a formalized learning environment.


Though this list is meant in jest, we need this contradiction: flexible, transient institutions that speak to the changing needs of the life long learner.

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