It’s been over 20 years since L. Dee Fink published Creating Significant Learning Experiences, a book that formally introduced the Taxonomy of Significant Learning and the related Integrated Course Design Process (ICD). College educators are often familiar with Fink’s Taxonomy, yet the taxonomy is just part of the overall ICD process.
With many colleges and universities offering some form of a Course Design Institute or program that guides faculty through a formal design process, certain steps have become commonly accepted as best practice, including backward design, articulating learning outcomes, and constructive alignment. These elements also exist in ICD, however, there are some ways in which the ICD process differs from other course design models.
What are some unique aspects about the ICD process?
Starts with “The Big Dream”
Backward design, a concept introduced by Wiggins and McTighe, taught us to start designing a course with the end in mind. Fink’s ICD process takes instructors back even further. Before articulating the learning outcomes for a course, ICD asks faculty to envision their students years after the course ends, when students are in their future lives and careers.
Fink unapologetically calls this the “big dream.” This step, in a nutshell, asks faculty to imagine a perfect teaching situation and respond to questions such as:
Five years in the future, as a result of taking your course,
The impact on students’ lives would be…
Students would carry with them…
Students who have taken your course would be different from those who did not because…
Those of us lucky enough to facilitate this process typically find this step to be fun and inspirational. It can remind faculty members why they love teaching and what the ultimate goals are for students as humans in our future society. I have actually had instructors tear-up when describing the dream for their students.
Rarely does anyone list content knowledge goals. Rather, response include:
🗨️”I want students to know they can do math.”
🗨️”I want students to be able to analyze the validity of information, and use it wisely in the construction of knowledge.”
🗨️”I want students to see the realities of the world and work towards creating a better society.”
🗨️”I want students to recognize how science concepts help them understand their everyday world.”
It may be unusual to start with dreaming in higher education, but Fink considers it to be essential.
Later in the process comes measurable learning objectives. But first, creating a focused, big dream in simple language about the impact on students’ lives keeps the thinking big. It can provide both a new sense of purpose as well as greater focus for a course.
Emphasizes the “Left Side” of the Taxonomy of Significant Learning
The big dream often spurs faculty to articulate goals that fit into the “left side” of Fink’s circular representation of learning outcomes: those of caring, learning to learn, and the human dimension.
Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning was built upon Bloom’s Taxonomy, but also includes elements that students find significant in their education. Bringing in learning outcomes related to values, interpersonal skills, identity development, empathy, or metacognition may not sound as groundbreaking as it did 20 years ago. But taking time to articulate those goals can still be new to many faculty. This is where the emphasis of the taxonomy within the ICD process is unique.
Faculty are asked to think about questions such as those below.
| Human Dimension | – What should students learn about themselves? For example, their identity, strengths, tendencies, positionality, etc. – What should students learn about others and understanding others? – What should students learn about interacting with others? |
| Caring | – What changes, values, or interests do you hope students will adopt? – What do you hope students will care more deeply about? – How can students connect course material to their own lives? |
| Learning How to Learn | – What learning strategies do they need to develop to be a successful learner in your course? In your discipline/program? In their future lives? – What should learners learn about learning, about engaging in inquiry, and becoming self-directed in their learning? |
Focusing on these domains within Fink’s taxonomy can unearth not just what we teach, but how we want students to learn. We want to develop not just problem-solvers, but ethical problem-solvers; not just someone with knowledge, but someone with a self-reflective, curious approach to their knowledge.
Why is this even more important in the age of generative AI?
AI use is mainly concerning to faculty when students use it to skip doing work or to offload the building of necessary thinking skills. Why do students cheat in the first place? Research in this area points to a lack of motivation such as little connection to the content, lack of learning strategies, and little concern about the material or about developing the related skills.
When we help students uncover what they care about and how course material connects to their lives, they are better able to see why learning matters, why developing skills are important. We also want students to care about building their thinking capacity. And a focus on self regulated learning may be necessary when students are deciding when to use AI or not to use AI. But also, students need metacognitive skills to evaluate AI outputs, to see its limitations and analyze how to use it strategically.
We may need to include new learning outcomes about AI based on Fink’s Taxonomy. Ideas include:
Caring
- Students will examine their own motivations for using or not using AI tools, reflecting on how their choices align with their long-term goals.
- Students will develop a personal stance on the use of generative AI in college learning.
Human Dimension
- Students will analyze the ethical implications of using generative AI within their fields.
- Students will recognize when AI-generated content reflects cultural biases or omissions.
- Students will develop a professional identity that includes an intentional approach towards AI use in their work.
Learning How to Learn
- Students will reflect throughout the course on how their relationship with AI tools is evolving or changing, documenting what they are learning about their own learning as a result.
- Students will distinguish between the use of AI as a thinking partner and the use of AI as a substitute for thinking.
- Students will develop habits of evaluating AI-produced work and using AI as a constructive study partner.
Includes Meaningful Components at Every Step
A few other unique aspects of ICD stand out for their focus on meaningful teaching.
Forward Looking, Educative Assessments
The ICD process stresses alignment between learning outcomes and learning assessments and activities. However, it also stresses that the types of outcomes and assessments we use matter. A course could be fully aligned but yet not produce significant learning. Fink supports educative assessment where course assignments and assessments are designed to enhance learning, maybe even teach the student something new, rather than just measure past learning. Part of this concept is forward looking assessment. Instead of looking back on what has been covered and essentially asking, “Did you get it?”, forward-looking assessments look ahead to what students will be expected to do in the future as a result of learning the material.
Caring Feedback
Additionally, Fink’s idea of “FIDeLity Feedback” is simply an acronym for feedback that is…
- Frequent
- Immediate
- Discriminating (focused and specific)
- Loving
Just like the term caring, “loving” is not a term we use often in higher education. Here, it simply means sharing feedback in a respectful, supportive, and caring way—not in a way that makes the students feel inadequate or demeaned.
Identifiable Opportunities
Although the ICD process promotes measurable learning objectives, many of the “left side” goals are possible, but difficult to measure in one course. We can measure shifts in caring, values, and motivations, but that may be beyond the time and capacity that most faculty can do in a course. Alignment in this case is more than matching an activity to LO 2.3.45, or making everything observable behavior, but rather, finding the ‘identifiable opportunities’ in your course that help move students towards those bigger goals.
If something is a goal in your course, you should at least be working towards moving the needle. If one of your goals is to teach students that they can do math, you would likely teach the course differently than if this wasn’t an articulated goal. You might build “quick wins” into the first weeks of class to help students feel successful, you might ask past students to come talk about the course, you might create opportunities for self-reflection of students’ mindset towards math, or even just add more humility and awareness to your lectures. In other words, having these goals means you look for identifiable opportunities to build this capacity.
A Unique Take on Course Design
Many of the features of the ICD process are familiar: alignment, backward design, engagement in learning. And although it is effective, course design can sometimes feel like a technical exercise. Fink’s ICD process helps us tap into what really matters in higher education. This process often results in faculty feeling excited about their courses again.
The world our students are entering is more complex, uncertain, and AI-mediated than anything Fink could have anticipated when he published his work over 20 years ago. Yet his framework can help meet our current challenges. By grappling with our big dreams and hopes for students, we can create not just competent graduates, but give them the type of learning that can be truly significant in their lives.
