Creating Significant Learning Experiences
An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses
Chapter One
CREATING SIGNIFICANT
LEARNING EXPERIENCES
The Key to Quality in Educational Programs
We won't meet the needs for more and better higher education until professors become
designers of learning experiences and not teachers.
-Larry Spence (2001)
Every year, in the United States alone, more than five hundred thousand college
teachers prepare to teach classes, and more than fifteen million students
come to learn. Most of us teach four to eight courses a year. As we engage in this
task, we have two options. We can continue to follow traditional ways of teaching,
repeating the same practices that we and others in our disciplines have used
for years. Or we can dare to dream about doing something different, something
special in our courses that would significantly improve the quality of student learning.
This option leads to the question faced by teachers everywhere and at all levels
of education: Should we make the effort to change, or not?
Given the scale of education and its significance for individual lives and society
at l ... read full excerpt from Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses ebook
