Aligning Outcomes, Assessments, and Activities
Creating a significant learning environment is more than what content you teach, but how you set up the learning environment. When creating a course of study the learning outcome must effortlessly coincide with activities and assessments that are done during the course. Looking at the development of a course from multiple perspectives of foundational, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn, a course can stimulate learning (Fink, 2003). Keeping the finish in mind first, and developing based on that.
As an example of this, I have created an overview of a course to assist teachers in using the iPad as a creation tool to encourage reflection of the learning. In Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind, reflection is important in
drawing forth cognitive and emotional information from several sources: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. To reflect, we must act upon and process the information, synthesizing and evaluating the data. In the end, reflecting also means applying what we've learned to contexts beyond the original situations in which we learned something (Costa & Kallick, 2008).
I have created this overview where the course would be done as a professional learning community, as described in my innovation plan. Support is through a collaborative wiki and resources, activities and assessments found in an iTunes U course. This course was designed backward with the learning outcome determined first and the activities and assessments determined after. With this type of course development, the focus is on the student learning and not the teacher teaching.
