Posted by amy at January 15th, 2006

I found the Fink article surprisingly readable especially in contrast with Dick and Carey - who are clearly leaders in the field, given the number of references made to them in the literature. I tagged a few terms that Fink didn’t elaborate on in the introduction and added them to the Pediwiki and my blog. I found Fink’s cleverly phrased outline for integrated course design to be quite contemporary - as the “cutting edge” trend in many disciplines has been to study “intersections.” (It began as the intersection of race, class and gender, then expanded to all sorts of identity issues, including religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation.) The idea of challenging what we know by changing how it is ordered or connected is a powerful analytical tool, in and of itself because it can (and in Fink’s case does) lead to some quite interesting discovers, but taken too far, it can lead to classes like “The Decentering of Gender in Feminist Theory: Different Difference and Significant Others.” (A class that I assume could really have benefited from an instructional designer, just peeking at the syllabus.)

Fink takes the interrelated point further by testing common (albeit hypothetical) course designs and checking them for compatibility. A quick look at her illustrations to identify integration problems reveal course dysfunction and that assessment provide the feedback to fix the course - (see Wiggins.)

The setup of her framework builds upon the similar concepts as the IEEE article and Dick and Carey Model, but again, presented in a much more readable and engaging manner. The idea of designing while constantly checking that all elements are not only in agreement but reinforce each other may be the most helpful idea I can take away from this reading. Oh, and I also loved the worksheet.

I didn’t find any of the content in any of the readings not to resonate at some level, but reading Dick and Carey, I found myself thinking more about my course than about the theory of what they were trying to accomplish, which was good in a practical, eat your vegetables kind of way, but when pressed to go back and pick just one module to follow, I doubt if I’d return to Dick and Carey as my first choice.

ADDIE Model
Active Learning
Educative Assessment
Significant Learning