Running head: CURRICULUM

Curriculum: Final Reflection

Jon Merrill
Loyola University Chicago

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The various classes that I have taken within my Master's program have prepared me to be
a student affairs practitioner. These classes ranged from educating me about the history of higher
education to understanding how students develop within a collegiate environment. My program
focused on theory-to-practice and subsequently challenged me to critically think about how the
theoretical information I learned connected to my professional practice. These lessons were very
valuable; however, I think taking the Curriculum Development in Higher Education course was
key in becoming an educator. As result of taking this course I now see myself first as an
educator, and this course provided me with the skills to create significant learning environment
with students. This final reflection encompasses my key learning from this course. The first
portion of this reflection will focus on self-assessment - I will articulate my strengths and areas

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of growth. Afterwards, I will focus on the largest theme that I have taken from this course. This
will be followed by a discussion of the connections made across assignments and to other
classes. Finally, I will summarize my experience in this class by articulating my personal
philosophy of curriculum development.
Self-Assessment of Learning
As previously mentioned, this first section will be an assessment of my learning this
semester particularly focused on my strengths and areas of growth. My largest strength as a
learner within this course was the ability to connect the course information to my professional
practice. I think this is best illustrated by the way incorporated Fink's (2003) Integrated Course
Design into my role as a conduct administrator. There are three components to this design:
learning goals, feedback and assessment, and teaching and learning activities. According to Fink,
all of these components should "reflect and support each other" (p. 71). Furthermore, he
suggested utilizing a backward design when trying to integrate these components by first
reflecting on how one would assess learning goals and then planning activities that would
address this assessment. In other words, students and educators first ask "what would student
have to do to convince themselves that they had achieved those learning goals" (p. 71). As result
of learning this technique, I have found it useful in generating sanctions in a conduct meetings.
Within this setting, I work with students to articulate how they can turn this incident into a
positive learning experience. I frame the question by explaining that future employers will have
access to this information and what they will be looking for is students to not only acknowledge
that they violated policy, but also to articulate how they have grown or what they have learned
from the incident. My role as an educator and conduct administrator is to then work with

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students to identify what they can learn from the incident and then to create sanctions that will
allow them to articulate this growth to potential employers. In this example, the sanction is akin
to the learning activity and students identify what their learning goals are. Finally, the future
employer can be thought of as the assessment portion of the design.
In addition to this strength, I recognize that there are still areas of growth for me as a
learner. I think the largest area of growth for me is in contributing to classroom discussion. The
majority of the meaning and learning occurred for me within the various writing assignments.
These reflections required me to breathe life into the theoretical concepts that we were covering.
This led me to de-value the in-class discussion portion of the course. Because I personally did
not feel the same investment to class discussion, I tended to be more passive and silent.
Although I had a very strong understanding of the concepts, I could have challenged myself and
been more open to incorporating the views of my peers. I think this is something that I will have
to continue to work on in the future.

Themes
Through reflecting on my learning experiences within this course this semester, I now see
making connections as the most powerful component in creating significant learning
experiences. This semester, I had the opportunity to go on a service-learning program and it has
become a personal example for the power of making connections. This experience had an inclass components, where I co-led a class of undergraduate men-of-color in exploring the concept
of the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as a service component where we spent a week at a

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Latino service Jesuit middle school. As articulated by Jacoby (1996), reflection is a key
component of service-learning and my co-leader and I facilitated reflections every night.
Through these reflections we were able to connect our daily experiences to the theoretical
concepts we had been discussing throughout the semester. Looking back, we utilized several of
Finks (2003) taxonomies of significant learning and they manifested themselves organically
throughout the program. Overall, making connections - for me - is the key to creating powerful
significant learning experiences. As such, the next section of this paper will examine how I have
made connections within and across this course.
Connection Across Assignments
The biggest connection that I made across the course readings, assignments, and group
project was that creating 'true' significant learning experiences or integrated courses is difficult.
From the readings I was able to get a sense of what these concepts looked like ideally. However,
in reality these concepts changed or were not fully adapted in order to be useful for the
environment in which they were used. For example, in the first case study, I examined key
points from Bransford, Brown, and Cocking's (1999) How People Learn and connected it to core
curriculum construction in higher education. In their work, they described a key element in
significant learning experiences - transfer learning. Transfer is defined as "the ability to extend
what has been learned in one context to new context" (p. 51). Transfer learning is another way
of stating the importance of making connection within the learning environment. The core
curriculum that I analyzed had consistent trends that related to positive educational practices:
developing a knowledge base, exposure to diversity, and focus on reasoning skills. However,
these curriculum struggled to intentionally incorporate transfer learning into the core. I found

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similar trends throughout all three case studies - existing institutions did a good job of capturing
certain aspects of what we learned in class, but not all of it. My understanding became much
more realistic when I developed a syllabus and created modules for Marquette.
In both of these exercises, I was challenged to practically use the various concepts that
we had discussed in class. However, the environment was often a factor that influenced my
ability to fully utilize the theories. For example, during the construction of my syllabus, I
reflected on being able to easily integrate linearly across learning outcomes, but struggled when I
tried to incorporate multiple learning outcomes into specific assignments. My motivation for
doing this stems from Fink (2003) who articulated that incorporating multiple taxonomies of
learning leads to more significant learning gains within the students (Fink, 2003, p. 91). While
theoretically it makes sense to incorporate multiple learning goals or outcomes into specific
learning activities, practically it was much more difficult.
Connections to Other Courses
I found this course enjoyable due to its applicability to other courses and teaching
techniques. Immediately after learning about Fink's (2003) Taxonomies of Significant Learning,
I was able to make clear connections to some of my previous educational experiences as well as
the techniques that my professors were using. One of Finks taxonomy is integration, where
students are challenged to make connections between "specific ideas, between various
learning experiences, or different realms of life" (p. 36). I immediately thought of my
interdisciplinary undergraduate major: Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology. In this major, I
took classes in what I initially thought to be three distinct disciplines. However, the courses
required me to make connections between the disciplines, and I ultimately learned how I can

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understand the brain and cognition through many different lenses. As mentioned by Fink, this
interdisciplinary approach developed my ability to look at a problem more holistically or through
multiple lens.
Additionally, based on these taxonomies, I was able to better understand my own
educational experience. This semester I had the opportunity to take a counseling course, and
although I was originally very excited about this course I quickly became disillusioned. In
reflecting on his teaching activities lectures I realized they largely focused on one specific
taxonomy: foundational knowledge. According to Fink, this taxonomy is the base for all of the
other types of learning and focuses on "understanding and remembering specific information"
(p. 34). I was comparing this professors teaching to what I have experienced in my Masters
program where, in addition to teaching foundational knowledge, there was a strong emphasis on
application, integration, and the human dimension of learning. In other words, this information
helped me to become a much more critical consumer of my education.
In addition to connecting this course content to teaching practices and learning
experiences, I found that this content also connected to what I had learned in Student
Development Theory and Organization and Governance in Higher Education. In Student
Development Theory, we discussed Baxter Magolda's Model of Epistemological Reflection
(Evans, Forney, Guido, Patton & Renn, 2010). In this theory, students move through four stages
in which their understanding of the nature of knowledge become more sophisticated. In the first
stage, absolute knowing, "knowledge is viewed as certain" (p. 125). Authority figures,
including teachers, are seen as having the right answer. This stage best correlates with the
foundational knowledge taxonomy of learning - in a sense, teachers are filling students container

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with basic knowledge. The challenge occurs when one tries to incorporate other types of
taxonomies. For example, the Fink's (2003) human dimension of learning calls for students to
make connections between what they have learned with personal experiences. In other words, it
challenges students to see that their own experiences are valid sources of knowledge. This type
of learning connects to later stages of Baxter Magolda's model and therefore requires students to
be at a higher developmental level to effectively use. In another example, in this course we
discussed undergraduate research as a form of high impact learning. In Organization and
Governance in Higher education, we discussed how the federal government funds institutions of
higher education, especially when it comes to research. Specifically, of federal funds dedicated
to research, 50% consistently go to the top 100 research institutions. The other 50% is spread
across all other institutions. Therefore, these top 100 research institutions have a lot more
resources at their disposal. In theory, these resources potentially trickle down to the
undergraduate level. With more resources for research there may be more opportunities for
undergraduate students to become involved. Since these experiences are often linked to greater
retention, it is arguable that students at these top 100 institutions are a competitive edge. In this
case, I think the connection was made between federal funding practices and how that potentially
intercepts with high impact learning practices.
In conclusion, making connections has been the cornerstone of my learning within this
course. As previously demonstrated, I have been able to connect this course content to subjects
that superficially seem unrelated as well as to my professional practice. Based on my learning
within this course, I have been able to develop a personal for curriculum development and
educator. I see education as one of the most powerful vehicles for social change. Cognitive
dissonance is key in education through dissonance we are challenged to continually make

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meaning of our understanding of ourselves and our social reality. This notion of dissonance is
the key foundation of my curriculum development philosophy statement. As an educator, I strive
to create curriculum and learning experiences that will engage students in conversations about
diversity and multiculturalism. Through this experiences I will challenge their worldview and
thereby start creating dissonance. Connection is the second foundation of my philosophy
statement. Through these experiences I will encourage students to make connections between
their lived-experience to course content. Through this approach, I hope to build students selfefficacy as they come to understand that we are both co-constructors of knowledge.

References
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.) (1999). How People Learn: Brain,
Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Evans, N. J., Forney, D. S., Guido, F., Patton, L., & Renn, K. (2010). Student

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development in college: Theory, research, and practice (2nd Edition). San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Jacoby, B. & Associates. (1996). Service-learning in higher education: Concepts and Practices.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Fink, L.D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to
developing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.