Running head: FINAL REFLECTION

Final Reflection
Candice Germany
Loyola University Chicago

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Curriculum. I had hear the word when I was younger. Teachers and professors used it
around me. I knew it was something important, but I did know what it was or why I needed to
care about it. In college, I found issues with courses, but I did not feel like I knew anything about
the subject to be able to tell another person, more educated than me, how they should design
their course.
When entering this course, I did not know what to expect from it. I did not think that it
would be necessary to take this class, since I am not a Ph.D. student and I did not think that this
would be necessary to the functional area I wish to work. I had heard from many people in the
program that it was a wonderful class and I had to experience it to understand why it was
necessary to take this class. After completing this course, I now understand why this course is
necessary to the graduate students in the higher education program. I may not be educating
students in a classroom, but I will be interacting with them in many different ways across
campus. Using my philosophy of curriculum design, I will be able to connect my course readings
to new programs that I want my students to learn something from.
Philosophy
When reviewing my own personal philosophy of curriculum design, I am partial to the
idea of discussion, discussion, and reflection. As an individual, the most beneficial moments I
had during class during my undergraduate and graduate career was the moments I learned
something new from a discussion. I integrated a lot of discussion into both my syllabus and into
my sections of the group project. I think that to have a good discussion course, you have to have
discussion questions that are prompting. I do not want students to repeat back to me information
they have already learned in readings. There is not a point to a discussion that aims to do that. I

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prefer discussion that incorporates reading and learning but also encourages students to generate
new thoughts on things they thought they already knew.
I also believe reflection is one of the strongest tools a professor, teacher, or mentor can
use to facilitate learning. To use reflection to enhance learning, the reflections need to have a
purpose (Fink, 2013). I also incorporated a lot of reflections in my syllabus that I created as well
as in my pieces of the group project. I really like to use Finks (2013) one minute reflection. I
believe that students can use this to get pass the muddle of information they have received and
form a thought or an opinion on something. It is also fun learning activity to incorporate into the
class.
Another section of my philosophy of learning is incorporating readings into courses that
are thorough, thought provoking, and necessary to the subject. I do feel that some professors
include readings in courses that are unnecessary. These kind of readings are just chapter book
readings that a professor expects you to read, but they never discuss, incorporate, or test on any
of the information that is given. I have also had professors that did not assign any book for a
course and there was no information, except lecture notes, to utilize. None of the things listed
above will help a student learn or get excited about a course. Fink (2013) discusses many of
these issues with readings. Sometimes, I felt that Fink left out readings as an impactful item in a
course structure.
When I incorporate readings into a course, as I did for my syllabus and one of the
sessions of the group project, all of the readings are necessary to beginning the exploration of a
subject. These readings are not just something that was pulled from the internet. They are
thought provoking research that brings together a lot of different theorists. To use readings in
class, I want to use them to spark a group discussion, but I do not want them to become a crutch

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for the discussion. Students should be reading and challenging what they have learned and
expanding on the information that they were given.
Beginning this course, I did not realize how much work went into design course work. I
had several struggles over the semester, but I also was able to learn from those struggles and
grow from them. During this course, I found I struggled with creating learning activities. As I
stated before, I found during my group project, I had a hard time moving away from discussion
based learning activities. When trying to create more interactive activities, I found myself relying
on the ones solely in Fink (2013). During the group project, I put in one activity that was a team
learning quiz. As an individual who prefers to discuss what I have learned and read, I found the
task of creating varied learning activities very stressful.
I had a difficult time creating learning outcomes that were useful and tied into the
learning activities. Finks (2013) model of how to create an integrated course design works
backward to create a course. During this process, I found that my learning outcomes were very
wordy to try and incorporate as much information as I could into one item. My learning activities
did not always connect with what exactly what I was trying to perform, but they were in the
general area of learning I wanted.
Syllabus
The syllabus project was the first opportunity that I really had to implement Finks (2013)
taxonomy on creating significant learning experiences. Though I do not think my syllabus was
completely off topic, looking back I think I could have made some significant changes to it. I
should have included more direct learning activities and assessment activities that were not just
reflection work. All of my learning activities for that project were group discussions and papers

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and reflections were the assessment activities. I should have implemented more activities that
had interaction between the students.
Group Project
This group project was a very long and arduous process that led to a significant learning
experience for myself. During this process, I found that I implemented all of Finks (2013)
integrated course learning design into each of the pieces of the project that I was involved in
creating. I created two different pieces from this project. One was a session on leadership and the
second was a session on classroom management. I learned two very important ideas from
building these sessions. The first is how to effectively design a course that integrates my learning
on how to build a course and what was stated in Finks (2013) book. I found that I was not an
expert on this topic. It took many hours of sitting and rereading Finks book to build those
sessions. I wanted to make sure the courses were informative as well as well built. I had to learn
how to make my learning outcomes shorter and more concise and create learning activities all
the students could benefit from. It took a couple of trials and errors before I finally understood
how to build these sessions successfully.
The second thing I learned from building this group project was that I will not always be
an expert on what I am teaching to students. Professors are very well educated individuals, but
they are also human. They will not be experts in every subject that they teach. I struggled with
this while creating my classroom management session. I had never taken a course on classroom
management, nor did I know that it was even important to this position.
Before writing this session, I asked several friends of mine that were teachers for articles
that they read in undergrad that helped them learn about classroom management. After reading,
four articles, I was able to choose one that I felt integrated a lot of information about classroom

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management, while still being understandable. I was very careful about how I designed this
course to include the information I had learned and felt was necessary for the students to learn
for their work.
E-Portfolio
When creating this e-portfolio, I really got to reflect on all of the things I have done in
this course. I first wanted to make sure that this portfolio was reflective of who I was as a person
astatically. I was able to find a design that incorporated calm, cool colors. I the wood background
allowed for me to bring a little bit of texture into the design. The soft grey on the boards is a
color that I am drawn to and does not interrupt the reader when they are browsing around on the
sight. The boards of the wood also bring the eye down to the information that was below. I also
did not put a lot of pictures, gifs, or crazy designs into my e-portfolio. I feel like these designs do
not reflect the learning environment or the social environment I prefer. I liked the look of clean
lines with lots of information on each page. I find that I prefer serene environments to the ones
that include too much information on one page.
The e-portfolio also allowed me to reflect on each of the papers I have completed. At the
top of each document, I was able to reflect on why I wrote each document the way I did. It also
showed me how much new information I had learned throughout the process. The learning I had
done about curriculum design between Case Study 1 and the Group Project was a significant
jump.
Conclusion
This class is by far one of the hardest and most fulfilling classes I have taken during my
higher education career. I always felt with each reading that I was learning something new and
wonderful that I would be able to use in the near future to enhance my students learning. The

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syllabus project was a wonderful introduction on how to use Finks (2013) learning taxonomy.
The group project, though it was a very long process, allowed me to use all the information that I
had collected from the readings, to create a wonderful document with a group of people who
cared about student learning as much as I do. The e-portfolio allowed me to combine all my
knowledge into one place to demonstrate the significant learning that I had done. This class has
allowed me to learn about a topic that I never thought would be necessary to my career before. I
hope to continue my learning in curriculum design so I can enhance my programs for my
students in the future.

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8
Resources

Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to

designing college courses. San Fransico, CA: John Wiley & Sons.