Even though I enjoyed the readings on course design (and am taking a course right now, on course design – using the Fink book), the chapter on Understanding (Ch 4) was what hooked me this week.  I teach first year freshmen and I suspect about half of them don’t understand what they read.  This is largely because they don’t take the time to read carefully.  But more interesting to me, is that I believe they don’t even know that they don’t understand.  They are unaware that they don’t understand.  And they are untroubled by their lack of understanding.

In class next week, I plan to begin using the six facets of understanding.   If a student can explain the text, interpret, apply, show perspective, empathize, and show a sense of awareness of their understanding (metacognition) then they can (likely) say they understand what they read.  These facets are a quantifiable way for students and teachers to gauge levels of understanding.  By applying this little rubric to everything they read, students will have some way to measure whether they truly understand what they’ve just read.

The frustrating part of designing courses, is that I expect my learning activities to jump from the reading that was done for homework.  I make every effort to plan with the learning goal in mind and tailor classroom work with certain assumptions (that the reading will be done).  But if there is a fundamental lack of understanding of the reading, then the classroom work is not engaging and becomes ineffective.  As we read earlier this semester, students expect that the lecture will include a summary of the reading homework therefore they just don’t do it or make little attempt to understand it.  Valuable classroom time is taken by the “re-cap” – which is also rather boring.

So the freshmen in my classes will receive a gift from me:  the gift of an “Understanding rubric”! This is the year they are creating the habits and patterns that will take them through the next few years.   When they come out of English 101 they will know how to understand if they understand (applicable for any subject), and they will know their strengths and weaknesses in reaching understanding.