Fink's Five Principles of Good Course Design

Fink's Five Principles of Good Course Design

Whether teaching young people or adult learners, most course design criteria are the same. This applies to the corporate world, as well as academia.

A "Good Course" is one which meets the following five standards:

1. Challenges students to higher level learning


2. Uses active forms of learning


3. Gives frequent and immediate feedback to students on the quality of their learning


4. Uses a structured sequence of different learning activities


5. Has a fair system for assessing and grading students

L. Dee Fink, University of Oklahoma Instructional Development Program, July 19, 1999.
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/finks5.htm

Six Sigma: DMAIC

As we have discussed before, Six Sigma is a powerful business strategy that utilizes data and facts, rather than intuition for making sound corporate decisions. The key methodology of Six Sigma is DMAIC:

• Define process improvement goals that are consistent with customer demands and corporate goals


• Measure key aspects of the current process and collect data


• Analyze the data to verify cause-and-effect relationships


• Improve the process based upon data analysis


• Control to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects

Even if your organization does not wholeheartedly adopt Six Sigma, it can still benefit from many of its precepts.