Creating Significant Learning Enviroments- EDLD 5313

Transforming Teaching: Creating Significant Hybrid Learning Environments

In today’s dynamic educational landscape, the teacher’s role has evolved from content deliverer to designer of authentic, inclusive, and meaningful learning experiences. This blog and the work it showcases go beyond collecting academic assignments; they reflect a deep commitment to teaching that transforms, humanizes, and inspires. As a second-grade teacher and teacher educator, I’ve come to understand that hybrid learning is not merely a format; it’s a powerful pedagogical strategy to enhance literacy, foster engagement, and support students ethically and inclusively.

This space is grounded in the vision of Creating Significant Learning Environments (CSLE) (Harapnuik, 2021), which calls for the intentional design of learning spaces where students feel safe, engaged, and empowered to grow. Designing significant hybrid learning environments means creating experiences that are emotionally meaningful, culturally relevant, and deeply connected to students' lives. Rooted in frameworks such as Meaningful Learning (Ausubel, 1963), Backward Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), and Universal Design for Learning (Nelson et al., 2021), this blog offers ideas, resources, and reflections to empower teachers to implement real change. Here, technology becomes more than a tool it becomes a vehicle for connection, inclusion, and creativity (Bates, 2014; Thomas & Brown, 2011).

This journey is guided by an educational philosophy grounded in five principles: Connecting with students, Exploring with curiosity, Constructing with purpose, Integrating with awareness, and Innovating with intention (CECII). This approach bridges theory and practice, providing a straightforward yet powerful framework for transforming classroom experiences. This portfolio is an invitation to reimagine education with passion, empathy, and purpose, recognizing that every child deserves to learn in a space where they feel seen, valued, and heard. It also acknowledges that every teacher can lead this transformation from within their own classroom.

The course EDLD 5313 Creating Significant Learning Environments has been essential in transforming my educational philosophy. Beyond delivering content, it taught me that authentic learning happens when we design meaningful environments that connect with students’ identity, curiosity, and lived experience. By integrating theories such as Significant Learning (Fink, 2003), Universal Design for Learning (Nelson et al., 2021), and the New Culture of Learning (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011), this course has inspired me to build spaces that nurture not only knowledge, but also passion, autonomy, and the ability to learn how to learn. It is a cornerstone for creating an innovative, ethical, and profoundly human teaching practice.

Beyond Content: Creating Inspiring Learning Environments

A New Culture of Learning

This work comes from a core belief: students don’t need more control; they need more inspiration. Inspired by A New Culture of Learning, I propose environments where play, passion, and community guide learning.
My approach aligns with my hybrid classroom innovation plan, aiming for fundamental transformation: learning with purpose and growing with freedom.

Grounded in Context: Designing with Purpose in a Changing Educational Landscape

This first worksheet is essential because it lays the foundation for instructional design through a deep understanding of the learning context. By identifying student characteristics, institutional conditions, available resources, and potential barriers or opportunities, this exercise ensures that the course is not a generic proposal but rather a learning experience aligned with real-life situations. Instead of starting from assumptions, it begins with people and their environments. This type of analysis fosters more empathetic, flexible, and inclusive pedagogical decisions, allowing the methodological process to respond to the participants’ needs honestly. In this way, an authentic design journey begins, where each course component gains meaning and purpose to its context (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).

Worksheet 1: Learning Environment-Situational Factors document

This analysis helps contextualize instructional decisions, understand the characteristics and needs of participating teachers, and identify institutional challenges. Based on this understanding, it becomes possible to design a meaningful, inclusive, and student-centered hybrid course. This initial reflection is essential within the Understanding by Design framework (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), and naturally aligns with the principles of the CECII model, which fosters authentic, human, and transformative learning experiences.

Desired Results: A Purposeful Start for Meaningful Learning

This second worksheet focuses on identifying the desired learning results that will guide the entire course design. Drawing from the principles of Backward Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), this stage invites us to begin with the end in mind: to define what truly matters in terms of enduring understandings, essential questions, and transferable knowledge and skills. Rather than listing content, this step emphasizes deeper learning outcomes that encourage teachers to reflect, question, and act with intention. These desired results serve as a compass for all learning experiences, ensuring coherence between goals, instructional activities, and assessment strategies. This process is further enriched by the ISTE Standards for Educators (ISTE, 2017), which promote the integration of technology, equity, inclusion, and student empowerment at the heart of the learning process.

By grounding the design in clear, relevant, and significant goals aligned with standards, pedagogical theory, and contextual realities, we lay the foundation for learning that is not only measurable but truly transformative. This reflection aligns with the call to Create Significant Learning Environments (Fink, 2003) and cultivate a New Culture of Learning (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011), where educators lead change and learning grows through purpose, passion, and authenticity.

Worksheet 2: Questions for Formulating Significant Learning Goals

This section is just the beginning. As we move forward, we will delve deeper into the enduring understandings, essential questions, and key knowledge that bring the course design to life. I invite you to keep exploring how these desired results translate into authentic learning experiences aligned with the purpose of teaching with meaning and transforming from within the classroom.

Designing with Purpose: Aligning Goals, Evidence, and Learning

The Three-Column Table is a foundational tool within the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework, as it makes visible the alignment between desired results, acceptable evidence, and planned learning experiences. This structure helps ensure that teaching is purposeful, assessments are authentic, and learning activities are fully aligned with what truly matters (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).

More than a planning chart, this tool reflects a deep commitment to learner-centered design and the creation of significant learning environments (Fink, 2003). By focusing on enduring understandings and transferable skills, the table supports the design of experiences that go beyond academic content and connect to real-world, inclusive, and hybrid teaching contexts. The second column, which defines acceptable evidence, reinforces the importance of designing assessments that allow learners to demonstrate understanding in meaningful and creative ways (McTighe & Seif, 2011).

Integrating goals, evidence, and learning experiences into a single, cohesive view transforms instructional planning into a strategic and intentional act. This table serves as a bridge between vision and practice, making learning visible, measurable, and deeply relevant to both teachers and students.

This section opens the door to a deeper understanding of intentional instructional design. I invite you to explore how the desired results, authentic evidence, and learning experiences of each column intertwine to bring a coherent, meaningful, and student-centered course to life. Each element was designed not just to teach but to transform.

Learning Outcomes 3 Column Table

Designing with intention has been, throughout this process, a way of returning to the core purpose of teaching with meaning. Each step from understanding the context, envisioning a bold and impactful goal, to aligning outcomes, evidence, and learning experiences has been an opportunity to connect pedagogy with real life, with what truly transforms.

This journey has been guided by inspiring frameworks: Backward Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), Significant Learning (Fink, 2003), the ISTE Standards for Educators (2017), and the voices that invite us to create learning environments where to learn is also to imagine, to question, and to build together (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011; Harapnuik, 2021). However, beyond theory, what has given this work meaning is the conviction that education must respond to its context, to diversity, and to the profound desire to improve the experiences of both learners and educators.

Aligning outcomes, assessment, and activities is not just about organizing ideas; it is an act of empathy, of ethical design, and of vision. Each tool used is a thread that weaves intention with action, structure with creativity. What I take away from this process is the certainty that when we plan from a human perspective, with purpose and an openness to change, learning becomes meaningful, possible, and alive.

REFERENCES

Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. Jossey-Bass.

Harapnuik, D. (2021). CSLE + COVA: Creating Significant Learning Environments to give learners Choice, Ownership, and Voice through Authentic learning opportunities. Retrieved from https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=7547

International Society for Technology in Education. (2017). ISTE Standards for Educators. https://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards-for-teachers

McTighe, J., & Seif, E. (2011). An implementation framework to support 21st century skills. In J. Bellanca & R. Brandt (Eds.), 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn (pp. 155–176). Solution Tree Press.

Thomas, D., & Seely Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. CreateSpace.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd ed.). ASCD.