PERS is SFBU's university-wide teaching framework. It names four dimensions of a learning experience: Personalized, Experiential, Relational and Student-Centered.
The framework gives faculty in every discipline a common way to describe a course and to notice which dimension a unit could develop further. Each dimension has four sub-principles, so the framework has sixteen elements in all. All four dimensions are present in any class already, and PERS makes them visible enough to design for.
Students arrive with different prior knowledge, working lives and relationships to the subject. SFBU treats those differences as material for the course. In a supply chain unit on disruption, students bring cases they have seen themselves, in a family business or a previous job. They use them alongside the textbook example, and the discussion gains more entry points and more depth.
A class working in small groups. Each table has the same problem, and the instructor goes from table to table.
Understanding grows when students do something with knowledge, and consequence deepens it. A computer science student defends a database design to classmates playing the client and answers a live question about what happens as data volumes grow. That student learns the material at a deeper level than one who submits a marked problem set. Think, Do, Create carries this dimension into the week-to-week structure of a course.
Research links the quality of the relationship between student and instructor to how much students learn. A meta-analysis of 119 studies, mostly in schools, found strong links with participation, motivation and achievement (Cornelius-White, 2007). Students who feel known take more intellectual risks and stay with difficulty longer. At SFBU this dimension has grown into a body of practice of its own. Relational Intelligence sets it out, and it depends on the classroom conditions described in Trauma-Aware Teaching.
A Student-Centered course begins from what students should be able to do and what experiences build that ability. In practice this means designing the assessment before the lectures, since assessments show what a course values. It also means asking what students will be doing for most of each session. Course Design places these decisions in order.
PERS works best as an input to a course. A course designed from the four dimensions looks different from one that adds activities to a finished topic list. CEPI consultations are most useful early for that reason.
Take this with you
1
Where students are from, what they already do, and one thing they know about your subject. Use the cards to choose examples all semester.
2
Classmates play the people who will use the work and ask what happens when it fails. No field trip is needed for the experience to have consequence.
3
What students must be able to do decides what each session is for.
One question to keep
In the unit I teach next, where is the experiential dimension?
Download the Faculty Guidebook
The full argument, worked examples and sources. PDF.
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