Yonit Shames
Published: August 23, 2005
Editor’s note: This is the first of several articles concerning learning-centered colleges and the impact for PJC.
PJC administrators began promoting an active shift to a learning-centered college last week as a workshop was conducted for the board of trustees Aug. 16. Faculty was welcomed back Aug. 19 with a convocation and workshop that further clarified the college’s plan to continue development as a learning-centered institution.
The college has been working on the concept since the fall of 2003 and in March, incorporated the paradigm into the college’s mission statement.
At the board of trustees meeting, Dr. David Sam, vice president of academic affairs, gave an overview of the concept, touching on styles of learning, gaining employee buy-in and the need for student performance assessment tools. He stressed that teachers won’t stop lecturing.
“Teaching is the means, learning is the end,” Sam said. “In learning-centered colleges, teachers don’t stop teaching.”
Rather the entire college is involved in the learning process from admissions to the maintenance employees, Sam said.
“Every employee is an educator,” Sam said. “People will work more in teams, taking responsibility in seeing students succeed.”
The discussion prompted board member Thomas Tait to conclude, “It’s not a program; it’s a culture.”
Convocation speaker, John Tagg, author of “The Learning Paradigm College,” elaborated on this “cultural” difference.
Traditional teaching demands that instructors break information into pieces, and then expects students to respond, in the form of answers on tests, Tagg said. Then teachers count the responses by grading the exams.
“Colleges should be focusing on what the student learns, rather than how much the student learns,” Tagg said.
Rather than surface studying, which prepares students for tests, students should be learning at a far deeper level to prepare them for life.
Tagg emphasized that new expectations of students would help them change the superficial way they think about school.
Learning-centered institutions are gaining acceptance among community colleges across the nation. Valencia Community College in Orlando, Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio and Palomar College in California, already have switched to learning centered curriculums, becoming pioneers in what appears to be a spreading trend in academia.
According to the League for Innovation in Community Colleges, an organization behind the movement, a learning-centered institution focuses on implementing and measuring assessable goals. The quality of academic performance of students is the main focus, rather than the quantity. In addition, the organization advocates improving student service as well as student success.
Examples of successes in the current pilot programs are outstanding programs in student advising, developmental education, faculty orientation and development, community learning opportunities, technology applications and Web-based registration and financial aid processes.
Palomar College summarized its new goals in its mission statement, saying that it is no longer content with “merely providing quality instruction” and that it intends to focus on “the quality of student learning” produced.
Sinclair Community College’s mission statement emphasizes perhaps the most concrete facet of learning-centered institutions that differentiates them from their traditional peers- tailoring course curriculums that expand learning through individualized learning methods, such as interactive multimedia and in particular collaborative group learning and team teaching.
At PJC, several committees have been formed to help implement the program, including the Global Learning Outcomes committee, which began meeting in February. It already has formulated a list of global goals that departments should expect their students to reach. The committee also will be working with departments to create assessment tools to measure student success.
But, Sam admitted to board members that he didn’t know how the college will evaluate the program, which could take five years to fully implement.
“It will have to be more than a grade, they already leave with a transcript,” he said. “They need to leave with a portfolio of their work.”
Corsair Editor-in-chief, Matt Foster, contributed to this article.