94p. · EARNING OLLEGE OR E ST ENTURY Terry O'Banion Many recent attempts at educational "Those...

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AUTHOR Hutchins, Sally, Ed.TITLE Trustee Quarterly, 1997.INSTITUTION Association of Community College Trustees, Washington, DC.PUB DATE 1997-00-00NOTE 94p.PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022)JOURNAL CIT Trustee Quarterly; 1997EDRS PRICE MF01/PC04 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Access to Education; Advocacy; College Presidents; Community

Colleges; Educational Change; Educational Policy; FinancialSupport; *Governing Boards; Learning; Mass Media Role;School Policy; Student Financial Aid; *Trustees; Two YearColleges; Women Administrators

IDENTIFIERS *Association of Community College Trustees

ABSTRACTThese four issues of "Trustee Quarterly" focus on current

topics affecting community college trustees. Issue 1 focuses on the learningrevolution and serves as a guide for community college trustees. It offersthe following feature articles by Terry O'Banion: "Education Reform: TwoWaves," "The Second Wave and the Community College," "The House that CarnegieBuilt," "Launching the Learning Revolution," "The Learning College," and "TheRole of the Board of Trustees." Issue 2 features "Focus on Mission BringsCanadian Colleges Through Funding Crisis," and "Making Policy that Makes aDifference," (Cindra J. Smith and Jim Lussier). Issue 3 presents "WomenAdministrators in Community Colleges: Confronting the Glass Ceiling"(Rosemary Gillet-Karam, Kathryn Baker Smith, Johnnie Simpson); "The Nation'sCommunity Colleges Are in Good Hands" (George B. Vaughan, Iris Weisman); and"Living in Detail and Brushing up Your Shakespeare: Simple Steps for BuildingSuccessful Presidencies" (Daniel J. LaVista). Issue 4 focuses on advocacy foraccess, with "Building Public Support Through the Media," (Carol Ann Kell);"Community College Advocacy: Strategies That Work" (Ann M. Garten); and"Advocating for Student Financial Assistance: The Key to Enhancing Access"(J. Noah Brown, Stephanie Giesecke). (YKH)

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Trustee QuarterlyIssues 1-4, 1997

Sally HutchinsEditor

Association of Community College Trustees

U.S. DEPARTMENTOF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational

Research and ImprovementEDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)1)This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organization

originating it.

Minor changes have been made toimprove reproduction quality.

Points of view oropinions stated in thisdocument do notnecessarily representofficial OERI position or policy.(Z)

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"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

S. Hutchins

TO THE EDUCATIONALRESOURCES

INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."

THE LEARNINGREVOLUI1ONA GUIDE FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE TRUSTEES

A

ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE TRUSTEES

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

EARNING OLLEGEOR E ST ENTURY

Terry O'Banion

Many recent attempts at educational "Those truly concerned withreform have failed because the pro- education will be well served

posed solutions only tweaked the current by the intertwined vision andsystem of education. These failures have common sense presented indriven many legislators, business execu- A Learning College for thetives, foundation officers, parents, and even 21st Century"educators themselves to call for a dramatic Diana G. Oblinger, Academic Programs

new revolution in education where learn-ing becomes the central focus.

Manager, IBM North America

"Terry O'Banion's vision for aO'Banion advocates the community college,with its strong penchant for innovation and

learning college is a wonderfulgift, not only for community

risk-taking, as the ideal forum for creatingthis new learning paradigm for the 21stcentury. The book describes in detail thesix key principles that form the definition

college educators, but for allindividuals interested ineducation... this timely workholds the potential for makingdramatic and much needed

r

and character of a learning college. Emerg-ing models of this concept are already in

changes in all of higher education.Dale Parnell, Professor

place at a number of community colleges,and six of these pioneering institutions

Oregon State University

share their initial journeys in this book. "The concept is right and the timeO'Banion draws from their experience, as is right. This is must reading forwell as from his own, to create a practical community college leaders."guide for community college leaders who Robert H. McCabe, President Emeritusare preparing their institutions to enter the Miami Dade Community College21st century.

Reserve Your Copy NowSeptember 1997/280 pages /Case 1-800-250-6557Order#8033$27.50 COMMUNITY

COLLEGEPR E S S®

itO Board of Directors1996-97

ChairMottles C. Martin, Jr.Trident Technical College, SC

Chair -Electbabel F. Doom leyChabot-Las Positas Community

College District, CA

Vlee-ChairDennis ChristensenCentral Wyoming College

Secretary-TreasurerWillie CulpepperHawkeye Community College, IA

Immediate Past ChairGene E. McDonaldWestmoreland County

Community College, PA

Richard A. AndersonCollege of Lake County, IL

Central Region ChairLenore CroudyMott Community College, MI

Linda GallenManatee Community College, FL

Stephen E. GoldbergRockland Community

College, NY

Joan S. JensteadWaukesha County Technical

College, WI

Gloria M. LopesSanta Fe Community College, NM

Robert M. Mc CrayCollege of Du Page, IL

Helen M. NewsomeRoanoke-Chowan Community

College, NC

Southern Region ChairJean B. PedenMississippi Galt CoastCommunity College

Ilebsag. PenlandAsheville-Buncombe Technical

College, NC

Linda B. Rosenthal?daricopa County Community

College District, AZ

Armando R. RutsCoast Community College

District, CA

Lydia ScuttibanesTemple College, TX

Western Region ChairJo Ann SharpSeward County Community

College, KS

Pacific Region ChillJams. E. SherrillCentralia College, WA

Dona L. ShammyPratt Community College, KS

Lillie J. SolomonHalifax Community College. NC

Northeast Region ChairMarsha A. StoltananMercer County Community

College, NJ

Gerald a WatsonChemeketa Community

College, OR

Ronald D. Winches..Burlington County College, NJ

The TRUSTEE QUARTERLY (ISSN 0271-9746)is published four times per year as a membershipservice of the Association of Community CollegeTrustees (ACCT). ACCT is a non-profit educationalorganization of governing boards of public and pri-vate community, technical, and junior colleges.Membership also is open to state coordinatingboards, advisory boards, and state associations. Thepurpose of ACCT is to strengthen the capacity ofcommunity, technical, and junior colleges to realizetheir missions on behalf of their communitiesthrough the development of effective lay governingboard leadership and advocacy at local, state, andnational levels. Important activities of the associa-tion are trustee education, assistance to boards oftrustees in developing and affecting public policy,local board service, promotion of the role of com-munity colleges, and education leadership.

Opinions expressed are those of the authors and notnecessarily those of ACCT

Non-members may subscribe to the TRUSTEEQUARTERLY for $30.00 a year. Third-classpostage paid at Washington. DC.

Director of Communications: Sally HutchinsPresident: Ray Taylor

Association of Community College Trustees1740 "N" Street, NW

Washington, DC 20036

202-775-4667

FAX: 202-223-1297

Web sitehttp://wwmacclorg

ISSUE 1, 1997

QUARTERLY

THE LEARNBGREVOLUTION

A GUIDE FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE TRUSTEES

Terry O'Banion

2Introduction

3Education Reform: Two Waves

6The Second Wave and the Community College

7The House That Carnegie Built

10Launching the Learning Revolution

13The Learning College

17The Role of the Board of Trustees

19References

90Calendar

THEREVOLA GUIDE FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE TRUSTEES

Terry O'Banion

here is a great deal of con-versation these days about

"the learning revolution,""learning communities," and"learning colleges." As a philo-sophya strategythe conceptaddresses many of the issuesconfronting community collegetrustees and presidents today.

The principles guiding this learner-centered reform movementhold promise for coping with the complex and often interrelat-

ed issues of maintaining access and equitywhile the scope and range of community /student needsgrowsin an increasingly pluralistic, cost-conscious, high-tech environment. The resulting change will be dramatic anddifficult and will require well-infirmed, committed leadership.

A project of the ACCT Trust Fund, thi.s. special issue of theTrustee Quarterly, written by Terry O'Banion, an advocateand leader of the learning revolution, will provide boardswith the background to begin assessing the "fit" of thisconcept with their own communities and institutions andthe steps they can take to fiuther the revolution.

Ray ThylorACCT President

Arevolution in learning isspreading rapidly across the

higher education landscape. In°-' 1994, the cover of Business Week

declared a learning revolution inprogress; in 1995 a special sectionin Time announced a rapidlydeveloping learning revolution.Throughout 1997, and for theremaining few years of this century.

"The Learning Revolution" will continue to be a leading themeof articles, books, conferences, commissions, and studies ineducation.

This current revolution in education is part of a larger socialtransformation. Peter Drucker, in Managing for the Future, suc-cinctly captures this special period of change: "Every few hun-dred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation hasoccurred. In a matter of decades, society all together rearrangesitselfits world view, its basic values, its social and politicalstructures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later a new worldexists... Our age is such a period of transformation" (1992, p.95).The learning revolution, "in a matter of decades," will fundamen-tally change the education enterprise. The revolution was trig-gered by the first wave of education reform launched in the early1980s and found its central theme in the second wave of educa-tion reform launched in the early 1990s. Substantive change isalready beginning to appear in higher education. especially com-munity collegesideal crucibles for the learning revolution.

Tern' OBanion is executive director of the League for Innovation in the Community College.

T sTE Q t r.

EDUCATION REFORM: Two WAVES

The First Wave

On August 26, 1981, Secretary of Educa-tion T.H. Bell created the National Commis-sion on Excellence and Education inresponse to "the widespread public percep-tion that something is seriously remiss in oureducational system" (National Commissionon Excellence in Education, 1983, p.1).

The Commission examined patterns ofcourses high school students took from1964-1969 and compared those course pat-terns with courses students took from 1976-1981. They were alarmed at the findings:

The proportion of students taking "generaltrack" or a cafeteria-style curriculumincreased from 12 percent in 1962 to42 percent in 1979.In 1979, only 31 percent of high schoolgraduates completed intermediate algebra,13 percent French I, 16 percent geography,and 6 percent calculus.A 1980 national survey of high schooldiploma requirements revealed that onlyeight states required high schools to offerforeign languages, but none required stu-dents to take the courses.Thirty-five states required only one year ofmathematics, and 36 required only oneyear of science for a high school diploma.(Ibid., pp.18-20.)After 18 months of study, the Commission

shared its report, A Nation at Risk, as "AnOpen Letter to the American People" andtook a bold position:

4

"The failure of this

well-intentioned,

well-executed

movement toward reform

summons us to think theunthinkable: we can no

longer improve the

education of our children

by improving school as

we know it. The time has

come to recognize that

school is not the solution.

It is the problem"

Our nation is at risk. Our onceunchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry,science and technological innovation is being over-taken by competitors throughout the world... Wereport to the American people that while we can takejustifiable pride in what our schools and colleges havehistorically accomplished and contributed to the Unit-ed States and the well-being of its people, the educa-tional foundations of our society are presently beingeroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens ourvery future as a nation and as a people. (Ibid., p. 5).

The phrase "a rising tide of mediocrity" appeared as theheadline in hundreds of newspapers all across the country

kid)

calling attention to the deteriorating stateof education. The Commission suggestedfurther that education in the United Stateswas so poor that "if an unfriendly foreignforce had attempted to impose on Americathe mediocre educational performancethat exists today, we might well haveviewed it as an act of war... We have, ineffect, been committing an act of unthink-ing unilateral educational disarmament"(Ibid., p. 5).

A Nation at Risk triggered one of themost massive reform movements in thehistory of education in the United States.Throughout the rest of the decade of the1980s, reform efforts were intensified atnational, state, and local levels with lead-ership from governors, state legislators,state and national educational leaders,foundations and education organizations,and individual principals, presidents, andfaculty leaders. In the decade between1982 and 1991, after adjusting for infla-tion, funding for K-12 schools increasedby $57.2 billion, or more than 50 percent,as an expression of the commitment toreform. Per-pupil spending increased anaverage $1,250, or 30 percent, above thelevel required to keep pace with inflation.(Augenblick et al, 1993). As part ofreform efforts, every state raised require-ments for high school graduation. Manystates increased standards for teachersand expanded state assessment programs.

Over 100 national and over 300 statetask force and commission reports were

created during the 1980s with specific recommendations foreducation reform. This first wave of educational reform cul-minated in the National Education Goals created by thenation's governors in 1989 and later recast as Goals 2000 bythe Clinton administration. The reform efforts triggered by ANation at Risk were now set as part of national policy withsupport from the states.

In the early 1990s, the reform efforts of the 1980s began tobe analyzed. The outcomes of the analyses have been dra-matic, but not in the ways that reformers had hoped. In areview of A Nation at Risk, George Leonard commented, "Thepainful truth is that despite the spotlight on schooling and thestern pronouncements of educators, governors, and presi-

ISSUE 1, 1 9 9 7 3

EDUCATION REFORM: TWO WAVES

dents, despite the frantic test preparationin classrooms all over the country and theincreased funding, school achievementhas remained essentially flat over the pasttwo decades" (1992 p. 26). Daggett ana-lyzed the changing world of work in anunchanging world of education and con-cluded, "Despite ten years of schoolreform, high school graduates in 1991 areless prepared for society in general, andthe work place in particular than weregraduates of the 1980s" (1992, p. 3). Thechairman and CEO of IBM, Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., in a speechto the National Governor's Association, reported in USAToday, also keyed off A Nation at Risk by asking, "What'shappened since? Lots of hand-wringing; lots of speeches; lotsof reports; but little improvement. U.S. students still finish at,or near, the bottom on international tests in math and sci-ence" (USA Today, p. 9A).

Several leading critics suggested the time had come toabandon the schools. Leonard concluded that "The failure ofthis well-intentioned, well-executed movement toward reformsummons us to think the unthinkable: we can no longerimprove the education of our children by improving school aswe know it. The time has come to recognize that school is notthe solution. It is the problem" (1992, p. 26). More pointedly,Lewis J. Perelman observed: "So contrary to what the reform-ers have been claiming, the central failure of our educationsystem is not inadequacy but excess: our economy is beingcrippled by too much spending on too much schooling... Theprincipal barrier to economic progress today is a mind-setthat seeks to perfect education when it needs only to be aban-doned" (1992, p. 24).

There are some indications, however slight, that reformefforts since 1983 have contributed to improving schools. Theoverwhelming perception, however, of the public, leading crit-ics, business executives, policymakers, and educators them-selves is that the reform effort launched by A Nation at Riskin 1983 has been a spectacular failure.

In retrospect, the primary problem of education reformtriggered by A Nation at Risk is that solutions were proposedas add-ons or modifications to the current system of educa-tion. It is now clear that tweaking the current system byadding on the innovation du jour is not sufficient for substan-tive change. Fixing what is broken by repairing the pieces orgrafting on a prosthetic technology will not address coreissues. "The reform movement of the past decade has beennothing more than trimming the branches of a dying tree"(O'Banion, 1995, p. 1).

4 TRUSTEE QUARTERLY

The Second Wave

The early 1990s was a time of realignmentfor the education reform movement. Therewas growing recognition that tweaking theestablished system of education by adding onnew programs or reorganizing existing pro-grams would not create an educational enter-prise capable of addressing the increasinglycomplex issues developing in American soci-ety. A second wave of education reformsounded a new theme that would give thelearning revolution a powerful engine for

bringing about substantive change in American education.The second wave of education reform erupted in numerous

national reports and pronouncements. A 1993 report An AmericanImperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education, issuedexactly ten years after A Nation at Risk, addressed many of thesame problems but suggested a different solution that would makethe learning revolution possible.

Interestingly enough, the 1993 report echoed the alarms of the1983 report:

A disturbing and dangerous mismatch exists betweenwhat American society needs of higher education andwhat it is receiving. Nowhere is the mismatch moredangerous than in the quality of undergraduatepreparation provided on many campuses. The Amer-ican imperative for the 21st century is that societymust hold higher education to much higher expecta-tions or risk national decline. (Wingspread Group onHigher Education, p. 1).

The 1993 Commission cited outcomes of several major studiesto illustrate the deteriorating state of education just as the 1983Commission had done:

Of recent bachelor's degree recipients in a 1992 analysis ofcollege transcripts by the U.S. Department of Education, it wasdiscovered that 26 percent did not earn a single credit in his-tory; 31 percent did not study mathematics of any kind; and 58percent left college without any exposure to a foreign language.In a 1993 National Adult Literacy Survey, the largest effort of itstype ever attempted, the Educational Testing Service reported thatonly about one-half of four-year graduates were able to demon-strate intermediate levels of competence in reading and interpret-ing prose such as newspaper articles, working with documentssuch as bus schedules, and using elementary arithmetic to solveproblems involving costs of meals in restaurants.In a comment on the survey by the Educational Testing Service,the Commission reported, "We note with concern that the 1993

survey findings reflect a statistically signifi-cant decline from those of an earlier surveyconducted in 1985." (Ibid., pp. 5-6).

Reflecting other themes addressed by the1983 report, the 1993 report also raised thespecter of competition from abroad. "Educationis in trouble, and with it our nation's hope for the

future. America's ability to compete in a global

economy is threatened... The capacity for the

United States to shoulder its responsibilities onthe world stage is at risk" (Ibid., p. 1).

Although both the 1983 and 1993 reportssounded similar alarms, the 1993 report dif-fered dramatically in its proposed solutions tothe problems. The 1993 report indicated that ifAmerican education is to be transformed, what

is needed is "a seamless system that can pro-duce and support a nation of learners, provid-ing access to educational services for learnersas they need them, when they need them andwherever they need them" (Ibid., p. 19).

Putting student learning first became thecentral theme of the second wave of educationreform and gave focus to a potent perspectivefor the learning revolution. The learning revo-lution suggests a new way of thinking abouteducation, a new way of thinking that placeslearners first. Many leaders and organizations have held this visionfor decades, but in the early 1990s, "placing learning and thelearner first" became the universal cry of commissions, profes-sional organizations, business leaders, policymakers, and, increas-ingly, educators from every sector of the educational landscape.

In 1994, the year following the publication ofAn American Imper-

ative, three prestigious groups declared their commitment to placinglearning first. The Education Commission of the States noted that"Nationwide, political, civic, and business leaders are pressing stategovernments and local school districts for radical alternatives to cur-rent operations" (Annajani, et al, 1994) and issued a report A Model

for the Reinvented Higher Education System: State Policy and College

Learning. The Committee for Economic Development, a privateresearch and educational organization of 250 trustees from top busi-

ness and major universities, issued a report titled Putting LearningFirst: Governing and Managing the Schools for High Achievement.The report strongly recommended "First and above all state clearlythat learning is the fundamental goal of schools" (1994, p. 3).The National Policy Board on Higher Education InstitutionalAccreditation (NPB) recognized that accreditation must extendbeyond evaluating resources, processes, governance, institutionalobjectives, and institutional missions. The report suggested that for

EDUCATION REFORM: TWO WAVES

ae'10

If American education is to be

transformed, what is needed is

"a seamless system that can

produce and support a nation

of learners, providing access to

educational services for

learners as they need them,

when they need them and

wherever they need them."

accreditation to be effective in the future it was

necessary "to elevate the importance of stu-dent learning" and recommended that "corestandards should emphasize student learning"(Independence, Accreditation, and the Public

Interest, 1994, p. 17).The Association of American Colleges and

Universities (AACU), has been the championof liberal learning for decades, encouraging itsmember institutions and all of higher educa-tion to ensure that liberal learning forms thecore of undergraduate education. It is further

testimony to the importance of the emergingfocus on learning when the AACU in 1995 dis-

tributed a paper "The Direction of EducationalChange: Putting Learning at the Center."

In 1996, a number of national statementscontinued to emerge from prestigious commis-sions and groups. The Western Governor'sAssociation created its own virtual university,the focus of which is to make learning moreaccessible to learners. Utah Governor, MikeLeavitt, commenting at the ceremony announc-

ing the virtual university, observed, "There was

a time when if you wanted a college education

you went to a college campus because that'swhere the professors and information were, but

technology is changing all of that. Education no longer has to bebound by place. In the Knowledge Age, the knowledge will go wherethe people are" (Media Advisory, 1996, p. 1). Also in 1996 theAmerican Council on Education released Guiding Principles for Dis-

tance Learning in a Learning Society, a document bursting with the

language of "learners and learning providers." A number of the keyprinciples developed in the context of distance learning in the ACEdocument strongly affirm the new emphasis on placing learning first:

The diversity of learners, learning needs, learning contexts, andmodes of learning must be recognized if the learning activitiesare to achieve their goals.The learning experience is organized over the time, place, and

pace of instruction.The development of a learning society may require significantchanges in the roles, responsibilities, and activities of providerorganizations and personnel as well as of the learners them-selves. (1996, pp. 3-4)These are only a few illustrations of the growing emphasis on

learning that is characteristic of the second wave of educationreform. As other organizations, agencies, and individuals join thelearning revolution, new statements with guidelines and princi-ples on placing learning first will increase.

ISSUE 1, 1 9 9 7 5

THE SECOND WAVE AND THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

The second wave of education reformthat places learning first is ideally suitedfor the character and culture of the com-munity college. Community colleges havealways been student-centered institutions,and there has been a groundswell ofinterest in recent years in transformingcommunity colleges into even more learn-er-centered institutions. Myran, Zeiss, andHowdyshell provide an elegant frameworkfor this more visible perspective on thecentrality of learning in the communitycollege:

There is something magical about the year 2000.We hear, as you do, the siren call of new begin-nings and new possibilities. We feel we are enter-ing a period of profound and fundamental changefor community colleges, the most sweeping periodsince the 1960s. Then, we transformed campus-based colleges into community-based colleges;today we are becoming learner-based colleges. Aswe enter the new century, we will combine theforces of learner-based and community-basededucation to shape a powerful new definition ofthe community college (Preface, 1995).

George Boggs and Robert Barr of Palomar College in Cali-fornia were among the earliest community college advocatesof a new emphasis on learning. They have been leaders intransforming their own institution and in advocating changethrough numerous speeches to community college groupsacross the nation. Boggs notes, "The mission is student learn-ing. The most important people in the institution are thelearners. Everyone else is there to facilitate and support stu-dent learning" (1993, p. 2). Barr and Tagg make much thesame point: "In the Learning Paradigm the mission of the col-lege is to produce learning" (1995, p. 15). A trustee of theSan Diego Community College District, Fred Colby, has notedthe difficult challenges facing community colleges andremarked, "To meet the challenge, we must develop newinstructional methodologies which focus on learning"(1995, p. 4).

Other individual leaders in the community college havealso articulated some of the features of the new emphasis onlearning. In a wide-ranging review of forces impacting on thecommunity college, Paul Elsner, Chancellor of the MaricopaCommunity Colleges, raised a number of key questions:

6 TRUSTEE QUARTERLY

How can the faculty facilitate theactual rhythms of learning, verifi-cation, expansion, and concep-tualization? Is this an elusiveprocess even when we witness it inour own labs and classrooms? Willtechnology drive a formidablelearning paradigm that will eclipseall traditional learning? Willstudents discover their own navi-gational route to such learningprocesses and live outside and onthe edges of our traditional col-leges? (1993, p. 26).

Many of these individual perceptions have coalesced in abasic agenda for the California Community Colleges. Theagenda is the major policy-setting document of the Board ofGovernors of the California Community Colleges. It isdesigned to provide direction to the chancellor and staff in theareas of legislation, budget, and work plans. A number of doc-uments have been updated over the past five years culminat-ing in The New Basic Agenda: Policy Directions for StudentSuccess (1995). In this key document that will influence the107 community colleges in California for some time in thefuture, the focus on student learning is clear and unequivocal:

Student learning is essential to the social and eco-nomic development of multicultural California.Consequently, the Board of Governors' policydirections for the community college are based onimproving student learning. To focus on successfullearning, the Board proposes that The New BasicAgenda include ways for colleges to (a) help allstudents determine their educational needs; (b)adapt to the rapidly changing demographic, eco-nomic, and social conditions of California so thatthe educational services colleges provide are rel-evant and timely; and (c) manage and deliverthese services, and monitor their results in themost effective way possible (p. 2).

The second wave of education reform provided a clear per-spective for the learning revolution: learners and their needsmust determine how, when, and where learning is provided.Before the learning revolution can succeed, however, thereare formidable barriers to overcome, not the least of which areembedded in the historical architecture of education.

THE HOUSE THAT CARNEGIE BUILT

The "Carnegie unit" is a metaphor for a vast array of tradi-tional structural elements that have provided the framework forAmerican schooling for generations of studentsa frameworkthat is the primary target of the learning revolution. The"Carnegie unit" is equivalent to one credit students receive fora year-long course in high school, an early attempt to codifyaccumulated learning in order to communicate the amount oflearning received. Ideally, students earn five credits in each ofthe last four years of high school, and the accumulated 20 cred-its earn them a high school diploma.

The "Carnegie unit" is but the tip of a very large iceberg thathas frozen education into a structure created for an earliersocial order. The current architecture of education was createdat the end of the last century when 90 percent of the populationleft school after the eighth grade and when the industrial revo-lution began to replace an economy built on agriculture.

In an agricultural society students were needed by their fam-ilies to work on the farms. Schools were designed to end in themiddle of the afternoon so that students could be home beforedark to milk the cows, gather the eggs, and feed the hogs. Sum-mers were set aside for major farm chores: harvesting crops,tilling new land, building barns, and repairing tools and fences.In Plant City, Florida, a major strawberry-producing center, theschools, as late as the 1940s, were referred to as "strawberryschools" in recognition of their adaptation to an agriculturaleconomy. "Everyone recognizes it [the academic calendar] forwhat it is: a relic of an agrarian society in which all able-bod-ied men and women were needed in the fields at certain timesof the year" (Lovett, 1995, p. B1).

When the nation changed from an agricultural to an indus-trial economy, the old school structure remained but was updat-ed and streamlined to fit the new industrial model. "Scientificmanagement" and hierarchical organization, the bedrock prin-ciples of bureaucracy, were introduced in the schools, in part tosocialize youth in the virtues of order and discipline. Moreimportantly, the modern factory, pioneered by Henry Ford in theproduction of automobiles, appeared ideally suited to schoolingthat up to this point had flourished in the cottage industry ofone-room schoolhouses. Schools could be operated like facto-ries with students as products moving through an assemblyline. Teachers were the workers who turned out the products,and they were in turn managed by principals and presidents,the management bureaucracy.

Reformers have been consistent in their criticism of the con-straints on learning reflected in the industrial model of school-ing. John Dewey, an earlier reformer, said, "Nature has notadapted the young animal to the narrow desk, the crowded cur-riculum, the silent absorption of complicated facts" (Deweyand Dewey, p. 15). K. Patricia Cross, a leading advocate for

A.-ra

educational reform throughout her career observed over 20years ago, "After some two decades of trying to find answers tothe question of how to provide education for all the people, Ihave concluded that our commitment to the lock-step, time-defined structures of education stands in the way of lastingprogress" (1976, p. 171). More recently, Toff ler (1995) hasnoted that "America's schools ... still operate like factories,subjecting the raw material (children) to standardized instruc-tion and routine inspection" (p. 13).

Today this inherited architecture of education places greatlimits on a system struggling to redefine itself. The school sys-tem, from kindergarten through graduate school, is time-bound, place-bound, efficiency-bound, and role-bound. (Seechart below.) As part of the second wave of education reformthere is almost universal agreement that these bonds must bebroken if the schools are to be redesigned and reengineered toplace learning first. "Putting learning at the heart of the acad-emic enterprise will mean overhauling the conceptual, proce-dural, curricular, and other architecture of postsecondaryeducation on most campuses" (Wingspread Group on HigherEducation, p. 14). There are many other factors, of course,that must change if the schools are to be transformed, but thetransformation of the structural elements is essential, andchanges in the historical structure will provide highly visibletestimony to changes in policy, governance, funding, mission,and values.

S'I'ItUCTURAUT DITION Al. LIIIITS ON ED N

Time-Bound

class hours

semester course

school year

Efficiency-Bound

linear/sequential

ADA/FTE

credit/grade

Place-Bound

campus

classroom

library

Role-Bound

expert

lecture

sole judge

Time-Bound

"Hurry up, the bell's going to ring." Every teacher who hasever lived knows full well the tyranny of time forced on the sys-tem by the creation of the "class hour." "Unyielding and relent-less, the time available in a uniform six-hour day and a 180-dayyear is the unacknowledged design flaw in American education.By relying on time as the metric for school organization andcurriculum, we have built the learning enterprise on a founda-tion of sand" (National Education Commission on Time andLearning, p. 8).

Issue 1, 1997 7


Herding groups of students through one-hour sessions dailyin high schools and three days a week in college, flies in theface of everything known about how learning occurs. No onebelieves that 30 different students arrive at the appointed hourready to learn in the same way, on the same schedule, all inrhythm with each other.

Recognizing that the schools suffer from a time-bound men-tality, the United States Department of Education appointed anational commission in 1992 to study the issue. Members of theCommission concluded "Learning in America is a prisoner oftime. For the past 150 years, American public schools haveheld time constant and let learning vary... Time is learning'swarden" (Ibid., p. 7).

The time framework is particularly pernicious when it isextended to credit hours per course. "The vast majority of col-lege courses have three or four hours of credit. Isn't it a coinci-dence of cosmic proportions that it takes exactly the samebillable unit of work to learn the plays of Shakespeare and thedifferential calculus? Or maybe the guest has been amputatedto fit the bed" (Peters, p. 23). The National Education Com-mission on Time and Learning reports that no matter how com-plex or simple the school subjectliterature, shop, physics,gym or algebrathe schedule assigns each an impartialnational average of 51 minutes per class period, no matter howwell or poorly students comprehend the material (1994, p. 7).

The reliance on time as a unit of measure must be changedto reflect mastery instead of time on task, recognizing what isuniversally understood: human beings learn at differe'nt rates.Students should not have to serve time. Time should servethem.

Place-Bound

School is a place. It is a schoolhouse, a schoolroom, a cam-pus, a college. Sometimes school occurs off campus but obvi-ously defined in relationship to campus. Young students go toschool. Young adults go off to college. Incorrigible students arekicked out of school. School/college, and the learning thatoccurs in that context, is over there. It is external to everythingelse that goes on in the learner and the society. It is cloistered,private, sacrosanct territory. Speed zones control its outer edgesand liquor stores cannot be built within its perimeters. Schoolis an ivory tower on the hill; it nestles in the gated groves ofacademe. Its residents do not mix with "townies." School is aplace.

School as a place is deeply embedded in the collectiveunconscious of a people who made great sacrifices to constructtheir first college in 1636. This early pattern of school andschoolrooms has been stamped indelibly on each successivegeneration as the natural order of the world of education. "... the

8 TRUSTEE QUARTERLY

design and practices of our childhood schoolrooms tend to bereproduced in most education and training settings, even thosethat aspire to be nontraditional or 'radically innovative.' Despitedecades of experience with models, demonstrations, and exper-imental programs, the "New American School" persistentlygravitates back to our familiar models of school, classrooms, andteaching" (Perelman, p. 125).

Schools are as place-bound as they are time-bound, andtogether these two traditions constitute a formidable barrier tochange. Leonard says, "... the conventional classroom ... is theisolation cell, the lock-up" (1992, p. 28). If the student is to befreed for more powerful learning experiences and the teacher isto be freed to facilitate that learning in a more powerful way,then the walls must crumble, the boundaries made limitless."The metaphor of a classroom is a powerful one. This mostbasic and fundamental unit of academic lifethe sanctity ofthe classroom and the authority of the teacher within itisabout to be turned inside out" (Plater, p. 27).

If reform efforts are successful, the campus, the classroom,and the library will be turned inside out. As currently designed,a few will remain to serve the needs of some students who learnwell in a place-bound context. But for the most part, theseplace-bound constructs will be artifacts, abandoned by themajority of students and faculty who will learn to use the openarchitecture created by new applications of technology and ofnew knowledge about how human beings learn.

Efficiency-Bound

The adoption of business values and practices in educationstarted in about 1900 and was based on Frederick Taylor's systemof "scientific management." The great business barons of the timealso had great influence on American culture, especially educa-tion, including Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Mor-

gan. President Calvin Coolidge reflected the values of theseindustrial barons and much of the country when he said, in 1925,"The business of America is business."

Of all the traditional architectural elements of schools, criticshave been most vocal about the negative influence of the efficien-cy model. Perelman writes, "Education developed in scale andbureaucratic density to mimic the industrial bureaucracy it wasstyled to serve. Education in its less than two-century-old modernform is an institution of bureaucracy, by bureaucracy, for bureau-cracy" (1992, p. 118-119). Perelman believes that the bureau-cratic nature of schools will lead to their ultimate downfall as thesociety in general moves to less bureaucratic models of social inter-action."... the disappearance of education is inevitable, not onlybecause education itself has become a huge socialist bureaucracy,but because it is a bureaucracy designed for a bureaucratic society.Reformers who aim to free schooling from bureaucracy are trying

to free an aircraft from air. An aircraft for air-less transport is, in fact, a spacecraft not a`reformed' aircraft but a whole different thing"

(Ibid., p. 119).Leonard makes much the same observa-

tion, "From the beginning it was an adminis-trative expediency, an attempt to adapt thetutor-learner system to mass education, acrude way of handling a large number of learn-ers with a much smaller number of teachers.We were able to get away with it in the pastchiefly because our society required few acad-emically or technically educated citizens" (1992, p. 26).

Sizer noted a decade ago that the hierarchical bureaucracies ofcontemporary schools are, "... paralyzing American education.The structure is getting in the way of children's learning" (1984, p.206). And Drucker weighs in with the astute observation that,"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient whatshould not be done at all" (1992, p. 29).


Nothing is less

productive than to makemore efficient what

should not be

done at all.

Role-Bound

By the end of the sixth grade a typical student has experiencedat least six different teachers. With high school graduation, assum-ing six teachers a year for six years, the number climbs to 42. Witha bachelor's degree, assuming 124 units divided by 3, the numberof teachers for a typical student now totals 83. Ten courses for amaster's degree, the minimum level of school achievement for thegreat majority of instructors working in community colleges today,bring the total number of teachers experienced by a student to 93,not including a vast array of teachers encountered in pre-school,scouts, 4-H, Sunday school, summer camp, etc. Most educatorswith a master's degree have spent 17 school years under the tute-lage of approximately 93 different teachers.

Teaching is the one profession that expects so much of its mem-bers and requires and pays so little. Teachers are expected to beknowledge experts, assessors, evaluators, managers, data con-trollers, artists, group facilitators, counselors, information proces-sors, lecturers, problem analysts, problem solvers, coaches,mentors, behavior controllers, and value clarifiers. Their formaleducation is ill-designed to prepare them for these multiple roles,and waitresses and airline stewards receive more on-the-job train-ing. New teachers are not inducted into the profession, exceptsometimes in an internship as part of pre-teaching exercises.Teachers are thrown into the profession, dumped into the classroomto sink or swim on their own. No wonder they fall back on the mod-els they know too well. They teach as they were taught by the 93teachers who were their models, repeating the dull catechism thatis passed on generation after generation, bound in a role that pre-tends each is an expert in some discipline, that endorses the lec-

ture method as the primary tool of teaching,and that demands that each teacher serve assole judge and jury over the lives of the stu-dents under his or her tutelage.

In addition to changing the architecture oftime and place, teachers must be releasedfrom their traditional roles to focus their tal-ents and abilities on the learner as their raisond'être. "Restructuring the role of faculty mem-bers will, at first, prove to be a monumentalundertaking. All of the incentives seemagainst doing soexcept, in the end, sur-

vival" (Guskin, p. 16).Perelman describes the basic model of education in vivid terms:

"There may be no more common and erroneous stereotype than theimage of instruction as injecting knowledge into an empty head.Whether in a typical schoolroom, or a congressional hearing, or acorporate training session, the same one-way process is acted out.In each, the teacher or expert faces the learners , taking on thecritical role of 'fountain of knowledge.' The learner plays the`receiver of wisdom,' passively accepting the intelligence beingdispensed, like an empty bowl into which water is poured" (1992,p. 135).

If the dominant role for teachers has been that of a conveyor ofinformation, the conveyor belt has been the lecture. "Lecturing isthe overwhelming method of choice for teaching undergraduates inmost institutions" (Terenzini and Pascarella, p. 29). Despite a largebody of evidence gathered over many years regarding the inade-quacies of the lecture method, the current structure supports andencourages its continuing and widespread use. One study (Pollio,1984), for example, found that teachers in the typical classroomspent about 80 percent of their time lecturing to students who wereattentive to what was being said about 50 percent of the time.

On the surface, the system does appear to work. How else cana society educate the masses if not in some linear and sequentialorder in which a student moves through grade levels, amassingcredits that are exchanged for diplomas and degrees as signs ofachievement? It is, after all, the most remarkable and largest sys-tem of schooling ever created, and it is infused with a sense ofdemocratic values. The entire structure, however, is built on afoundation of sandthe course grade. Grades are the coin of therealm in the education factory; they undergird all otherexchanges. According to Paul Dressel, the course grade is "aninadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by biased and vari-able judges of the extent to which a student has attained an unde-fined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinitematerial" (1983). No amount of efficient accounting of accumu-lated credits can overcome the messy point at which gradesbegin.

ISSUE 1, 1 9 9 7 9

LAUNCHING THE LEARNING REVOLUTION

The historical architecture of educationthe time-bound,place - hound, efficiency-bound, and role-bound model currentlyembedded in educational culturepresents a formidable barrierto the learning revolution, a revolution that aims to place the needsof the learner over the needs of an architecture created for a dif-ferent world. The house that Carnegie built must be torn down. Inits place must be constructed a new framework for education, aframework for which there are currently no clear blueprints.Caught between an established educational paradigm that isdying and a new educational paradigm that is still to be designedand constructed, educational leaders are struggling with how toframe the learning revolution. Sure of only their vision that learn-ing and the needs of the learner must guide all they do, a numberof leaders are beginning to suggest designs and formulate plans toconstruct a new educational framework. These modest beginningsherald a revolution in learning that will have profound impact oneducation well into the 21st century.

Guidelines from Vanguard Colleges

A small vanguard of leading community colleges are beginningto experiment with new approaches to placing learning first,implementing new practices and programs to make their institu-tions more learner-centered. Six community colleges have beenidentified by the author that are committed to institution-wideefforts to place learning and learners as central to all their efforts.The early experiences of these colleges are informative for othercolleges that plan on exploring how to respond to the learningrevolution. Although each college initiated its activities in terms ofits own culture, there are common elements that reflect basic stepsor practices that may be useful to other colleges. The commonelements are listed here as general guidelines; more detail onindividual practices and policies of the six colleges can be foundin A Learning College for the 21st Century by Terry O'Banion.

Revise Statements of Mission and Values to Focus onLearning. There will often be months of institutional thrashingabout before some key leaders begin to speak about the need to bet-ter assess outcomes or the need to better serve customers or theneed to reengineer programs to reflect declining resources. Everyinstitution begins its revolution based on its own characte4 culture,and community; at some point, however it becomes clear that thekind of institutional change called for in the current situation is sosubstantive that a review of mission and basic values is required.

In the case of the six colleges on which these guidelines arebased, the existing mission and value statements reflected oldparadigms of education, paradigms that failed to place learningfirst. That is not at all surprising. Robert Barr studied the missionstatements of all California community colleges and concluded "Itis revealing that virtually every mission statement contained in the

10 TRUSTEE QUARTERLY

catalogs in California's 107 community colleges fails to use theword 'learning' in a statement of purpose" (1994, p 2).

If learning is to be the central focus of a learning-centeredinstitution then learning must be the central focus of mission andvalue statements. When the college board of trustees engages thisissue there will be a great deal of discussion, but it is an early stepthat cannot be avoided. Revised or new statements are createdafter much soul-searching and reflect new values held in common.These statements are not easily developed, but once the board setsthe mission, college members will have a vision to guide them forthe rest of their journey.

The following brief excerpts from several new mission state-ments reveal the new focus on learning:

Jackson Community College (Michigan) is a community oflearners.Lane Community College (Oregon) provides quality learningexperiences in a caring environment. Above all, Lane must putthe learner first by shifting more and more to a learner-focusedorganization.

Learning is a process which is lifelong for everybody andshould be measured in a consistent, ongoing matter focused onimprovement. Maricopa Community Colleges (Arizona).We see ourselves as a learning institution in both our object andour method. Palomar College (California).These statements are taken out of context and do not do justice

to the complete and more elegant statements developed by thecolleges, but they do provide the flavor for new ideas beginning toflow in community colleges. Any community college consideringjoining the learning revolution will eventually be involved in areview and revision, if not complete overhaul, of its mission andvalues statements.

Realign Current Structures to Accommodate Collabor-ation and Teamwork Within the College Community. Manycommunity colleges are involved in restructuring and reengineer-ing their institutions in response to changing conditions. Theincreasing use of technology, the expanding diversity of students,the demand for a better prepared workforce, and declining supportof education are only some of the reasons institutions of higher edu-cation are involved in reviewing their missions, their programs, andtheir practices. More and more, leaders in higher education arebeginning to realize there is more involved than realigning theexisting institution to improve on current practice. Leaders arebeginning to realize they are engaged in a major revolution thattranscends the efforts to tinker with and tweak a few programs hereand there. The entire system of higher education, and its support-ive architecture, is being called into question; answers lead to amajor revolution that places learning front and center. JerryMoskus, president of Lane Community College (Oregon) recog-

14


nized this challenge in 1993 and said to thefaculty and staff "Lane must rethink nearlyeverything it does."

Leaders at Lane initiated their institution-wide effort to become a learning-centeredcollege by examining in great detail their cur-rent organizational structure. All faculty andstaff were invited to participate, and eventu-ally a new organizational structure was creat-ed based upon a new vision that placedlearning at the center of all their activities.

Community colleges that begin the journey

to become more learner-centered will almostalways reorganize their current structure toensure more collaboration and teamworkamong institutional members. Traditionalhierarchical structures designed for controland efficiency do not elicit the kind of cre-ativity and commitment required for learning-centered institutions. Colleges that arereorganizing to become more learner-centeredreflect the ideas of Deming, Juran, Senge, andWheatley regarding the need to flatten organi-zations, empower individuals, and involve allmembers. Community colleges are findingtheir own voice regarding the structuralchanges as noted in the following excerpts:

To leverage structural change, Maricopaagreed that changing the learning para-digm from a traditional one, to a current,more learner-centered approach was thevehicle to more comprehensive, and evenprofound, structural change.Organizations that move routine decisionmaking and problem solving to work teamsare better able to adapt to continuedchange. We must break down the wallsbetween departments by designing our processes and servicesaround work teams that cut across artificial organizational lines.

(Lane Community College)Palomar College empowers our educational teamfaculty,staff, and administrationto create powerful learningenvironments.Effective organizational change is really the relationshipbetween structure, strategy, systems, style, skills, and staff, andsomething called shared values. (Sinclair Community College)The form of the new organizational structure created by com-

munity colleges moving toward a more learning-centered para-digm is not nearly as important as the long and sometimes

Community colleges that

begin the journey to become

more learner-centered will

almost always reorganize

their current structure to

ensure more collaboration

and teamwork among

institutional members.

Traditional hierarchical

structures designed for control

and efficiency do not elicit

the kind of creativity and

commitment required for

learning-centered institutions.

chaotic processes colleges use to create newstructures. And more important than theprocesses used are the new values thatemerge from the willingness to engage in theprocesses. Community colleges that plan tojoin the learning revolution will learn littlefrom the diagrams and charts that illustratenew structures developed by other colleges.All of the essence lies between the lines andaround the boxes and can be understood andappreciated only through direct experienceapplied to one's own situation.

Involve All Members. In a communitycollege, the key constituents are the mem-bers of the community and representativesmust be included in any discussion of majorchange. Internal members include adminis-trators, full-time faculty, support staff, andthe board of trustees. Depending on theculture of the institution and its capacity tomanage complexity, part-time faculty andstudents may be included as internalmembers.

The new "science" of management andleadership that prescribes flattened organiza-tions, open communication, and empoweredparticipation makes a strong case for involv-ing all members in major reform efforts. Mar-

garet Wheatley, a consultant onorganizational change to many companiesand the U.S. Army, says, "Any change pro-gram that insists on defining how thingsought to be done, that tries to impose astructure on everyonewithout theirinvolvementworks against our naturaltendencies" (Brown, 1994, p. 24).

Wheatley goes on to say:

You need deep and meaningful involvement of thewhole organization. This seems like an insurmountable

barrie to involve the whole organization, but I believethe starting point for real change is to focus energy anddirection on this one key question: "Can we involve theexpertise and experience of everyone in the organiza-tion?" We can't ignore that question. We've got to figure

out how we can avoid the temptation to design thingsfor people instead of engaging them in creating theirown responses to change" (Ibid., p. 26).

IssuE 1, 1997 11


Few community college presidents willargue against the importance of involving allmembers of the internal college communityin the process of creating a learner-centeredinstitution, but many will be challenged abouthow to do this. It is more practical to set a goalof involving all members who want to partici-pate by providing numerous opportunities fortheir participation. Members can participatein institution-wide convocations, workshopsand seminars, and special training sessions.Staff development programs can be reengi-neered to focus on activities related to learn-ing-centered efforts. In-house newsletters canprovide important information regarding pro-ject activities. In some cases, a special publication will need to be created to carry themessage for the learning initiative. Copies ofkey documents, such as the vision statement,and later documents, such as new policies forassessing students or selecting faculty orrewarding and promoting support staff, willneed to be sent to every member for reviewand response. Universal agreement is not thegoal; universal opportunity to participate is,and some changes may need to be put to a vote.

Create an Open System of Communication. Conveninga single meeting and distributing one key paper about the ini-tiative to become more learning-centered will doom the effort toan early death. This is not an undertaking that can succeed bytossing one stone in the pond and following-up on the ripples.Creating a learning-centered institution means tossing hundredsof stones into the pond, dumping boulders into the pond, andperhaps even filling in the pond and digging a new one. Thiskind of change will not occur unless the internal college com-munity is kept fully and constantly informed about what is hap-pening and unless there are mechanisms provided whereby theycan communicate across the entire community of participants.Fortunately, technological innovations now exist, and are begin-ning to be in place in many community colleges, that allow for arich exchange of information and opportunities for intimate con-nectivity.

Wilson says "If a vision is to shape the future and drive action,then the leaderand others in executive positionsmust com-municate it broadly, consistently, and continuously, until itbecomes an integral part of the organization's culture" (1996, p.5). The message must be driven home again and again throughspeeches, newsletters, meetings, articles, interviews, surveys,and actions.

Creating a learning-centered

institution means tossing

hundreds of stones into

the pond, dumping boulders

into the pond, and perhaps

even filling in the pond and

digging a new one.


As college members become convincedthat the leadership is engaged in a seriouscommitment to become more learner-cen-tered, there will be a tremendous release ofcreativity and ideas that individuals willwant to share. There must be highly visibleand readily accessible mechanisms in placeto allow for this outpouring of ideas. Mecha-nisms must also be in place to link peoplewith common suggestions and concerns, tocapture and record suggestions and ideas,and to incorporate these perspectives in cre-ating a new culture that is learning-centered.

A project manager is often appointed toensure that the mechanisms are in place forthe communication that is needed. The CEOof the college will need to take responsibilityfor many "official" roles in communicatingabout the project activities as well as manyunofficial ones. As the project emerges andmatures, more and more participants will takeresponsibility for communicating their needsand their ideas if they see that these are takenseriously.

These four initial steps appear to be common for all communi-ty colleges that begin the journey to become more learner-cen-tered. The steps are idiosyncratic to the culture of the institutionand the character and abilities of its leaders. The steps are not lin-ear or formulaic as they appear to be in these written descriptions.In actuality all four steps occur simultaneously and are often noteven identifiable until they are almost completed. All four stepsappear as guidelines or practices to follow, and at the same time,they are explicit value statements. For a college ready to join thelearning revolution, these four steps are a good place to begin.

Toward a Learning-Centered College

But where will the journey lead? And how will we know thatthe learning revolution has been won? In other words, what doesa learning-centered college look like?

Cautiously aware that answers to these questions are likely tobe different for each collegethere is ample evidence of that inthe six colleges referenced in this paperit would be helpful tohave a perspective on what a learning-centered institution couldbe. The author has developed one such perspective, a beginningconceptual framework that may be useful to community collegesas they begin to explore their interest in becoming more learner-centered. The author has created the term "the learning college"to describe this conceptual framework.

THE LEARNING COLLEGE

The learning college places learning first and provides educa-tional experiences for learners anyway, anyplace, anytiJne (O'Ban-ion, 1995-96, p. 22). The model is based on the assumption thateducational experiences are designed for the convenience oflearners rather than for the convenience of institutions and theirstaffs. The term "the learning college" is used as a generic refer-ence for all educational institutions.

The learning college is based on six key principles:I. The learning college creates substantive change in individual

learners.II. The learning college engages learners as full partners in the

learning process, assuming primary responsibility for theirown choices.

III. The learning college creates and offers as many options forlearning as possible.

W. The learning college assists learners to form and participatein collaborative learning activities.

V. The learning college defines the roles of learning facilitatorsby the needs of the learners.

VI. The learning college and its learning facilitators succeed onlywhen improved and expanded learning can be documentedfor its learners.

Principle I: The learning college creates substantivechange in individual learners.

The first principle is a self-evident, general truth easily verifi-able in personal experience by anyone reading this page. It is soelementary that it is often unstated and overlooked. This first prin-ciple must be stated and restated until it becomes an embeddedvalue undergirding all other principles.

Basic human experience easily confirms the validity of the firstprinciple. Consider the joy and release of energy that accompa-nies the first steps of a baby learning to walk. The new walker pad-dles off in all directions, teetering forward on toes used differentlyfor the first time, teetering backwards on bottoms that cushionrepeated falls. The new walker is a joyous learner excitedly test-ing out new boundaries and excitedly exploring objects seen froma new vantage point. In this situation, learning is clearly a power-ful process that brings about substantive change in the individual;there is also substantive change in all the other players connect-ed to the new walker's environment!

These special learning experiences are moments of discovery,natural processes used by every human being to move forwardfrom the first breath of life. The developmental tasks that framethe various milestones of growing up provide the most dramaticmoments for discovery, but the smaller steps tucked away in thenooks and crannies of everyday life are key components in con-structing a full picture of a complex, growing human being. Learn-

ing kindles new ways of seeing, thinking, and doingin dramaticevents and incrementally in day-to-day experiences.

At its best, formal schooling is every society's attempt to pro-vide a very powerful environment that can create substantivechange in individuals. But formal schooling is no longer at itsbest. In the learning college this first principle must form theframework for all other activities. The learners and the learningfacilitators in the learning college must be aware of the awesomepower that can be released when learning works well. Learning in

the learning college is not business as usual. Powerful processesare at work; substantive change is expected. Learners are explor-ing and experimenting with new and expanded versions of whatthey can become.

Principle II: The learning college engages learners asfull partners in the learning process, assuming primaryresponsibility for their own choices.

At the point a learner chooses to engage the learning college, aseries of services will be initiated to prepare the learner for theexperiences and opportunities to come. Until there is a seamlesssystem of education for life-long learning based on the principlesof the learning college, these services will be heavily focused onorienting the learner to new experiences and expectations that arenot usually found in traditional schools. Two key expectations willbe communicated to new learners at the first stage of engagement:1) learners are full partners in the creation and implementation oftheir learning experiences, and 2) learners will assume primaryresponsibility for making their own choices about goals andoptions.

The services will include assessing the learner's abilities,achievements, values, needs, goals, expectations, resources, andenvironmental/situational limitations. A personal profile will beconstructed by the learner in consultation with an expert assessorto illustrate what this learner knows, wants to know, and needs toknow. A personal learning plan will be constructed from this per-sonal profile, and the learner will negotiate a contract that outlinesresponsibilities of both the learner and the learning college.

As part of the contract, the learner will purchase learningvouchers to be used in selecting from among the learning optionsprovided by the learning college. The assessment information, theterms of the contract, historical records from previous learningexperiences, and all pertinent information will be recorded on thelearner's "smart card" which serves as a portfolio of information,a lifelong record of lifelong educational experiences. The "smartcard," similar to an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cardalready widely used by banks, will belong to the learne>j who willbe responsible for keeping it current with assistance from spe-cialists in the learning college. While the "smart card" will con-tain information on learning outcomes and skill levels achieved,work experience, and external evaluations, other educationalinstitutions and employers will develop their own systems to ver-ify what they need to know about the learner.

17 ISSUE 1, 1 9 9 7 13

The learning college will also provideorientation and experimentation for learnerswho are unfamiliar with the learning environ-ment of the learning college. Some learnerswill need training in using the technology,in developing collaborations, in locatingresources, and in navigating learning systems.Specialists will monitor these services care-fully and will be responsible for approving alearner's readiness to fully engage the learn-ing opportunities provided.

In the learning college, the engagementprocess will take as much time as will berequired to meet the needs of each individuallearner. Some learners seeking minimallearning experiences about which they arevery clear can begin their activities immedi-ately following their first point of engagement.

Some learners will want to participate in theprocess for a few days or a few weeks. Somelearners may be engaged in the process forseveral months. Since there will be no restric-tions on time and place for the engagement,there will be no limitations governing the activities except theneeds of the learner. There will be many options for learners toengage the learning college including self-guided print and videomodules, group-based activitiesface-to-face or through theInternetclasses and laboratories "on-campus," and individualconsultations with a variety of specialists. Continuing learnerswill soon learn to navigate the learning college system and use itto their full advantage.

Principle III: The learning college creates and offers asmany options for learning as possible.

In the learning college there are many options for the learner ininitial engagement and in learning activities options regardingtime, place, structure, and methods of delivery. The learner hasreviewed these options and experimented with some that areunfamiliar: Entry vouchers are exchanged for the selected optionsand exit vouchers held for completion.

Each learning option includes specific goals andlevels needed for entry, as well as specific outcomecompetency levels needed for exit. Learning colleges are con-stantly creating additional learning options for learners, many ofthem suggested by learners from their own experiences.

A major goal of the learning college is to create as many learn-ing options as possible in order to provide successful learningexperiences for all learners. If one option does not work, the learn-er should be able to navigate a new path to an alternative learningoption at any point.


In the learning college,

the university ideal of a

"community of scholars"

is transformed into a

"community of learners."

competencymeasures of


If a learning college had to develop a fullarray of options from scratch, the task wouldbe overwhelming and too costly. Fortunately,there is a tremendous variety of resourcesavailable, many of them field-tested andfree. Thousands of individual faculty mem-bers have designed improved or alternativelearning materials as part of their sabbati-cals, on released time during regular terms,on summer projects, with innovation grantsfrom various institutions, and with supportfrom federal and foundation grants. Individ-ual colleges have initiated programs todesign and develop new learning opportuni-ties for students, sometimes with a consider-able commitment of college resources.Colleges have initiated consortia to work incollaboration with each other and with agen-cies and companies to produce new learningprograms. State and federal agencies, andmost especially the military, have createdhundreds of learning options that are free forthe asking. Business and industry have

spent billions on training materials. Educational entrepreneurssuch as book publishers, testing agencies, information networks,training organizations, and computer corporations are in the spe-cific business of developing training materials often available toeducational institutions for a fee paid for by the students.

To "manage" the activities and progress of thousands of learn-ers engaged in hundreds of learning options at many differenttimes, at many different levels, in many different locations, thelearning college will rely on expert systems based on early devel-opments such as General Motors' Computer-Aided MaintenanceSystem or Miami-Dade Community College's Synergy Integrator.Without these complex technological systems the learning collegecannot function. These learning management systems are thebreakthroughs that will free education from the time-bound,place-bound, and role-bound systems that currently "manage"the educational enterprise.

Principle IV: The learning college assists learners to formand participate in collaborative learning activities.

In the learning college, the university ideal of a "community ofscholars" is transformed into a "community of learners." Morethan just cute word play, the focus on creating communities amongall participants in the learning processincluding not just stu-dents but also the faculty and other learning specialistson cre-ating student cohorts, and on developing social structures thatsupport individual learning, is a requirement of a learning college.


Practitioners as well as researchers know that group interactioncan be very helpful to individual learning. There are examples ofeffective collaborative learning models at all levels of education.We also know from experience that programs that are designed tobuild cohorts of students and then to engage them in a commonexperience or curriculum greatly increase retention, and ulti-mately program completion. Nursing programs in community col-leges have some of the highest success rates in all of education, atleast in part because a cohort is guided together through a rigor-ous competency-based curriculum. Nursing students studytogether and support each other and there is no disincentive forall to succeed at high levels because students are not graded rel-ative to each other (as on a Bell curve) but relative to a perfor-mance standard.

The most widespread form of collaborative learning in thecommunity college takes place in "learning communities," aspecific term that is a curricular intervention to enhance collab-oration and expand learning. "Learning communities . . .pur-posefully restructure the curriculum to link together courses orcourse work so that students find greater coherence in what theyare learning as well as increased intellectual interaction with fac-ulty and fellow students" (Gablenick et. al., 1990, p. 5). Thestructures are also referred to as learning clusters, triads, feder-ated learning communities, coordinated studies, and integratedstudies; but "learning communities" has emerged as the favoritedescriptor. When the same 30 students enroll for nine credithours in a sequence of courses under the rubric of "Reading,Writing, and Rats," they have enrolled in a learning community.

In the learning college some learning communities and col-laborative learning activities will not look very much like class-rooms, and many will have dynamics defined by characteristicsof pace, distance, membership, and means of communication.For instance, as the number of adult workers returning to collegefor education and training continues to grow, a most likely venuefor establishing learning communities will be in the workplace.Workplaces that value and encourage lifelong learningwhetherbecause of altruism or enlightened self-interestwill make idealsites for communities of learners, as common interest may be eas-ier to determine and the level of resources available to supportthe community potentially very high. For instance, video-on-demand can distribute information, and even interactive trainingmodules, directly to the desktop of employees; informationresources can be concentrated at a common work location; andassessment services or learning specialists can be housed at thework site as desired.

Powerful networking technology can also help nurture a learn-ing community by assisting its members to communicate witheach other regularly in both synchronous and asynchronousmodes. Certainly if courtship and even mating can be accom-

=

plished in cyberspace, then learning communities can be formedthere. The Electronic Forums established in the Maricopa Com-munity Colleges are pioneering efforts to create communities oflearners through technology networks.

The roles that college educators will play in forming andsupporting learning communities are yet to be thoroughlydefined. However, in a learning college, staff will form andrecruit students into cohorts of common interests or circum-stances. Process facilitators will orient individuals and formthem into groups or communities of learners. Resource spe-cialists will attend to the resource needs of both individuals andgroups of learners. Learning facilitators will design experiencesthat build upon and use group strengths and other dynamics.Assessment specialists will design and implement authenticassessments that can occur both individually and in the contextof the learning community. The learning college will bedesigned not only around the unique needs of individual learn-ers but also around their needs for association. The learningcollege will foster and nourish learning communities as an inte-gral part of its design.

Principle V: The learning college defines the roles oflearning facilitators by the needs of the learners.

If learners have varied and individual needs that require spe-cial attention in the early stages of engagement, continuing mon-itoring of their participation in learning options, continuingdevelopment of new learning options, management of the operat-ing systems, and evaluation of outcomes, then it follows that thepersonnel employed in this enterprise must be selected on thebasis of what learners need. Community college staff are usuallyselected on the basis of needs of an administrator, a department,a center, or a course. All too often these staff are role-bound byestablished job descriptions or by traditional expectations, espe-cially for teaching faculty.

Everyone employed in the learning college will be a learningfacilitator, including categories formerly designated administra-tion and support or clerical staff. Trustees will also be consideredlearning facilitators as they exercise their responsibilities for gov-ernance and policy development. Every employee will be direct-ly linked to learners in the exercise of his or her duties, althoughsome activities such as accounting may be more indirectly relat-ed. The goal is to have every employed person thinking abouthow his or her work facilitates the learning process.

The learning college will contract with many specialists toprovide services to learners. Specialists will be employed on acontract basis to produce specific products or deliver specificservices; some will work full-time but many will work part-time,often from their homes, linked to learners through technology. Anumber of specialists will be scattered around the world provid-ing unique services and special expertise.

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The groundwork is already being preparedfor these new roles to emerge. A 1996 reportby the Ohio Technology in Education Steer-ing Committee recommended the term"learning consultant" to best describe theeducator of the future. "As learning consul-tants, educators will play many roles:

Learning consultants will be mentorsguiding each learner to his or her own cho-sen goals.Learning consultants will be facilitators ofinquirycoaching learners and helpingthem remove barriers as they move towarddiscovery.

Learning consultants will be architects ofconnectionobserving the needs of indi-vidual learners and joining them to infor-mation experiences, resources, experts,and teams.Learning consultants will be managers ofcollaboration and integrationcombin-ing the needs and abilities of their learn-ing communities with the needs andabilities of other learning communities"(1996, p. 13).Learners will also participate as learning

facilitators, and this role could be made partof the expectations negotiated in the engage-ment process. Some will not have time, but others will welcomethe opportunity to offer their experience and knowledge to assistother learners. Colleges already use students as lab assistantsand tutors to facilitate learning. In the learning college, theseroles and opportunities will be expanded to capitalize on theresources students bring , to free professional staff for other roles,and to reduce personnel costs.

Principle VI: The learning college and its learning facil-itators succeed only when improved and expanded learningcan be documented for its learners.

"What does this learner know?" and "What can this learnerdo?" provide the framework for documenting outcomes, both forthe learner and the learning facilitators. If the ultimate goal of thelearning college is to promote and expand learning, then this is theyardstick by which the learning college and staff are evaluated.Conventional information may be assembled for students (reten-tion rates and achievement scores) and for faculty (service andobservation by students, peers, and supervisors), but the goal willbe to document what students know and what they can do and touse this information as the primary measure of success for thelearning facilitators arid the learning college.


Learners negotiate and

sign contracts for

overall programs

(general education core,

basic skills, workplace skills, etc.)

and a specific contract

for each learning option

whether part of a

program or not.


All learning options in the learning col-lege include the competencies required forentrance and for exit. These competenciesreflect national and state standards whenavailable, or they have been developed byspecialists on staff or on special contract.Assessing a learner's readiness for a particu-lar learning option is a key part of the initialengagement process and thereafter a contin-uing process embedded in the culture of theinstitution.

Learners negotiate and sign contracts foroverall programs (general education core,basic skills, workplace skills, etc.) and a spe-cific contract for each learning option whetherpart of a program or not. Learners will beencouraged to add competencies and goalsbeyond those established in the standards.

Portfolio assessment, a form of authenticassessment, will be the primary means bywhich learning is documented. A portfolio isa systematic and organized collection of evi-dence of what the learner knows and whatthe learner can do. It builds on prior infor-mation, is in constant use through revisionand updates, and provides continuity intofuture learning activities. Specific bench-marks of achievement may be applied to

determine credits earned if that continues to be the coin of therealm for moving learners along a seamless path of education.

The portfolio assessment process will be one of the primaryfunctions of learning facilitators. Since many of the learningoptions will be stand-alone, student-led collaborations, contractswith specialists, or facilitated by tutors and coaches, learning facil-itators will have more time for the portfolio assessment. It may bepossible to codify some of the assessment process for easier man-agement, and advances in technology will provide some assistance.

These six principles form the core of the learning college.They refer primarily to process and structure, built on the basicphilosophy that the student is central in all activities of the edu-cational enterprise. There are certainly other principles that mustbe considered in creating a new paradigm of learning, here loose-ly coupled into a concept designated "the learning college." Con-tent, funding, and governance are examples of key issues thatmust be addressed and for which principles must be designed. Inthese six principles there is at least a beginning direction forthose who wish to create a learning college that places learningfirst and provides educational experiences for learners anyway,anyplace, anytime.

THE ROLE OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

The learning revolution will not occur unless it is initiated andstrongly supported by the community college board of trustees. Ifthe board determines that placing learning first will benefit thecommunity, it will create a positive environment in which thecollege can make the transition.

A true revolution in learning that leads to the creation of alearning college or something very much like a learning collegewill be so disruptive to the existing norms of an institution that itcannot begin without the commitment of the board. The board willestablish the policy framework for the learning college and willmake it clear that the new direction is not a "whim" or a "fad", notthe president's idea or that of some other individual or group, butthe policy of the college that will guide all activities that follow.

There will be new organizational structures; resources will bereallocated; new programs will be developed and old programsrealigned; staff roles may change dramatically. Trustees willensure that the target for the revolution remains clear and thatprogress in reaching the target is systematically checked.

There will be disruptions and conflicts and political pressurescharacteristic of all revolutions, but the policy set by the board willhelp to keep the focus of the learning revolution on the benefit tothe community.

The following guidelines have been developed for communitycollege boards of trustees planning to implement policiesdesigned to move the college toward a more learning-centeredenterprise.

Trustees Should Learn As Much As Possible About the LearningRevolution

In order to make informed decisions about initiating theprocess of creating a learning college, trustees need to becomeinformed about the learning revolution.

The board of trustees of the Maricopa County CommunityCollege District has done an unusually good job of learning aboutchanging conditions in society and how these conditions influenceeducation. As part of the initiative to become more learner-centered throughout this large, ten-college district, leaders atMaricopa organized "Strategic Conversations" involving theboard, internal college constituents, and many representatives ofthe community. Throughout 1994 and 1995, these scheduled con-versations of two and three hours replaced the routine businessusually addressed in board sessions. The following list is a smallsample of the topics covered in the conversations:

New learning paradigmsChaos theoryLeadership and the new scienceStudent needs in a rapidly changing worldContinuous quality improvement effortsNon-traditional education

The conversations were well-structured, well-facilitated, andbetter researched than former board sessions. The sessions were ledby faculty, classified staff, administrators, consultants, and students.Maricopa had been developing a culture in which "leaders learnand learners lead," and the conversations provided a laboratory topractice this value. Through the Strategic Conversations, Maricopa'strustees have become very knowledgeable about the learning revo-lution and have illustrated their commitment to collaboration andinvolvement, key characteristics of learning-centered institutions.

Trustees who are reading this Trustee Quarterly have alreadytaken a major step to becoming informed about the learning revolu-tion. The author's book, A Learning College for the 21st Century, will

provide a much more thorough and detailed review of the issuesreferenced here only briefly. There are also references to key worksat the end of each chapter in A Learning College. To further assisttrustees in learning about the learning revolution, the author askedsix CEOs who prepared chapters for A Learning College to recom-mend the two most important books or documents they thoughttrustees should read on this topic. The recommended list follows:

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