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George H. Copa
William Ammentorp
University of Minnesota
National Center for Research in Vocational Education
Graduate School of Education
University of California at Berkeley
2030 Addison Street, Suite 500
Berkeley, CA 94720-1674
Supported by
The Office of Vocational and Adult Education
U.S. Department of Education
April 1998
FUNDING INFORMATION
| Project Title: | National Center for Research in Vocational Education |
|---|---|
| Grant Number: | V051A30003-98A/V051A30004-98A |
| Act under which Funds Administered: | Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act
P.L. 98-524 |
| Source of Grant: | Office of Vocational and Adult Education
U.S. Department of Education Washington, DC 20202 |
| Grantee: | The Regents of the University of California
c/o National Center for Research in Vocational Education 2030 Addison Street, Suite 500 Berkeley, CA 94720 |
| Director: | David Stern |
| Percent of Total Grant Financed by Federal Money: | 100% |
| Dollar Amount of Federal Funds for Grant: | $4,500,000 |
| Disclaimer: | This publication was prepared pursuant to a grant with the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education. Grantees undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their judgement in professional and technical matters. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official U.S. Department of Education position or policy. |
| Discrimination: | Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states: "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Therefore, the National Center for Research in Vocational Education project, like every program or activity receiving financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education, must be operated in compliance with these laws. |
The overall purpose of the New Designs for the Two-Year Institution of Higher Education (NDTYI) project is to bring the best ideas from research and practice to bear on the design of two-year institutions. In this report, we present a design process, a set of design specifications, some initial new designs for two-year institutions, and the supporting rationale that are in keeping with the vision set forth above.
We have had much help along the way and many of their names are presented in the first appendix to this report. However, we give special thanks to the following individuals:
Thank you very much to a cast of hundreds.
As this summary report is being prepared, our project work continues as we
Change is not an option--it is an inevitability. The tremendous changes in the culture that surrounds and impacts higher education have created both crisis and opportunity. As presently organized and delivered, higher education is no longer sustainable pedagogically, technologically, or economically.
The consequence of culture change is most evident in our common lifeplaces--work, family, and community. Within higher education, the two-year institution is closest to these lifeplaces and therefore to the challenges and opportunities they hold. We must begin an earnest search for the synergies that will better connect our educational institutions to our culture in ways that free and create resources and multiply desired results. This is the challenge and the opportunity of New Designs for the Two-Year Institution of Higher Education (NDTYI).
Envision . . . . .
This is the vision implicit in the NDTYI specifications.
NDTYI had three purposes. The first was to develop a design process that was sufficiently powerful to overcome traditional approaches and responses to designing two-year institutions of higher education. The second purpose was to develop a set of design specifications for an effective 21st century two-year institution of higher education. The third purpose was to develop and/or identify and describe new designs for two-year institutions that met the design specifications in order to make the specifications real and concrete for use in dissemination, training, and implementation.
NDTYI focuses on several target audiences: (1) administrative leaders responsible for designing entirely new institutions; (2) administrative leaders responsible for major restructuring through merger, re-engineering, or downsizing of institutions; and (3) policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels responsible for policy, regulations, and funding of two-year institutions of higher education. These target groups were involved in the project's development and implementation, as well as in reporting and dissemination plans.
The design process consists of ten elements, executed in a particular order, referred to as "designing down." The design elements are (1) learning context, (2) learning signature, (3) learning outcomes, (4) learning process, (5) learning organization, (6) learning partnerships, (7) learning staff and staff development, (8) learning environment, (9) learning finance, and (10) learning celebration. The elements of the design-down process follow this specified sequence so as to get careful alignment among the elements and to get "first questions first." The idea is to ensure that the design fits the needs of the local situation and proceeds in a logical order from aims to actions to supporting structure, processes, and environment. The design process is envisioned as being like a seminar where knowledge and experiences are shared among a design group. The design group is made up of representatives of all major stakeholders in the institution.
In NDTYI, several sources of information served as ingredients to the design process. These sources of information were best professional practices in two-year institutions of higher education nationally and internationally; the latest research on higher education relating to each of the design elements; reports advocating revision and reform of higher education; focus group interviews with students, faculty, administrators, other staff, and external stakeholders; and a National Design Group selected to reflect broad representation of leadership and stakeholders in the future of the two-year institution of higher education. This report is organized based on the design elements, each chapter discussing one element in the design process, with the exception of the beginning chapter, which provides the project's purpose, focus, and process, and the ending chapter, which summarizes the report and provides future direction for transitions to new designs.
NDTYI must meet the needs of a particular context or situation. Chapter Two describes the context in terms of assets to be carried forward into the future, problems with the current institutional operation, opportunities to be taken advantage of in new designs, and aspirations to be accomplished by the institution. This chapter presents the design assumptions for NDTYI, the changing context of higher education in the United States with emphasis on the two-year institution, and the design criteria for NDTYI.
The focus of Chapter Three is on the learning signature. The learning signature is a powerful shorthand way to represent the institution to its staff, students, and the public. In NDTYI, the purpose of the learning signature element is to provide explicit and early focus on the identity of the two-year institution of higher education in relation to its learning context. The following is presented in Chapter Three: the purpose of the learning signature and the process used to develop design specifications and new designs for the learning signature in NDTYI; the connection of the learning signature to the design criteria presented in the section on learning context; the design specifications for an effective learning signature; and the learning signature themes developed by the National Design Group, the resulting NDTYI learning signature, and exemplary new designs for the learning signature.
Learning outcomes is the focus of Chapter Four. Learning outcomes refer to the added competence (value) developed by a learner through a learning experience. Because of the centrality of teaching and learning to the mission of two-year institutions of higher education, the learning outcomes become a powerful force or keystone in designing the institution and its way of operation. Chapter Four presents the purpose and process of developing new designs for learning outcomes, the connection of learning outcomes to the design criteria and the learning signature, a set of design specifications for guiding and reviewing the development of learning outcomes for a specific institutions, and a set of learning outcomes developed as part of the NDTYI project and exemplary new designs for learning outcomes.
Chapter Five provides a description of the learning process for new designs for the two-year institution of higher education. The learning process needs to be designed to respond to the learning context of a two-year institution and its learning signature and learning outcomes. The prior selection of learning outcomes plays a central role in designing the institution's learning process. Chapter Five discusses the purpose and process of developing new designs for the learning process, the connection of the learning process to the previous elements in the design process, key concepts regarding the learning process, design specifications developed for learning processes for two-year institutions, and exemplary new designs for the learning process.
Chapter Six focuses on the learning organization for two-year institutions. For the learning process to be successful in reaching the learning outcomes in a manner called for by the learning signature, a learning infrastructure or organization must be put into place and continually improved upon. Chapter Six presents the purpose and process of developing new designs for the learning organization, the connection of the learning organization to the previous elements in the design process, key concepts regarding the learning organization, design specifications developed for the learning organization for two-year institutions, and exemplary new designs for the learning organization.
The purpose of Chapter Seven is to define and apply the construct, "partnership," to NDTYI. The link between higher education institutions and their communities takes the form of learning partnerships or alliances with public and private sector organizations. Research and best practices relating to partnerships in education and other inter-organizational contexts are reviewed in this chapter. In addition, the meaning of being partners, the process of partnerships, and the links between two-year institutions of higher education and various categories of partners are explored. Design specifications for learning partnerships follow from this review and exploration. Finally, examples of new designs for learning partnerships are presented.
The purpose of Chapter Eight is to describe and rationalize a set of design specifications for the learning staff and staff development for NDTYI. The purpose of learning staff and staff development as an element of the design-down process is to underscore the importance of the staff to NDTYI. The attitude and competence of staff with regard to NDTYI are central to feasible implementation. The purpose and process of developing new designs for the learning staff and staff development are discussed in Chapter Eight. Following this discussion, the connections between the learning staff and staff development and the previous elements in the design process are presented. Then the key concepts and the design specifications for staff and staff development resulting from focus group interviews and discussions of the National Design Group are described. Last, exemplary new designs for staff and staff development are recommended.
The focus of Chapter Nine, the learning environment, includes attention to both technology and facilities needed to support the design specifications recommended in the previous elements of the design process. Key questions addressed in this chapter concern the desired nature of the relationship between learning experiences and the learning environment, design specifications for the environment, and exemplary new designs for the learning environment of two-year institutions.
Chapter Ten centers on learning finance for NDTYI. Learning finance is critical to the implementation of NDTYI recommendations. Chapter Ten outlines an approach to financial management that links institutional resources to NDTYI and its work, identifies key concepts and design specifications for learning finance for NDTYI, and provides examples of exemplary practice regarding learning finance.
The final element in NDTYI, learning celebration, is presented in Chapter Eleven. Learning celebrations have to be designed in consideration of all of the processes and steps involved in the redesign of the whole institution. In addition to discussing the purpose and process of learning celebrations and connecting celebrations to the previous elements in the design process, Chapter Eleven also presents key concepts and design specifications for learning celebrations and exemplary new designs focused on learning celebrations.
The final chapter of the report offers a perspective on and strategies for organizational change that show how current practices and structures can be modified to move toward NDTYI. Putting new designs to work in the two-year institution is a major undertaking. Old paradigms and their associated practices must be challenged and, in many cases, fundamentally changed. As we look to the next century, it is clear that higher education will experience a host of new challenges and opportunities. These will result in pressures on institutions that cannot easily be countered by conventional organizations and educational practices. Instead, new designs will be required and institutional forms will need to be invented to enable institutions to adapt to their environments and to assist stakeholders in dealing with change.
Two-year institutions are at the center of change in higher education. They are the linking organization that helps people of all ages connect to our common lifeplaces in work, family, and the community. Furthermore, they are the pathway whereby access to opportunity is afforded to many otherwise excluded from higher education. The new designs envisioned in NDTYI "dance with change," seek out and use interdependencies, and lead the way to higher education that is excellent and sustainably so--pedagogically, technologically, and economically.
This section provides an introduction to the project, New Designs for the Two-Year Institution of Higher Education (NDTYI), conducted during calendar years 1995 and 1996. Sections of the introduction will address the purpose of the project, its focus in terms of institutions and motivations, and the research and development process used to achieve its purpose.
NDTYI had three purposes. The first was to develop a design process that was sufficiently powerful to overcome traditional approaches and responses to designing two-year institutions of higher education. Two-year institutions (TYIs) face serious threats to standard operating procedures as will be evident later in this report. A way was needed to jar institutional planning out of its current ruts and create "new space" within which to think about institutional purposes, structures, and operations.
The second purpose was to develop a set of design specifications for an effective 21st century TYI. The challenge first was voiced by those involved in implementing concepts from an earlier National Center for Research in Vocational Education project, New Designs for the Comprehensive High School. High school stakeholders were asking what college should be like in view of the proposed design specifications for the 21st century high school. We decided to focus on only the first two years of college, particularly in the context of TYIs. The design specifications for future TYIs were to be built on best knowledge we could find to support effective educational practice. We proposed to start from scratch with few assumptions about what was needed and how needs should be met, always questioning conventional thinking and practice. The resulting design specifications were to serve as the criteria for an alternative model of TYIs--a way to stretch thinking and stimulate responsible critique of current practice.
The third purpose was to develop and/or identify and describe new designs for TYIs that met the design specifications referred to above. The new designs were to make the design specifications very real and concrete for use in dissemination, training, and implementation. In some elements of the design process, the project was used to develop actual new designs for institutional practice as will be illustrated in later sections of this report. For other design process elements, the project used a different route--identifying and describing actual institutional practices that met the proposed design specifications.
The work of the project was focused in two different ways--by type of institution and by motivation for considering new designs. First, the project focused only on TYIs and not four-year colleges and universities. TYIs included technical institutes and colleges, community colleges, and private proprietary schools. TYIs offer a wide variety of programs culminating in certificates, diplomas, and associate degrees. As shown in Table 1, there were 7,638 public and private postsecondary institutions offering less than four-year programs in the United States in 1994. Of this total, 2,010 offered less than one year of instruction; 3,038 offered at least one year but less than two years of instruction; 1,144 offered the associate degree, and 1,446 offered two years but less than four years of instruction. Only 1,534 of the 7,638 institutions offering less than four-year programs were public institutions. When only the institutions that are accredited at the higher education level by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education were counted, the total number of less than four-year institutions dropped from 7,638 to 1,443 institutions (U.S. Department of Education, 1994). Of the 1,443 accredited postsecondary institutions, 99% are those that offer the associate degree or two years, but less than four years of instruction. From another source, there were 1,472 community colleges in 1991 of which 1,291 were public institutions (Vaughan, 1995). Therefore, we estimate that there are about 1,500 accredited public and private TYIs in the United States. In 1992, community colleges enrolled more than 5.7 million students in credit courses (p. 1). Vaughan goes on to state, "More than 50 percent of all first-time college students in the United States attended a community college, and more than 45 percent of all minority students enrolled in higher education in America attended a community college" (p. 2). The general educational structure of the United States is shown in Figure 1. The figure depicts the place of the TYI in relation to secondary education and other forms of higher education. Comparable European educational institutions comprise the later years in higher level vocational schools and the earlier years in polytechnic institutions.
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Highest
Level of Offering*
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Total
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Public
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Nonprofit
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For-Profit
|
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All
institutions
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10,369
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2,152
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2,890
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5,327
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Less
than one year
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2,010
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40
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157
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1,813
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|
One
but less than two years
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3,038
|
237
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175
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2,626
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|
Associate's
degree
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1,144
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628
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147
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367
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|
Two
but less than four years
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1,446
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629
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467
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350
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|
Bachelor's
degree
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790
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96
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631
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63
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|
Postbaccalaureate
certificate
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160
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11
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125
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24
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|
Master's
degree
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830
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178
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602
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50
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|
Post-master's
certificate
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188
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99
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87
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2
|
|
Doctor's
degree
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675
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228
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427
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20
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Other/did
not respond
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88
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6
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70
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12
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* In addition to the highest levels of offering shown here, first-professional degrees or certificates were offered by 150 public institutions, 505 nonprofit schools, and 21 institutions classified as for-profit.
Sources: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (PEDS), Institutional Characteristics Survey, 1993-94 ; U.S. Department of Education (1994).
The project also focused on a particular target audience in terms of motivations for considering major changes in the above-mentioned institutions. Three specific groups were of interest: (1) administrative leaders responsible for designing entirely new institutions (e.g., the Homestead campus in Florida, which was destroyed by a hurricane; the two new campuses to be built by the Maricopa Community College district in Phoenix, Arizona), (2) administrative leadership responsible for major restructuring (merger, re-engineering, downsizing) of institutions (e.g., merger of technical and community colleges in Connecticut and Minnesota), and (3) policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels responsible for policy, regulations, and funding for TYIs. Care was taken in the project development and operation to involve these target groups and ensure that they are a part of reporting and dissemination plans.
This section of the report will describe the design process used in developing specifications for a future-oriented TYI, the sources of information used as ingredients to the process, and the way in which the design process was implemented. Each of these components is a product of the project in the sense of providing a strategy or "roadmap" for design in a particular institutional setting.
The design process was made up of ten elements, executed in a particular order, referred to as "designing-down." The design process is shown in Figure 2. The elements were addressed in a particular order so as to get careful alignment among the elements and to get "first questions first." The idea is to ensure that the design fits the needs of the situation and proceeds in a logical order from aims to actions to supporting structure, culture, and environment. Each of the design elements will now be described.
Learning Context Learning Signature Learning Outcomes Learning Process Learning Organization Learning Partnerships Learning Staff and Staff Development Learning Environment Learning Finance Learning Celebration |
Each design for a TYI must meet the needs of a particular context or situation. The context is described in terms of problems with current institutional operation, opportunities to be taken advantage of with a new institution, and goals to be accomplished by the new institution. Studying and analyzing the learning context results in a set of design criteria for use in guiding and monitoring the accomplishments of the other design process elements.
Learning enterprise designs are given direction and energy by the symbols and metaphors representing the hopes and expectations of policymakers, educators, and their students. An effective design process must first try to elicit and understand these hopes and expectations as a way to give coherence and focus to learning design. Often, the signature takes form through symbols and metaphors (e.g., words, pictures, people, stories, objects) representing a deeply shared perspective on the learning enterprise.
Globalization and its associated complexity demands that TYIs have a clear idea of the value to be added by the learning enterprise as a starting point for program improvement. In short, TYI leaders must clearly know the competencies, standards, or results they want to produce for and through the learners. At the same time, students must be able to see what TYIs can do for them in terms of their personal development.
Learning outcomes are accomplished through the design of an appropriate learning process, traditionally viewed in terms of the language of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Too often, the attention in higher education is to teaching in contrast to learning and to subject matter (curriculum) at the expense of instruction and assessment. Most faculty in higher education are not required to study the learning process; instead, they center almost solely on subject matter. If TYIs are to address the learning design challenges and opportunities of the future, they must have a working language and knowledge of the learning process with foundations in human development.
For the learning process to be successful in reaching the learning outcomes in a manner called for by the learning signature, a learning infrastructure or organization must be put into place and continually improved. The learning infrastructure is made up of the organization of learners, learning time, learning settings, subject matter, staff, technology, and learning environment. It is here that new designs for TYIs are most clearly visible. Familiar physical and organizational forms of higher education are unlikely to be responsive to the needs of students and the changing nature of society and its lifeplaces (e.g., work, family, community).
The link between higher education institutions and their communities takes the form of learning partnerships between public and private sector organizations. TYIs can no longer "go it alone"; they have neither the resources nor the knowledge to be set apart from their surroundings. Instead of the "ivory tower" of the past, higher education institutions of the future will be ever more closely integrated with their communities and will bear increasing responsibilities for the quality of life of those who support and benefit from their work.
The changed perspective suggested above mandates parallel development of teachers, administrators, and support personnel ready to adapt TYIs to new realities. Higher education will need to identify, train, and support leaders who can shape curricula and student experience in forms indicated by ever-changing learning expectations and processes.
The driving force for higher education has shifted from the traditional--static--subject matters to a dynamic view of knowledge and its use. Information technology has been and will continue to be a pivotal force in this development; it has redefined the process of knowledge creation, transmission, and application. Learning technology has become one of the major considerations in any new design for the learning environment for TYIs. After noting the design elements above, consideration should shift to the physical and social environment of the institution. New designs will not be constrained by architectural forms nor will they be limited to traditional educational practices; they will be motivated by the dynamic integration of higher education institutions with their students and communities. Learning environments will include consideration of settings such as home, workplace, community, and school.
This element of the New Designs process concerns both the cost and revenues for higher education. Key strategies concerning cost include cost containment, improved efficiency, re-engineering, and privatization. On the revenue side, strategies include institutional development, new products and services, partnerships, and new markets.
The New Designs process is integrated by the cultural symbols and practices of all those associated with TYIs. Learning experiences and their applications are continually reinforced through celebrations whereby the community confirms the relevance of the work of higher education.
While the elements are presented in linear, downward order, the process also involves moving upward and among the design process elements to ensure close alignment and internal consistency and coherence. Close alignment of the elements is needed to realize quality and efficiency in operation of the TYI.
The design process is envisioned as being like a seminar, where knowledge and experiences are shared among a design group with the purpose of mutually "learning their way into" new designs for a higher education institution that meet the needs of the context they have at hand. The knowledge and experience include that possessed by the group itself as well as what can be brought to the group from others. In NDTYI, several sources of information served as ingredients for the design process.
Care was taken to scan professional practices nationally and internationally to identify the best used by TYIs. We looked for effective and innovative places, leadership, and concepts for possible use in developing New Designs specifications for each of the elements of the design as described above. At each design element, we also looked for professional practices outside of public higher education for ways to improve the design process and specifications.
We also searched for the latest research on higher education relating to each of the design components. As with the scan for best practice, we searched for ideas and concepts from outside of higher education that might prove worthy of adaptation. We particularly examined NCRVE's past and present research and development work for study findings and recommendations that were appropriate to include in New Designs specifications.
We examined several of the reports advocating revision and reform of TYIs for recommendations and supporting rationale that deserved consideration in the design process. We wanted to ensure that we were making use of previous studies and planning of TYIs and were not merely reinventing what had already been reported. Sometimes these reports addressed only certain elements of the design process. Our contribution was unique in addressing the full range of elements and striving for alignment in the recommendations among all of the elements.
Group interviews were used in the design process in order to get first-hand views of many of the design elements. Interviews were held with groups of students, faculty, administrators, and external institutional partners. The group interviews held for each of the selected design elements were as follows:
Each of the group interviews was tape recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for implications for the design specifications and discussion by the National Design Group.
The National Design Group was selected to give broad representation by the leadership and stakeholders in the future of TYIs. They were also selected to give diverse perspectives in terms of gender, ethnicity, and geographic location. The following individuals were the members of the National Design Group:
The National Design Group provided guidance on important issues needing attention, the resolution of issues, and the development of design specifications for NDTYI. They played a very significant role in forming the institutional design recommended in this report.
The process used in the project to work through the design elements occurred as a series of interactive steps. The meetings of the National Design Group served as a major organizer for the project. The agendas for the meetings are shown in Appendix 2 of this report. Each meeting was preceded by the project staff's development of a draft paper on the design elements to be addressed at the meeting. The draft paper was sent to the National Design Group just prior to the meeting for its review and discussion at the meeting. Following discussion at the meeting, the draft paper was revised and a set of design specifications for the element was put forth. Where focus group interviews were conducted on a design element, the results were presented to the National Design Group for its consideration. The meetings of the National Design Group were held in the following sites:
At each of the meetings, we invited several individuals from local TYIs to serve as resource persons. The list of resource persons is presented in Appendix 1 of this report. As part of the Miami, Florida, meeting, we visited three of the campuses of Miami-Dade Community College. The project staff was responsible for the final form of the report and for the wording of design specifications.
Development of an appropriate set of design criteria for NDTYI was a significant element in the design process. These criteria guided the response to design specifications and the selection or development of exemplary new designs for the remaining elements of the design process. The resulting design criteria are grounded in a close examination of the context of TYIs in the United States--their problems, assets, opportunities, and aspirations. The selected criteria are that new designs be imaginative, directional, responsive, collaborative, accountable, and resourced. In the view of the NDTYI staff, if new institutional designs are responsive to these criteria in all of the criteria's dimensionality, the resulting institutions will have good assurance of being successful (perceived as doing a good job), valued (perceived as doing a job worth doing), and used (perceived as a good investment by individuals and community).
The major limitations of the project were in funding to support the review of research and best practices (we wanted to be even more thorough in identification of research and best practices), commissioning papers from experts on high-profile topics (as it was, the project staff wrote most papers), and meetings of the National Design Group (we wanted at least two more meetings at sites permitting visits to institutions exhibiting best practices). While additional resources would have permitted the development of an even better product, we appreciated the resources we did have and used them effectively.
The major products of this project are a design process, design specifications, and illustrative new designs for the TYI in the United States. Each can be used by a particular institution in its design or redesign for the 21st century. Our focus was on technical colleges and institutes, community colleges, and private, proprietary schools. We targeted the leadership of places that are building new institutions or undergoing significant institutional restructuring. We also targeted policymakers at the state and federal levels who are directing and funding TYIs. A ten-element design process was used to develop the design specifications for a 21st century, TYI using information about best practices, research, reform reports, focus-group interviews, and the National Design Group. The key limitation was funding for more extensive and enhanced design support and analysis.
The first element in the design process focuses on learning context and results in a set of design criteria to guide and monitor the development of design specifications and new designs in the elements to follow. As such, the description of learning context is arguably the most important element of the design process. It provides overall direction and ensures that the resulting design is tailored to the needs of a particular situation. The design criteria can be used as a "report card" to assess how the rest of the design process is progressing and to indicate needed adjustments.
This section is organized into the following parts: (1) the design assumptions for NDTYI, (2) the changing context of higher education in the United States with emphasis on the TYI, and (3) the design criteria for NDTYI. Before moving forward with these parts, an explanation is provided of how the learning context of TYIs was addressed for the purposes of NDTYI.
The process of work used to develop what is reported in this section started with a review of literature on the context of the TYI and discussions by the NDTYI Work Group. Work on the design assumptions was begun in preparation for a graduate course dealing with planning and evaluating TYIs, taught at the University of Minnesota during the spring of 1995 by George Copa. At about the same time, the NDTYI Work Group developed a preliminary set of characteristics of the context faced by TYIs on entering the 21st century and a preliminary set of design criteria that could be use to ensure that the NDTYI design specification and new designs were responsive and effective in addressing the context characteristics. A similar effort was undertaken as a class project in the graduate course noted above. The 21 participants in the graduate course were practicing administrators on TYI campuses or at the state system offices in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As a strategy for use in identifying the context of TYIs, each group was asked to first identify and prioritize the problems to be faced, the opportunities to be explored, and the goals to be sought by effective TYIs on entering the 21st century.
At the first meeting of the National Design Group, members were asked to undergo the same activity of identifying problems, opportunities, and goals in view of the conclusions of major reports addressing the context of TYIs (provided by the project staff), other reports with which they were familiar, and their own experiences. The NDTYI Work Group then presented the preliminary design criteria it had developed from its efforts at describing the learning context. The strategy used in the project was aimed at getting the original thoughts of the National Design Group, but also benefiting from more extensive work by the NDTYI Work Group and the graduate class. Following the presentation to the National Design Group by the NDTYI Work Group, the National Design Group was asked to prioritize the problems, opportunities, and goals of TYIs that most needed attention in new designs for these institutions. The results of these efforts were used to revise the recommendations of the NDTYI Work Group regarding design criteria, and the revisions are presented below as the NDTYI's design criteria. This set of criteria was reviewed several times by the National Design Group at subsequent meetings. As a result of the review by the National Design Group, another section was added to the learning context description presented in this report. The added section focuses on the key dimensions of the changing context of TYIs--changes which must be faced and serve as a basis for interest in and real concern about new designs for these institutions. The design criteria serve as a response to the dimensions of change, providing strategic clues about how to proceed in the NDTYI.
As will be apparent later in this section, a key part of new designs for the TYI on entering the 21st century will be dealing with a changing context on several dimensions at the same time. With this in mind, we wanted to formulate a few assumptions that would capture the essence of the strategy that we felt would lead to an appropriate design stance or posture for effective TYIs in the future.
The first assumption we selected is shown in Exhibit 1. The assumption brings attention to the idea of viewing change as a friend rather than an enemy, and letting change assist in finding a productive, satisfying way into the future for higher education. In "dancing with change," the question arises, "Is the higher education institution or some outside organization or force leading the dance process?" Our answer is that perhaps the leadership changes from time to time, and that the study of dance from a multicultural perspective suggested that there are many forms of dance where there is no one leader. A whole community may be involved in an integrated way in the whole dance process. The same might be the case for TYIs--at times follower, at other times leader, and at times both or neither. Another characteristic of dance is that there are many unique in forms and manners, yet there are often clear patterns that identify particular dances, one from another. The agile and effective TYIs of the future will need to be astute in ascertaining patterns in complex and turbulent change as guides to mission, vision, and effective responses.
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"What
is required now is a purposeful consideration of the alternatives an
institution can imagine itself making, as well as a real discussion of the
consequences of not changing at all. To convene such a conversation is to dance
with change." Pew Higher Education Roundtable, 1994, p. 12A
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The Pew report (Pew Higher Education Roundtable, 1994), from which the first design assumption is taken, goes on to note that convening the "conversation with change" is "to enter into a relation with a future not yet fully imagined. To demur, . . . is to let someone else choose your partner as well as call the tune" (p. 12A). They advise that the conversations emanate from "a strong collective sense of an institution's identity" (p. 12A). They must balance faculty collegiality with recognition that postponing painful steps is not an option, and draw on the best ideas of faculty for maintaining institutional energy and responsiveness.
The second design assumption is captured by Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers (1996) in a book entitled, A Simpler Way , and shown in Exhibit 2. Higher education must more clearly recognize and make use of its interdependencies with many individuals, organizations, associations, agencies, and communities. The challenge for TYIs that aspire to be really effective is to continuously seek and find many (large and small) synergies with other entities where resources can be leveraged and multiplied with positive, catalytic, and symbiotic impacts for all those involved. In the language of the Internet, institutions must be effective at "surfing for synergies" to improve their quality and effectiveness in the context of the problems, opportunities, and goals that they face with increasingly scarce resources.
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"Everything
participates in the creation and evolution of its neighbors. There are no
unaffected outsiders. No one system dictates conditions to another. All
participate together in creating the conditions of their interdependence."
Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, 1996, p. 14
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As background for this section, several different reports will be reviewed that present descriptions of the changing context of higher education and, more particularly, TYIs. As noted above in the section on Process of Work in describing the learning context, except for the most recent reports, these are the materials that were presented to the NDTYI Work Group and National Design Group for their consideration in identifying the problems, opportunities, and goals to be addressed in NDTYI. The reports are presented in chronological order.
In this report published by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education and authored by Wardlow, Swanson, and Migler (1992), the focus was on the essential elements that characterize exemplary vocational education institutions. This report is included here because vocational education institutions (e.g., technical institutes and colleges, private proprietary institutions) are an important form of the TYI, and vocational education programs are a major component of comprehensive community colleges, another form of the TYI. The fourteen institutions selected for study through a nomination process included six secondary and eight postsecondary (four technical colleges, one proprietary technical institute, and three community colleges) institutions scattered across the United States. The themes associated with effective institutions were categorized under the following headings: (1) School Climate, (2) Administration, (3) Teacher Attributes, (4) Student Attributes, (5) Vocational-Student Organization, (6) Curriculum, (7) Support Services, and (8) Institutional Marketing. Within this framework the following characteristics were described as being associated with institutional excellence:
These themes were found to be consistent across institutions that were studied, both secondary and postsecondary. Wardlow et al. (1992) suggest that
there is likelihood that the most effective way to develop these characteristics in an institution is for that institution to participate in a mentoring process with an exemplary institution, in which participants in the aspiring institution gain a holistic view of the concept of institutional excellence. (p. 42)
This set of discussions and report focused on the question, "What does society need from higher education?" It was sponsored by four foundations--The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; The Johnson Foundation, Inc.; Lilly Endowment, Inc.; and The Pew Charitable Trusts. The preface to the report of the prestigious group, chaired by former U.S. Secretary of Labor William Brock, states,
An increasingly open, global economy requires--absolutely requires--that all of us be better educated, more skilled, more adaptable, and more capable of working collaboratively. These economic considerations alone mean that we must change the ways we teach and learn. But, an increasingly diverse society, battered (and that is not too strong a term) by accelerating change, requires more than workplace competence. It also requires that we do a better job of passing on to the next generation a sense of the value of diversity and the critical importance of honesty, decency, integrity, compassion, and personal responsibility in a democratic society. Above all, we must get across the idea that the individual flourishes best in a genuine community to which the individual in turn has an obligation to contribute. (p. i)
The report notes that there is no single "silver bullet cure" for higher education in the United States; rather, improvements will come campus by campus with discussion and action requiring, "honest introspection and some very hard and even controversial new thinking about its roles and responsibilities, principles, and priorities" (p. ii).
In challenging higher education to raise its learning outcome standards, the report states, "A disturbing and dangerous mismatch exists between what American society needs of higher education and what it is receiving" (p. 1). Citing changes in the economy, demography, culture, technology, and globalization, the challenge for institutions of higher education is to prepare individuals to "learn their way through life" (p. 2). The response to the question of what does society need from higher education advocated in the report, particularly as relates to TYIs, is as follows:
The report issues three major challenges to higher education institutions:
In
the Wingspread Group's words, "Putting learning at the heart of the academic
enterprise will mean overhauling the conceptual, procedural, curricular, and
other architecture of postsecondary education on most campuses" (p. 14). And
the overall response may need to be different for different students depending
on their ability to handle independence, support, and challenging standards.
With respect to financing these changes, the report is straightforward and again challenging in stating,
higher education's best financial hope rests on helping itself by helping expand the nation's wealth, by providing the knowledgeable and highly skilled workforce that can enhance our productivity, revitalize our communities, and rebuild our sense of "we". . . . We also believe that institutions that defer change until new resources are available will find themselves waiting for a very long time. Financial salvation will begin on the campus, or it will probably not begin at all. (p. 25)
The contribution of this report, authored by Banach and Lorenzo (1993) and published by Institute for Future Studies at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, is in describing succinctly the radical changes emerging in America at the end of the 20th century as a backdrop for design and/or redesign of TYIs. These changes in context, generating both challenges and opportunities, are expected to dictate the need for bold new strategies in design and operation of TYIs. The key dimensions of the emerging context resulting from their environmental scanning are as follows:
In the context of these changes, Banach and Lorenzo (1993) recommend the following changes in the planning (design) process:
At the time NDTYI was initiated, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (1994) published a list of the ten most significant public policy issues in higher education for 1994. The issues were developed by a group of higher education policy experts who gathered together in October 1993. The "front burner" issues, which provide a sense of the challenges facing governing boards, trustees, presidents, and chancellors responsible for higher education systems and campuses, including TYIs, were the following (not listed in priority order):
This report, published by The Institute for Future Studies (1994) of Macomb Community College, describes the most important issues facing community colleges in 1994-1995, the time period at which NDTYI was just beginning. Presumably, a new design for the TYI will have to effectively deal with these issues if it is to be successful. The issues described in the report are as follows:
This report was authored by Lorenzo and LeCroy (1994) and published by The Institute for Future Studies at Macomb Community College. The subtitle to the report is "Creating a Culture of Responsiveness." Lorenzo and LeCroy's operating assumption was that community colleges need to change in fundamental ways, meeting new needs more precisely and working from a more cohesive structure. The key assumptions they set forth to undergird their framework for fundamental change were as follows:
Ten elements make up the proposed framework for change:
In this report published by the Miami-Dade Community College Foundation, McCabe (1995) addresses four major issues facing community colleges: "the demand for more highly educated workers is increasing and will continue to increase; more undereducated and underskilled workers are attempting to enter the workforce; there is an ever expanding dependent underclass; and in most cases community colleges are receiving less financial support" (p. 1). By not providing adequate resources to community colleges, legislators are "starving the most promising solution" to resolving the first three issues noted above. McCabe goes on to document the positive effects of community colleges on worker training, addressing the needs of the undereducated and underskilled, and developing economic independence. He concludes that community colleges are "undervalued, under-appreciated, and underfunded" (p. 10). Major symptoms of the underfunding include "a rapid increase in sections taught by part-time faculty, a decrease in support personnel, inadequate funds to stay current with technical equipment and library materials, and non-competitive salaries" (p. 11).
The National Assessment of Vocational Education was mandated by the U.S. Congress as a part of the 1990 Perkins Act. The Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education was assigned the task of conducting the assessment. Its purpose was to examine the outcomes of the 1990 Perkins Act and make recommendations concerning future reauthorization. A major component of the assessment was the examination of postsecondary vocational education, which largely occurs and is a significant purpose of TYIs.
On examining participation in postsecondary vocational education, the assessment resulted in the following conclusions (Boesel, Hudson, Deich, and Masten, 1994):
With these conclusions in mind, the assessment makes the following recommendations for reauthorization of the Perkins Act to improve postsecondary vocational education:
Important themes in the assessment's summary report (Boesel & McFarland, 1994) as it relates to postsecondary vocational education include (1) closer linkage of secondary and postsecondary programs (Tech Prep); (2) better integration of occupational and academic programs; (3) more accessible and responsive to a wide range of learners, particularly those with special needs; and (4) increased use of occupational and industrial standards as benchmarks for program quality and ensuring being up-to-date.
Nearing the completion of NDTYI, the Society for College and University Planning published the report entitled Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century (Dolence & Norris, 1995). The authors call for major transformation in higher education as society changes paradigms from the industrial age to the information age. In their vision, higher education must realign with the needs of its stakeholders, clients, customers, and beneficiaries. The transformation of higher education is addressed in four phases: (1) realign, (2) redesign, (3) redefine, and (4) re-engineer. Key concepts in the transformation from industrial age to information age include changing from . . .
In making the transformation, higher education will need to realign with the changing nature of information, knowledge, and scholarship; needs of individual learners; and the changing nature of work and learning. Redesigning higher education to integrate these new concepts will include changes such as creating barrier-free, perpetual learning; offering high-quality, flexible enabling services; reconceptualizing around essential outcomes; and pushing out organizational boundaries using technology. Redefining roles in higher education will include faculty playing a variety of roles: "researcher, synthesizer, mentor, evaluator and certifier of mastery, architect, and navigator" (p. 61). The transformation will involve re-engineering around performance measures such as the following:
The authors of this report are clear in their admonition about the choice available to higher education institutions: "Accept the risks of pursuing the transformation of higher education to an Information Age model, or the certainty of stagnation and decline as Industrial Age colleges and universities fall further and further from favor" (p. 94).
A well-known leader in the field of community colleges, George B. Vaughan (1995), was commissioned by the American Community College Association to prepare this concise description of the community college movement in the United States. Since the community colleges represent the most numerous form of public, TYIs, the report was included in developing design criteria for NDTYI. Vaughan reports that there were 1,472 public community colleges, technical colleges, two-year branch colleges, and independent junior colleges in the United States in 1990, and they enrolled more than 5.7 million students in credit courses. This number amounts to about 38% of all students enrolled in community colleges and four-year institutions (p. 10).
Vaughan summarizes the mission of community colleges as a series of precepts or basic commitments:
The community college's mission is usually achieved through the following traditional categories of programs, activities, and services:
With regard to the description of community college students, Vaughan contrasts traditional four-year institutions with "student-as-citizen" to the community college, where the norm is "citizen-as-student." The citizen-as-student is described as, "concerned with paying taxes, working full-time, supporting a family, paying a mortgage, and with other responsibilities associated with the everyday role of a full-time citizen" (p. 17). The change in role has many implications for student needs in terms of how, when, and by whom courses are taught.
In terms of funding, community colleges are primarily supported by local and state taxes. According to Vaughan, "On average, nationally, community colleges receive approximately 50 percent of their funds from state taxes, 21 percent from local government, 20 percent from tuition and fees, 4 percent from the federal government and 5 percent from other sources" (p. 22).
In view of the positions, findings, and recommendations of the reports described above and intensive deliberations in the NDTYI Work Group and National Design Group, a set of key changes in the context of higher education was selected for attention in NDTYI:
These are the changes that challenge new designs for the TYI. They form the basis for the design criteria that were used to guide the development of NDTYI.
Given the design assumptions and the changing context of the TYI in the United States, the work of the NDTYI Work Group and the National Design Group, in combination and interaction, resulted in a set of design criteria to guide and monitor the next elements in the design process. This section of the report will give an overview of the design criteria followed by a more detailed treatment of each criterion in terms of the questions it suggests for each element in the design process.
By way of overview, the criteria for the exemplary design of a 21st century TYI were formulated as follows:
The following section of the report focuses more in-depth on each of the design criteria in terms of what the design criteria mean in action (e.g., on being imaginative, on being directional). For each of the design criteria, attention is given to a brief description of the concept underlying the criterion and then raising questions relating the criterion to each of the elements in the design process (e.g., signature, outcomes, process, organization).
Imagination involves exploration of the possible. It questions the beliefs and myths that underlie current activities and organizations. Imagination creates metaphors that help people visualize productive futures. And, it facilitates the design of models of systems and behaviors that give creative shape to the future. Being imaginative raises the following questions for each design element:
Signature
Outcomes
Process
Organization
Partnerships
Staff and Staff Development
Environment
Finance
Celebration
The metaphor for direction of the TYI is a camera with the ability to change the lenses of its organizational procedures to focus the resources of the institution and diffuse information to make impressions--wide angle to get a broader view of the context and environment, telescope for the future or to view other organizations, snapshot to take stock, and video to function in an ongoing environment. Each member of the learning community should have the same camera capacity. Being directive raises the following questions for each of the design elements:
Signature
Outcomes
Process
Organization
Partnerships
Staff and Staff Development
Environment
Finance
Celebration
The amount of information is doubling currently at about a rate of every 18-24 months. By the year 2010, that rate may be every three to five days (Noam, 1995). With extraordinary growth in information, institutions of higher education need to be able to respond quickly. How does an institution of higher education position itself to be responsive in the 21st century, moving from the Information Age into the Knowledge Age? Being responsive raises the following questions for each element in the design process:
Signature
Outcomes
Process
Organization
Partnerships
Staff and Staff Development
Environment
Finance
Celebration
Collaboration is a dynamic, mutually beneficial, and well-defined relationship entered into by two or more individuals or organizations to achieve common goals. The relationship includes a commitment to a definition of mutual relationships and goals, a jointly developed structure and shared responsibility, mutual authority and accountability for success, and sharing of resources and rewards. Collaboration results in easier, faster, and more coherent access to services and benefits and in greater effects on systems. Working together is not a substitute for adequate resources, although the synergistic efforts of the collaborating partners often result in creative ways to overcome obstacles. Being collaborative raises the following questions about each element of the design process:
Signature
Outcomes
Process
Organization
Partnerships
Staff and Staff Development
Environment
Finance
Celebration
Accountability involves meeting responsibilities and includes nuances that range from the explicit, but usually quite narrow, demands for specific accomplishments of goals or objectives as might be expressed in a planning document or contract to the implicit, diffuse, and usually unarticulated expectations that have their foundations in cultural traditions and mores that truly determine parameters for institutions and individuals. A metaphor that reflects the range of meanings for accountability may then be that of the iceberg with a tip visible on the surface that ostensibly can be approached in a straightforward manner, and a great hulk of the hidden, treacherous mass underlying the seemingly benign portion. Many a ship has been wrecked because it has not paid attention to or has misjudged the degree of danger lurking beneath the waves. Likewise, being accountable demands attention not only to explicit, but also to implicit expectations. Being accountable raises the following questions for each element of the design process:
Signature
Outcomes
Process
Organization
Partnerships
Staff and Staff Development
Environment
Finance
Celebration
Being resourced means ensuring that there are adequate financial resources to provide the desired characteristic for each element of the design of a TYI. It means that lack of funding is never the reason for not doing what is in the best interest of providing a quality learning experience. Financial resources are soon converted into the people, learning materials, equipment, and settings needed to create the desired learning experience. Resourcing has short- and long-term considerations and a revenue and cost side to the ledger. Being responsive demands a balance of prudence and risk taking, making the best of what is in place and having an entrepreneurial spirit to develop new ventures, making wise use and the best case for existing financial sources, continually seeking new sources, honing the efficiency of present systems and ways of doing business, and asking tough questions regarding entirely new approaches. Being resourced raises the following questions about each element of the design process:
Signature
Outcomes
Process
Organization
Partnerships
Staff and Staff Development
Environment
Finance
Celebration
Development of an appropriate set of design criteria for NDTYI was a significant element in the design process. These criteria guided the response to design specifications and the selection or development of exemplary new designs for the remaining elements of the design process. The resulting design criteria are grounded in a close examination of the context of TYIs in the United States--their problems, assets, opportunities, and aspirations. The selected criteria are that new designs be imaginative, directional, responsive, collaborative, accountable, and resourced. In the view of the NDTYI staff, if new institutional designs are responsive to these criteria in all of the criteria's dimensionality, the resulting institutions will have good assurance of being successful (perceived as doing a good job), valued (perceived as doing a job very worth doing), and used (perceived as a good investment by individuals and community).
Signature communicates our unique identity. Personal signatures are used when we take ownership and make promises. Institutional signatures come in the form of logos, seals, shields, and mascots. Signatures have been visible on the educational landscape since the Middle Ages (Barnard & Shepard, 1929). The seals associated with the ancient European colleges captured an identity that was rooted in the histories of these institutions (Lockmiller, 1969). We see the same pattern in the United States where institutional shields are used as symbols that connect modern institutions with their European past. The shield of the University of Chicago, shown in Figure 3, is but one of many examples of these academic signatures.
Those who know the history of the University of Chicago will be quick to point out that the Latin inscription, "Cres-Cat. Sci Entia Vita Exco-Latur," can be loosely translated as "science is the escalator to life" and that the true University signature is that of the Maroons--the fabled "Monsters of the Midway" of athletic fame.
In countless examples like that of the University of Chicago, we see the tension between a historical signature and the popular imagery that inspires the loyalty of students and alumni (Lee, 1992). In this tension, we see the signature's essence--an attempt to symbolically visualize an institution's unique identity. In its best form, the signature promotes identification with the aims, history, and culture of the institution. Signature is a powerful shorthand way to represent the college to its staff, students, and the public.
Signatures are not limited to seals and shields. They can also be bound up with the physical environment of the college. Location, architecture, and the built environment constitute anchors for perceptions of individuals and groups. The environment has durable connotations for individuals who have lived and/or worked in the institution (Thelin & Yankovich, 1987). The sum of their experiences is tied to settings, buildings, and rooms in ways that prompt instant recall of that aspect of signature. Much of the built environment has been shaped by forms taken from ancient designs. It is not uncommon to find Grecian temples on many campuses; what is not so obvious is that designs of this sort bring a large repertory of rituals and behaviors with them, which may or may not be appropriate for the future (Williams, 1985).
In the contemporary college, signature is increasingly associated with marketing and institutional development efforts. Signature is the public face of the college--a means of communication with the public. According to Topor (1986), "The collective image of your institution, or global institutional image, is the total of many audience members' perceptions. This global image should contain some recurring components, the key ideas you want to communicate to each target audience" (p. 5). In a sense, this view of signature is in line with corporate images and the logos that anchor commercial marketing.
Educational institutions have many interrelated dimensions to their identity. They are, to be sure, located in physical space; they worry about marketing, and they have no end of visual images and rituals. These attributes of signature are the tangibles that speak of the underlying identity of the institution. And, it is the identity that is expressed eloquently by effective signatures. They empower the organization to realize its potential; as Gareth Morgan (1986) has stated, "The images or metaphors through which we read organizational situations help us to describe the way organizations are, and offer clear ideas and options as to how they could be" (p. 331).
Here, the key word is metaphor--the shorthand expression that makes it possible for all members of the organization to understand history, present action, and future possibilities (Sackmann, 1989). Organizational metaphors gain their usefulness to the extent that they incorporate the stories or myths that people use to tell others about the history of the institution (Westerlund & Sjostrand, 1979). Finally, myths and metaphors are translated into models, which depict the flow of events at the core of the organization (deThomasis, Ammentorp, & Fox, 1991).
This section is organized into the following major sections: (1) an introduction that addresses the purpose of the learning signature and the process used to develop design specifications and new designs for learning signature in NDTYI; (2) a section describing the connection of learning signature to the design criteria presented in the section on learning context; (3) a section presenting the design specifications for an effective learning signature; (4) a section describing the learning signature themes developed by the National Design Group, the resulting NDTYI learning signature, and exemplary new designs for learning signature selected from existing TYIs; and (5) a summary to the section.
In NDTYI, the purpose of the learning signature element in the design process is to provide explicit and early focus on the identity of the TYI in its learning context. The learning signature element forces discussion of past identity and how that identity needs to change for future viability of the institution. The learning signature serves as a way to bring coherence and focus to multiple dimensions of an institution's identity, including (1) mission--what activity is the institution about (e.g., key products and services), (2) vision--where does the institution want to go with the activity, (3) values--what gives the institution its meaning, (4) assumptions--what is the institution's context/reality, and (5) major purposes--what are the institution's major functions.
Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers (1996) are particularly insightful on the crucial role that learning signature, as identity, plays in institutional design in a context of need for change and transformation. One of their guiding principles for thinking about how to organize human activities is
Life organizes around identity. Every living thing acts to develop and preserve itself. Identity is the filter that every organism or system uses to make sense of the world. New information, new relationships, changing environment--all are interpreted through a sense of self. This tendency toward self-creation is so strong that it creates a seeming paradox. An organism will change to maintain its identity. (p. 14, bolding is in original)
They go on to describe identity (signature) as the "most compelling organizing energy available" (p. 58). In questioning how to think about organizational identity, they suggest:
In organizations, as in people, identity has many dimensions. Each illustrates some aspect of who the organization is. Identity includes such dimensions as history, values, actions, core beliefs, competencies, principles, purpose, mission. None of these alone tells who the organization is. Some are statements about who it would like to be. Some are revealing of who it really is. But together they tell the story of self and its sojourn in a world it has created.
Identity is the source of organization. Every organization is an identity in motion, moving through the world, trying to make a difference. Therefore, the most important work we can do at the beginning of an organizing effort is to engage one another in exploring our purpose. We need to explore why we have come together. (p. 58)
These remarks reinforce the need for attention to learning signature very early in the design process. For the learning signature provides a way of bringing coherence and alignment to the rest of the design. Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers (1996) clarify this point:
We can't resolve organizational incoherence with training programs about values, or with beautiful reports that explain the company's way, or by the charisma of any leader. We can resolve it only with coherence--fundamental integrity about who we are.
With coherence, comes the capacity to create organizations that are both free and effective. They are effective because they support people's abilities to self-organize. They are free because they know who they are. (p. 60)
They conclude with a compelling reason for attention to learning signature as an early and significant design element in NDTYI, "In organizations, clear identity is an unmistakable and certain call" (p. 61).
The process of developing the design specifications (the desired features or characteristics to be effective) for learning signature involved a review of the literature and practice on developing organizational identity and ways to communicate the identity visually. Resulting from this review was a preliminary set of design specifications for the learning signature of TYIs. The preliminary design specifications were reviewed by the NDTYI Work Group and the National Design Group and then brought into final form.
The process used to develop actual new designs for the learning signature involved both the NDTYI Work Group and the National Design Group. The NDTYI Work Group was used to try out a process of developing a learning signature for NDTYI. Based on this experience, the process was revised and used with the National Design Group. The final process was set up in several steps: (1) review and discussion of the purpose of the learning signature (i.e., its relationship to communicating a unique institutional identity); (2) review and discussion of the design specifications for an effective learning signature; (3) development of proposed learning signature for an effective TYI in the 21st century by each National Design Group member; (4) discussion among the National Design Group of their learning signature proposals; (5) based on the proposed signatures and resulting discussion, identifying and prioritizing a set of common themes among the proposed signatures; (6) contracting with a graphic artist to use the proposed signatures and common themes as a basis for developing learning signature options for NDTYI; (7) review of the learning signature options by the National Design Group; and (8) development of a final learning signature by the graphic artist in consultation with the NDTYI staff. Each of these steps will be presented in greater detail later in this section.
In addition to developing a generic signature for the TYI in the United States on entering the 21st century, we also spent a very limited amount of time searching for exemplary learning signatures among TYIs that we knew about. This process resulted in selecting two additional signatures to illustrate the idea and power of learning signature as a part of the NDTYI design process. These signatures are presented later in this section.
If the design process is to produce an effective new design for the TYI, it must be coherent, one design element with another. For the learning signature, the greatest challenge is with the first element of the design process--the learning context. In the previous section, the learning context for the TYI was described in some detail and then attention was turned to the development of a set of design criteria as a way to bring focus and priority to the contextual analysis. As a result, NDTYI decided on six design criteria to guide and monitor the design specifications and new designs for the remaining nine elements of the NDTYI design process. The design criteria are that new designs for TYIs should be imaginative, directional, responsive, collaborative, accountable, and resourced.
The imaginative criterion suggests that the learning signature specifications and designs be willing to break with traditional boundaries for higher education and encourage an entrepreneurial stance in searching for a future identity. The directional design criterion suggests that the institution needs to focus--institutional focus is a very powerful strategy to deal with a turbulent and challenging context. The discussion of the directional criterion implies that the learning signature should point the institution in a direction that may be different from other TYIs as it tunes into its unique learning context and situation--its problems, opportunities, assets, and goals. Being responsive means that the learning signature must communicate attention to people and communities, lifelong commitment, diversity, flexibility, quickness, and top-notch service. The collaborative criterion necessitates that the learning signature cannot be the product of one small group (e.g., the institution's central administration)--rather, it will need to involve and be owned by all of the institution's stakeholders--staff, students, partners, community, and state. Being accountable brings attention to developing a learning signature that communicates an institutional promise that will be taken seriously in terms of quality assurance and continuous quality improvement; effectiveness in terms of the signature will be monitored, publicly disclosed, and acted upon. In turn, being resourced means that there are or will be adequate resources to deliver on the signature's promise--it is naive to become carried away by grandiose ideas in the development of a leaning signature, only to find that the promise is hollow in practice. There is much strategic foresight and energy in designing a learning signature that carefully develops/finds a challenging and yet comfortable institutional identity.
The review of literature and good practice on developing design specifications for effective learning signatures focused on the concepts of organizational identity and image. Napoles (1988), in a book entitled Corporation Identity Design , draws a contrast between identity and image as follows:
Understanding the difference between the concepts of corporate image and corporate identity is the first step toward closing the gap between the two. The corporate image is the way in which a company is perceived by the public--consumers, competitors, suppliers, the government, and the general public. Corporate identity, on the other hand, is a symbol that reflects the way in which the company wants to be perceived. It is the ideal situation, and can be created; whereas image is always earned. (p. 20)
According to Napoles, a healthy corporate image will have the following characteristics:
The corporate identity is the visual presentation of the corporate image. Napoles (1988) notes that effective corporate identities have the following common characteristics:
Napoles (1988) claims that a favorable corporate image "is one of the most important assets a business can have" (p. 32). Another author, Schmittel (1984), in a book entitled Corporate Design International , presents the following criteria for an effective trademark: "unique, memorable, flexible, strong, and enduring" (p. 110). He notes the three key image words are "high quality, progressiveness, and smartness" (p. 136). Interestingly, one of his basic rules for designing corporate identity is, "A clear identity is not the result of many individuals--and/or of manifold single activities! Uniformity and conformity come into existence through consistency and responsible competence of one decisive (!) central authority" (p. 22).
Napoles (1988) cites the following benefits to developing an effective image:
Henrion (1990) in his chapter on design coordination and visual identity in the book entitled Managing the Corporate Image portrays the benefits as follows: "Increased recognisability, increased memorability, increased employee confidence, greater attraction for potential employees, cost savings through standardization, a stronger presence in the market, more confidence among sources of finance, increased public awareness, and, in short, a more appropriate image" (p. 22).
Symbols are the medium used to communicate an organization's identity--the visualized representation of the signature. Napoles distinguished several different types of symbols, "linguistic, mathematical, scientific, and graphic" (p. 43). Symbols in turn have their power on the subconscious mind and the meaning can be positive or negative. Some symbols are easy to interpret in particular ways and are called "symbolic metaphors" or "archetypes" (Napoles, 1988, pp. 44-45), such as a bolt of lighting for speedy delivery or an oak tree for soundness and stability. A key point in designing an effective signature is being aware of the associations triggered by a symbol. The phenomenon of transfer of meaning from a symbol to an organization is referred to as "sensation transference" (p. 47). The basic symbol categories developed by Napoles are as follows:
Often these categories of symbols are used in combination. Napoles notes that the determining factor, "should be the ability of the symbol to communicate the company's objectives to its target market" (p. 49).
With respect to the process of designing an identity or signature, Napoles (1988) proposes the following steps:
An impressive presentation of an organizational identity manual is the 3M Corporation's (n.d.) The Corporate Identification System , which presents five basic design elements for the 3M Corporation: (1) corporate symbol, (2) typeface, (3) color, (4) grid system, and (5) signature system. Henrion (1990) proposes a similar set of steps to the signature creation process: "analysis, briefing, concept, development, design guidelines, motivation, and implementation" (p. 16). The "motivation" step is unique and addresses the need to involve staff early on in the development process and communicate widely to gain acceptance and understanding of the signature.
In thinking about the organizational identity, Turner (1990) suggests starting utilizing four different points of view:
As should now be clear, the signature of an organization is significant to its effectiveness and requires a thoughtful process to develop and implement. The reality is that the signature portrays the organization's strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, and approach to a project (Boemer, 1986).
Key concepts regarding the learning signature for NDTYI, based on the review of literature and practice and the design context described in the previous section, include identity, image, uniqueness, focus, coherence, promise, and ownership. Each of these concepts is important to the lexicon or language of NDTYI:
Based on the process outlined earlier in this section involving the NDTYI Work Group and National Design Group, the design specifications for an effective learning signature for a TYI are as shown in Exhibit 3.
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In addition to the design specifications for this and each of the remaining elements of the New Designs process, exemplary new designs for TYIs that are responsive to the proposed design specifications and illustrate the specifications in practice will be presented. In some cases, an illustrative new design will be developed as part of NDTYI; in other elements, we will select exemplary new designs from the good practice of institutions with which we are familiar, and for some elements of the design process both strategies will be used--that is, we will develop new designs as part of the project and also select new designs from existing institutions. Learning signature is one of the design elements where both approaches were used.
As described above in the section on process, we used both the NDTYI Work Group and National Design Group to assist the project staff in developing an illustrative learning signature for NDTYI. The NDTYI Work Group assisted in developing and pilot-testing the process used with the National Design Group in creating an effective learning signature for the project.
The process used with the National Design Group was to ask them to first consider the design criteria and design specifications for an effective learning signature and then propose a learning signature for a future-oriented, TYI. More specifically, they were asked individually to respond to the question, "What picture, words or phrase, object, person, or music should be used to characterize an effective 21st century TYI?" The National Design Group members each developed a learning signature and presented it to other members of the group and the project staff. The signature proposals included the following:
While these learning signatures were being presented to and discussed with other members of the National Design Group, a record was kept of the concepts used to describe and explain the signatures. The National Design Group was then asked to help refine the list, and then the concepts were prioritized by group-voting procedures. The themes identified as most important in the learning signature presentations were as follows:
In subsequent meetings of the National Design Group, these themes were further refined. The following concepts are central to the learning signature for NDTYI:
In addition, the project staff wanted to keep a connection between NDTYI and the previous design effort which focused on the comprehensive high school and used a bird as part of its learning signature.
With this information in hand, a graphic artist was contracted to develop the learning signature. After several options were reviewed by the National Design Group at its last meeting, the final developments and selection was left to the NDTYI staff. The learning signature selected for NDTYI is as shown in Figure 4.
The bird, with the attributes of both eagle and dove, represents the learner on leaving the TYI. Under its wing, the learner carries the learning experience which has been transformational and synergistic. The learner has changed in some very meaningful ways, and connections have been made, internally and externally, which prepare the person to have a better life and contribute to a better society. At the same time, the learning signature symbolizes the desired identity and image of the TYI--moving forward, transforming as it "dances with change" and responds to a dynamically changing context, and improving through webs of relationships and connections that produce synergies in accomplishment and use of resources.
As a part of NDTYI relating to the learning signature, the project staff also remained on the outlook for learning signatures that were already in use by TYIs and represented the NDTYI design specifications for a learning signature. The signatures of two institutions were selected for illustration--each representing a different use of symbols.
This tribal and community college is located in Cloquet, Minnesota. It is one of the Native American Tribal Colleges and was recently constructed to provide higher education opportunities for the Ojibwa.
Fond du Lac Community College is found on land of traditional significance to the Tribe. It is in--and of--the surrounding second-growth forest. Trees removed from the site were preserved and used in rough form as interior posts for the main campus building. The common space of the campus center is open to the outdoors so that one gets a sense of the interdependence of the people and nature.
The site plan for the college is where its learning signature is most apparent. The traditional symbols of the tribe are the bear's paw and the thunderbird. The site and the buildings express this learning signature as shown in Figure 5. Each of the bear's claws will soon be represented by a residential building (see Figure 6), showing that the educational experience and life experience come together at Fond du Lac. Housing units are open to all ages and the college takes care to see that elders of the tribe are in residence to provide a cultural foundation to contemporary learning. In fact, the conscious attempt to integrate traditional and current values is the fundamental goal of the college--to apply what is unique to the Ojibwa culture to the realities faced by students.
Kirkwood Community College is located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The college was visited just as NDTYI was coming to a close. The purpose of the visit was to study its use of learning technology. While on the campus, it was very evident that a new learning signature was being implemented for the college. Banners with the learning signature were evident throughout the campus and in its written materials. For example, a huge banner proclaiming the learning signature hung above the entrance to the main student building. The learning signature, as shown in Figure 7, responded in direct ways to many of the design specifications we had set for an effective learning signature.
The incorporation of a learning signature is about finding/developing institutional identity and then symbolizing it--usually in a visual form. Developing the learning signature for a TYI is one of the most important early steps in the design process. The process requires serious attention to the learning context of the institution and the need for the institution to change or transform, perhaps in some drastic ways. Once set, the learning signature provides the starting point for aligning all other elements in the design process. If it is off-base, it will lead the rest of the design process further off-base.
Important concepts to be understood and considered in designing a learning signature include identity, image, uniqueness, focus, coherence, promise, and ownership. From a NDTYI perspective, the design specifications for an effective signature are as follows:
In developing a learning signature to be used for the TYI across the United States, NDTYI selected a core identity that emphasized the concepts of transformation and synergy for the institution and its effects on learners.
The purpose of this section is to identify the design specifications and new designs for the aims and purposes of two-year institutions of higher education (TYIs) from a learning perspective. The aims and purposes will be set forth in the language of learning outcomes. The new designs for TYIs were expected to result in institutional designs that add value to students, and, thereby, to the communities where they live, to their families, and to the places where they work. Because of the centrality of teaching and learning to the mission of TYIs, the learning outcomes become a very powerful force or keystone in designing the institution and its way of operation. The development of learning outcomes needs to occur institution-by-institution in order to develop the necessary ownership and commitment by key stakeholders and to tailor the outcomes to the context of each institution. The products developed through NDTYI's learning outcomes are the following: (1) a set of design specifications or criteria for guiding and reviewing the development of learning outcomes for a specific institution, and (2) new designs for learning outcomes presented as a set developed as part of the NDTYI project and as a set selected from current practice. The latter are used to illustrate the character of the learning being expected from effective TYIs.
Words such as aims, purposes, goals, objectives, standards, and results have been an important part of the history and philosophy of education at all levels. Learning outcomes is another such word. The intent of using the term learning outcomes is to refer to the added competence (outcome) developed by a learner through a learning experience. The expected or promised learning outcomes are what the educational institution is contracting for in exchange for resources from the learner, family, community, state, and others. The learning outcomes form the common-sense base for designing, implementing, and assessing the effects of the learning experience. As such, they are central to the design, funding, operation, and accountability of TYIs.
As stated by O'Banion (1995), Executive Director for the League of Innovation in the Community College, "At the moment, most community colleges are struggling to operate within established paradigms that are dying" (p. 19). One of the ways to get out of the "ruts" that TYIs now find themselves in is to focus on rethinking and redefining the learning outcomes that should be the focus of their programs. Then design down from these learning outcomes by ensuring that the learning process, organization, staffing, and environment are in alignment with and take their lead from the learning outcomes. Boggs (1995) reinforces the emphasis on rethinking the whole operation of the TYI from the perspective of student learning in advocating, "We need a new paradigm for community colleges as learning rather than teaching institutions. The mission should be student learning, and we should measure our effectiveness based on student learning outcomes" (p. 25).
As
we approach the process of rethinking the TYI, Alfred and Carter (1996a)
suggest three possible strategies--(1) treading water, (2) catching up, and (3)
market foresight. The
latter strategy involves transformation of the institution in anticipation of
future changes in the market for education. They
note that, "Transformation's new strategy can be captured in three words,
entrepreneurship, speed, and a focus on outcomes"
(p.
17). In their book entitled
Transforming
Higher Education
,
Dolence and Norris (1995) also link institutional transformation with a focus
on learning outcomes and devote a whole section to "Redesigning to Meet the
Needs of the Information Age--Reconceptualizing Around Essential Outcomes" (p.
33).
In summary, there is a basic need to rethink the whole purpose and operation of TYIs with a focus on learning outcomes. In order to get a fresh start at this process, the perspective taken by NDTYI is that institutions must essentially "go outside to get back in" to be of greatest benefit to their stakeholders. The emphasis on going outside the institution and thinking through the changes in life roles and responsibilities on entering the 21st century was made very clear in the prestigious Wingspread Report (Wingspread Group on Higher Education, 1993) entitled An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education. An important dimension of the imperative dealt with is that, "We must redesign all of our learning systems to align our entire education enterprise with the personal, civic, and workplace needs of the 21st century" (p. 19).
Those who have written about the development of learner outcomes (Spady, n.d.) have identified three different strategies to approach the development task. The different strategies are akin to "generations" of computers, in that each succeeding generation (level) is more sophisticated, powerful, and useful than the previous generation. The first approach is called the "traditional strategy" and is initiated by approaching each separate discipline or occupational field and asking representatives of the discipline or field to develop a set of learning outcomes for their subject matter area. For example, one would approach the mathematics faculty or the business faculty and ask them to develop a set of learning outcomes for their areas of expertise. They might do it themselves or in consultation with subject matter experts from the next higher level of education (e.g., for TYIs, advice might be sought from faculty in the same subject matter areas in four-year institutions) and/or with representatives of business and industry knowledgeable about the subject matter area. The consultation with representatives of business and industry is more common for occupational fields rather than for the disciplines. The result of this strategy of developing learning outcomes is a separate listing of outcomes for each discipline or occupational field. There is little coordination among the outcomes across disciplines and fields. Integration of subject matter is left to the learner.
The next "generation" in strategy for developing learning outcomes is labeled the "transitional strategy." Here the approach is to bring a cross section of faculty involving a variety of disciplines and occupational fields together and ask them to develop a more general or generic list of learning outcomes. Usually there is a fair amount of "turfspersonship" as the various disciplines/fields compete for inclusion and recognition of their subject matter areas in the final list of outcomes. Here most of the energy focuses on relationships among the various subject matter areas with little involvement of external stakeholders. The resulting list is usually quite general and "academic" with outcomes addressing topics such as communications, computation, problem solving, and critical thinking. The learning outcomes recommended are very abstract, with little context of application, and timeless in that they are likely to stay in place for several years.
The most sophisticated strategy for developing learning outcomes is referred to as the "transformative strategy." With this strategy, one starts outside the educational institution by identifying and doing in-depth analysis of the changing context of life in the future and the resulting problems and opportunities likely to be faced in living and improving the state of affairs in the workplace, family, and community. Based on the analysis of problems and opportunities, the focus shifts to the areas of competence that will be most needed and effective. These areas of competence should add the most value to improved living. The result of using the transformational strategy to develop learning outcomes is the development of outcomes that are both integrative of subject matter areas (because that is how the challenges of living exist) and contextually linked or applied (because they are derived from real-world problems and opportunities). Often the resulting list is demanding in terms of the implications for change in direction, operation, and accountability of educational institutions. Because the promise and expectation of NDTYI is to be future-oriented and to break with tradition where needed, the transformational strategy will be used in this project as the approach to developing learning outcomes.
The process used to develop the design specifications for learning outcomes and illustrative new designs for learning outcomes for TYIs involved meetings of the NDTYI Work Group and the National Design Group, a review of literature, and group interviews at several TYI campuses. The process started with the NDTYI Work Group and focused on developing an initial draft of the design specifications for learning outcomes. The draft of design specifications for learning outcomes was then reviewed and edited by the National Design Group.
As directed by the resulting design specifications, the project staff began a review of literature on the changing nature of work, family, and community life on entering the 21st century and implications for education, particularly for the TYI. Central to this process was grounding the learning outcomes in the demands of future living, in contrast to the past or even the present way of thinking about the purposes of TYIs. The aim was to make certain to break with the current mold of designing and operating TYIs where that was needed in setting the tone and direction for NDTYI.
Using the review of literature as a base, an initial draft of an illustrative set of learning outcomes was developed. The review of literature and list of outcomes were first critiqued by the NDTYI Work Group and then by the National Design Group. Suggestions were made for strengthening the literature review, and modifications were made to the list of outcomes. Next, the development process for both the design specifications and the illustrative set of learning outcomes involved direct and indirect review through small group interviews on TYI campuses. Indirect review came by asking those interviewed what they thought were the criteria for an effective set of outcomes and asking them to list important outcomes. The suggested criteria and outcomes were then compared with existing drafts of design specifications and learning outcomes. Direct review came by sharing the existing drafts of the design specifications and learning outcomes with those interviewed and asking for their comments. One of the groups interviewed was students; the interview of a diverse group of students occurred on the San Diego Community College Campus. The second and third interviews were with faculty and staff and occurred on the Tunxis Community Technical College Campus in Farmington, Connecticut, and Miami-Dade Community College in Miami, Florida. The results of these interviews were shared with the National Design Group and resulted in further modification of the illustrative set of learning outcomes.
The final version of the learning outcomes developed as a part of NDTYI is presented later in this section. Another illustrative new design for learning outcomes was discovered in Australia when project staff members were invited there to present a preliminary report on NDTYI at an international conference on learning technology and the learning environment. The Australian set of outcomes is also presented later in this section.
If the NDTYI was to be coherent, the design specifications and illustrative new designs needed to be connected and aligned with the previous elements of the design process--learning context and learning signature. Since care was already taken to align the learning signature with the learning context, the connection of learning outcomes to the learning signature is emphasized here. The design specifications for the learning signature and the connection to development of design specifications and illustrative new designs for learning outcomes are as follows:
As with the development of design specifications for the learning signature, several key concepts emerged from the development of design criteria based on the learning context and learning signature for TYIs and the review of literature and discussions with the NDTYI Work Group and National Design Group specifically focusing on learning outcomes. Those that particularly stood out were the following:
With these key concepts in mind, the discussions by the NDTYI Work Group and National Design Group led to the development of a set of design specifications for the learning outcomes of an effective 21st century TYI. The design specifications should serve as a guide for the development of learning outcomes by a specific institution. The suggested specifications for a set of learning outcomes are shown in Exhibit 4. These specifications are a major product of NDTYI and should serve to review and/or develop the learning outcomes for a specific institution.
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Taking its lead from the design specifications stated in the previous section, this section of the report goes outside the TYI and addresses the changing nature of work, family, and community life in the United States (and to some extent the world) as we enter the 21st century. After identifying and describing these changes and related challenges, the implications for education are set forth. Finally, two sets of learning outcomes, which were mentioned earlier, are presented to illustrate what NDTYI has in mind when focusing on transformative learning outcomes for TYIs.
Bridges (1994) sees three major changes in technology and work:
To cope with these changes in technology and work, organizations have begun to make decisions more quickly by reducing hierarchies, turning over the design of products to crosstrained and self-managed teams, shifting to just-in-time systems of material handling, and bringing suppliers and customers onto product development teams (p. 17). Turbulence requires that every organization build the management of change into the structure of the workplace: "The job as a packet of responsibility, rewarded according to a fixed formula, and a single reporting relationship, is a roadblock to change" (p. 26). According to Bridges, organizations must search for speed, "faster product development, faster production, faster delivery, faster information processing, faster service, and faster implementation of all of the changes are necessary to keep up with the market" (p. 26).
Bridges (1994) notes that corporations are moving to teamwork where there is constant collaboration. For example, at Microsoft Corporation there are no regular hours; buildings are open twenty-four hours; people work anytime, all the time; no keeping track of hours, but everyone is watching output, and accountability to the team (p. 40).
New rules for jobs according to Bridges (1994) are as follows:
In the context of these new rules, Bridges suggests that job security will depend on three characteristics:
Bridges (1994) describes the world of work of the future as a series of projects, and the organization built around a mix of projects. Project-oriented structures offer the important advantages of tailor-made, designed-to-fit, unique tasks; flexible resource commitments; defined-terminal points; and an absence of enduring commitment that encourages resistance to change (p. 57). Bridges encourages individuals to put together personal strategies where workers see every potential work situation as a marketplace where things are exchanged. The market defines things in terms of their exchange value, and the worker needs to look past her or his past and current employer for new markets for products and services (p. 59).
Rifkin (1995) notes in his book, The End of Work , that, "Redefining opportunities and responsibilities for millions of people of a society absent mass formal employment is likely to be the single most pressing social issue of the coming century" (p. xv). He goes on to claim that because the idea of a society not based on work is utterly alien to any notion we have about how to organize large numbers of people into a social whole, we are faced with the prospect of having to rethink the very basis of the social contract (p. 120).
One
of the most challenging phenomenon of the late 20th century is the dislocation,
restructuring, outsourcing, part-time, and temporary employment of millions of
workers and the often accompanying disparities in income, job security, and
benefits compared to the relative job security of the Post World War II
decades. Rifkin's research findings suggest that we will be facing a depressed
workforce, a rising part-time work contingent, increasing numbers of long-term
technological employment, and a disparity in income between the "haves" and the
"have nots" which will result in a two-tiered economy
(p.
181).
The general agreement among social scientists is that the U.S. society is moving from one stage of the industrial revolution to a new stage. Rifkin (1995) refers to the stage to which we are moving as the "Third Industrial Revolution," while Toffler (1980) called it the "Third Wave Society." Still others (e.g., Tapscott & Caston, 1993) refer to the coming stage as the "Second Era of Technology." The terms may differ, but there is agreement among authors that society is moving into a new era. This movement is affecting all sectors. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the decline in the middle class came from the manufacturing sector; however, in the late 1980s and in the 1990s, the decline in the middle is made up of the college-educated. Between 1987 and 1991, the college-educated made up the bulk of management-level positions in the American economy. Over the past ten years, more than 3 million white collar jobs were eliminated in the United States (Rifkin, 1995, p. 9). From 1980 to 1990, more than 1.5 million mid-level management jobs were eliminated (p. 171). Even as the economy rebounded in 1992 with a 2.6% growth rate, more than 500,000 additional clerical and technical jobs disappeared (p. 9). United States corporations are eliminating more than 2 million jobs annually (International Labor Organization, press release, Washington, DC, ILO, March 6, 1994). According to reports from the Michigan State University College Employment Research Institute (1993, as cited in Rifkin, 1995), more than 35% of recent graduates have been forced to take jobs that do not require a college degree, up from 15% in the late 1980s (Rifkin, 1995, p. 171). This Institute reported that the job market for the college educated is the poorest since World War II.
In 1953, corporate executives earned 22% of corporate profits; in 1987, they earned 61% of profits. In 1988, the average CEO earned 93 times the earnings of the average (manufacturing) worker. This represents a greater consolidation of wealth for those who are executive management, contributing to the disparity of incomes and resulting in the before-mentioned two-tiered economy (Rifkin, 1995).
The
knowledge worker is just below the top income level of workers. These jobs
involve the use of state-of-the-art information technology to identify,
process, and solve problems. They are the creators of the stream of information
that makes up the post-industrial, post-service, global economy. Their ranks
include design engineers, lawyers, investment bankers, management consultants,
financial and tax consultants, architects, strategic planners, marketing
specialists, film producers and editors, art directors, publishers, writers,
editors, and journalists. The top income level, 3.8 million or 4% of the
population, earns as much as the entire bottom 51% of the American wage
earners--49.2 million people (Rifkin, 1995, p. 174). The entire knowledge class
comprises 20% of the workforce and earns more income than the remaining 80%
combined, $1,755 billion
(p.
174). The comparatively high incomes of knowledge workers to other workers
contributes to the dual economy phenomenon or, according to Reich (1992), "the
divergence of economic fates of Americans" (p. 173).
During the mid-1990s we are experiencing a shift to a core of full-time employees and a peripheral pool of part-time or contingent workers. "Just in time employment" is the practice of companies that use people only as needed. Part-time temporary workers earn 20% to 40% less than full-time workers doing comparable work (Rifkin, 1995, p. 194). Part-time and temporary workers are both clerical and professional. The Executive Recruiter News reported that more than 125,000 professionals work as temporary workers (as cited in Rifkin, 1995, p. 192).
Americans still define themselves by their work (Rifkin, 1995, p. 195). Employment is more than income; for many it is self-worth. Studies conducted over the past decade have found clear correlation between rising technological employment and levels of depression and psychotic morbidity (p. 195). Cottle, from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, has met with the hard-core unemployed, those who have been unemployed more than six months and have given up looking for employment. Cottle found that the hard-core unemployed experience symptoms of pathology similar to dying patients. They manifest the classic signs of dying. There is a common progression of symptoms; the first is anger at a former employer and coworkers. Second, they turn inward and become reclusive, which further limits their ability to become employed. A challenge of the 21st century will be for society to transition from an occupationally identified population to a broader criteria for personal identification (pp. 195-197). The changes in the workplace, changing employment patterns, technological advancements, and changing or loss of occupational identity will be a challenge for NDTYI.
National attention has been directed at improving the skills and employability of the American workforce. In 1991, Secretary Lynn Martin convened the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), a bi-partisan, multi-sector commission for the purpose of linking education to the "real world" of work. The aim was to develop students into productive workers, responsible citizens, and more complete human beings (SCANS, 1992). Chair William Brock wrote in the report's cover letter to Secretary Martin, "The United States needs to recognize that schools and students do not exist in a vacuum but are part of a community, and that this nation needs workplace competencies integrated into national standards and assessment of core academic subjects" (p. xiii). The characteristics and skills identified were needed to support a high-performance economy, characterized by high-skills, high-wage employment (p. xiii).
The high-performance economy envisioned by the SCANS report has high skills, high wages, and full employment--in which every human being's resources are used well. The high-performance workplace, the foundation of the high-performance economy, has the following characteristics:
SCANS brings back a common term of the 1950s and 1960s, "know-how." Know-how has moved from the old job skills of reading, writing, comprehending (instructions), reliability, and following a set schedule, to new job skills of decision making, gathering and sifting information, setting and troubleshooting systems, organizing workflow and team arrangements, manipulating data to solve problems, and providing direction to colleagues (p. 12). For the nation to realize a high-performance workplace and a high-performance economy, SCANS links the high-performance criteria back to the schools. High performance must be consistent throughout the interlinking system of education and work.
SCANS (1992) reported that high-performance workplaces required a solid foundation in basic literacy and computational skills, in thinking skills necessary to put knowledge to work, and in personal qualities to be a trustworthy and dedicated worker. These characteristics and skills were further refined into competencies that would encourage a high-performance economy characterized by high-skill, high-wage employment (p. xiii). The competencies state that effective workers can productively use the following:
In addition, SCANS recommended the following foundational skills:
The report called for the competencies and skills to become the standard for both employers and schools, and that individuals should be provided with multiple opportunities to achieve them (p. xiv).
The Commission envisioned the skills becoming explicit objectives at all educational levels, assessment systems providing students and workers with a résumé documenting attainment of skills, SCANS know-how being incorporated into the human resource development efforts, the federal government leading the way to the high-performance workplace by advancing the SCANS agenda, and every firm in America creating its own strategic vision around the principles of the high-performance workplace (p. xvi).
The competencies and skills would be realized through the following recommendations:
The SCANS report noted that one third of new entrants into the workforce are members of minority groups (p. xvii) and that 80% of the workers of the 21st century are already on the job (p. xviii). Education and training programs need to take into consideration differences in family incomes, limited English-speaking proficiencies, and different lifestyles.
Labor unions and industry-specific groups can develop training strategies and materials around the SCANS competencies. Students/workers would be certified in workplace competencies. There could be a nationwide voluntary assessment system bridging education and work. The individual's résumé would include courses, projects completed, and proficiencies attained--beginning in middle school (SCANS, 1992, p. 3). Information would flow from employer to educator through recruiting and employee development activities. A national assessment system would be implemented to permit educational institutions to certify the levels of SCANS competencies that students have achieved. Employers, both public and private, would define requirements for higher-level competencies. Employment-based assessment would be needed to diagnose the individual's learning needs (p. 3).
Kantor (1995), in her book World Class , supports the argument for standards--world standards. She calls the 21st century the "World Century" (p. 12). The competition is no longer among corporations but between global networks and world class skill centers. To be "world class," businesses must be in the global network and, therefore, must meet world standards to be a member. Some companies are "born global" and can implement universal standards, as has happened in software, telecommunications, and health care technologies (p. 26). In the 21st century, "those who set the standards call the shots" (p. 354). Setting or meeting standards will be necessary to create a world class education center.
World class education centers gain competence from "core capabilities," such as flexibility, and can be renewed or updated; the organizational competencies are general and permit diversity, which in turn creates new industries. World class education centers have deepening, widening skills that link them to the global economy (Kantor, 1995, p. 28). The world class centers are preeminent for "thinkers, traders, and/or makers" (p. 28).
The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, passed into law in 1993, established the National Skill Standards Board. The purpose of the board is to develop and implement a voluntary system across the country of industry skill standards and certification. According to Hoachlander and Rahn (1994), an effective system of national skill standards will require completing four tasks:
As a nation, we have a long way to go before completing these tasks.
Work at identifying industry skill standards was begun prior to passage of the Goals 2000 legislation when the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor (n.d.) commissioned 22 pilot projects in 19 major industries back in 1992 and 1993. The reports of these projects, which present long lists of general and specific occupational skills competencies in different formats, have been under review by the National Skill Standards Board since its creation. More information on national skill standards is provided in a four-volume report (Wills, 1993), focusing on a review of skill standards (education and industry driven) in the U.S. and selected other countries. While applauding the value of developing and using skill standards, Wills and her research team concludes, "The largest challenge . . . will be the development of the capacity to exploit the standards to their fullest potential within organizations and governments" (p. 29). In other words, the standards must be used by government, education, business and industry, and labor.
The July 1996 newsletter of the National Skill Standards Board entitled WorkWise reports that some of their current activities include increasing public awareness of the need for skill standards, awarding studies to implement skill standards in several industries, and implementing a series of projects to incorporate skill standards into effective school-to-work programs. Clearly, as the work on skill standards develops, it will have implications for TYI learning outcomes, particularly as outcomes address worklife roles and responsibilities.
Stasz, Ramsey, Eden, Melamid, and Kaganoff (1995) explored skills and work-related dispositions in technical work by closely examining skills in seven target jobs in work sites representing diverse industries--health care, traffic management, transportation, and semiconductor manufacturing. The project research goal was to improve the understanding of skills as they are manifested in technical work, both by extending the theoretical conception of skills and by providing empirical observations of skills in practice. The study explored employer's strategies for obtaining the skills needed under conditions of technological or organizational change (p. iii).
The project research focused on three skill areas--(1) problem solving, (2) communications, and (3) teamwork--as well as work-related dispositions because all have been generally perceived to be required in the workforce (Stasz et al., 1995). Further, it is widely agreed that the workforce lacks these capabilities, and to improve them requires public policy action (p. 11). Capelli and Rogowsky (1995, cited in Stasz et al.) surveyed workers and supervisors on the importance of skills as defined by SCANS (1992), their contribution to job performance, and the relationship between the new system of work organization and skill requirements. Employees ranked thinking skills (problem solving) first, followed by "ability to work with others," communication skills (speaking, listening, writing), and the "ability to work in teams" (Stasz et al., 1995, p. 11). Supervisors' ratings, according to Stasz's recount, overlapped with the workers (p. 11).
Bailey and Merritt (1995) analyzed the skill standards movement and twenty-two U.S. Departments of Labor and Education pilot projects for various industries in the U.S. Their research generated a detailed description of two models within the skill standards movement (Merritt, 1996): (1) the skill components model and (2) the professional model. The skill components model is based on limited passive roles that workers are expected to assume in traditional hierarchical organizations (p. 1). The academic skills are learned prior to vocational skills and are useful to the extent that they help workers master the required list of tasks. Workers do not transfer the enabling competencies to their applications (Stasz, McArthur, Lewis, & Ramsey, 1990, as cited in Merritt, 1996, p. 1). In the end, the manager, not the worker, retains control over the decision of when to use the skills or tools, the process of developing skill standards, and their certification.
The other model identified by Bailey and Merritt is the professional model. This model assumes that workers have the ability to apply general knowledge to a variety of nonroutine circumstances or situations (Wolfson, Trebilcock, & Tuohy, 1980, as cited in Merritt, 1996, p. 1). Professionals are rewarded for autonomous, proactive, nonroutine behavior and are expected to make important decisions on a client's behalf. At the same time, professionals are expected to carry out specific tasks. In the professional model, technical and academic skills are the foundation or enablers for more complex general functions.
Looking specifically to the role of the community college in preparing the workforce, Grubb, Badway, Bell, and Kraskouskas (1996) identified five areas of educational content for occupational preparation. Their analysis was done as a basis for thinking about and identifying/developing strategies for integrating general and occupational studies in community colleges. The five areas of competence they describe are as follows:
This listing represents one of the most recent interpretations of what might be the general areas of learning outcomes from a work requirement perspective. The next part of this section turns to the family and community life requirements as two additional and important areas of learning outcomes for the TYIs.
The 21st century will bring many changes to homes and families, resulting in new challenges to individuals and families as an institution. These changes will include changing demographics, rising dual economy, lack of affordable housing, and impact of technology.
Some of the demographic trends of the late 20th century that affect family formation (DaVanzo & Rohman, 1993) and help to describe the context and challenges of the learner in TYIs are the following:
Just as the workplace is changing, families continue to change. The impact of changes in work and the workplace affect the family, and changes in the family affect work and the workplace. Some of these changes may be positive, others negative. The dual economy was described earlier and reported in the 1993 Census. They found that the number of Americans living in poverty in 1992 was greater than at any time since 1962 (Rifkin, 1995, p. 177). The total number in poverty was 36.2 million people with 40% of those being children. The poverty rate was, 11.6% for Caucasians, 29.3% for Hispanics, and 33% for African Americans. Among the poor, 40% were working in low-paying or part-time jobs (p. 177).
The statistics cited above mean that fewer families are able to own their own homes. In 1980, a home required 37.2% of the average American's income. This was up from 29.9% in the 1970s. Consequently, in the 1980s and early 1990s, home ownership dropped for all age categories. In the February 5, 1988, Wall Street Journal , it was reported that Americans were having difficulty purchasing homes (as cited in Rifkin, 1995, p. 179). For persons in the thirty to thirty-four age bracket, the rate of home ownership dropped from 61% to 53.2%, and, for the thirty-five to thirty-nine group, home ownership declined from 70.8% to 63.8% (p. 179). In 1995, when housing was discussed, an additional category needed to be included, which was the number of homeless persons. A 1991 survey of 25 cities found 600,000 persons were homeless, which included 90,000 children (p. 180).
The Third Wave family (Toffler, 1980) or the family at the turn of the century will continue to have many forms: two parents, single parents, individuals, childless couples, same-sex marriages, adult clusters, and family clusters. Part of the diversity of the 21st century will continue to be the diversity of the family structure. Individuals will experience multiple "family" arrangements over a lifetime.
Toffler (1980), as well as others, recognized that technology would have an impact on the family. He suggested that one of the most profound effects on the family will be the shifting work back to the home. Technology makes it possible for individuals to work either at home or in work centers close to home. The linking between family and work has always been strong. Just as the factory and office caused the shift of parent's time away from the family, the technological changes in the workplace will cause a shift in family communication patterns and activities. The family in the coming era will have the ability to work together or to work in parallel arrangements within the home. The presence of work in the home will mean a fundamental shift in family relationships and family interaction.
The functions that were transferred from the home to schools, hospitals, and human service organizations may return to the home often via telecommunications. Toffler (1980) predicts that children in the 21st century will again experience adults working. The family may, in fact, extend itself in ways similar to the families of the 1930s. Families in the 1930s often included an unrelated child or young adult who lived with the family and contributed to the family work. In the 21st century, the family will be able to function in an extended fashion through electronic communications. In 1980, 6% of American families were classified as expanded or extended, and Toffler predicts that the number will triple by the turn of the century (pp. 219-222).
Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1993) in their book, The Good Society , made the point that,
The family is in flux, and signs of trouble are widespread. The idea of the nuclear family is difficult to create and to keep in place. The communities of support for the family have weakened, and many family functions have been taken over by the economy and the state. While there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in our society say they desire nor, especially in the case of children, with their interests. (p. 45)
These authors go on to describe the postnuclear family as being characterized by a shift from child to adult centeredness, to family having a purpose of generating personal satisfaction, to increasing divorce rates with long-term consequences for children and the larger society, and to reducing the ability to depend on extended family.
Changes in families have significant implications for educational institutions, including TYIs. For good, and sometimes for bad, family is the young person's first teacher, first community, and first workplace. Many of the most important skills for life (e.g., communications, relationships, problem solving, responsibility) are first approached and often accomplished in the family (Way & Rossmann, 1996). The impact of the family on the young, with its wide variety of forms, is part of nearly everyone's life. Individuals probably spend as much time dealing with their family roles and responsibilities as with work and community roles and responsibilities. And there is much to be learned about being effective in family roles and responsibilities over a lifetime.
Elkind (1995) has contrasted the stereotype of the modern family common in the United States over the past fifty years with what he termed the postmodern family, more a reality today, and then suggests implications for education. The contrasting features of the modern and postmodern family are described as follows:
With the change to a postmodern family, Elkind (1995) suggests that education will need to mirror the kinship structures, sentiments, values, and perceptions of the emerging family characteristics. For example, educational institutions will have to recognize many different forms of family, provide for shared parenting, and use more sophisticated curricular materials that address the problems faced by families and family members who are more urban and autonomous.
The concern for families and children extends to concern for communities. Etzioni (1993), in The Spirit of Community , links concern for children and parents with community. He writes,
The moral voice of the community is based on shared values. The underpinnings of society are based on people knowing one another. If there is not viable community, if people do not know one another, then the underpinnings of morality are lost. The moral voice does not just censure, it blesses. Communities need to hear the moral voice of welcome, concern, encouragement and celebration. (pp. 33-34)
Etzioni finds that the moral voices are no longer heard with clarity and conviction.
To Etzioni (1993) the challenge of the 21st century is to reverse the dearth of time that parents are able to spend with their children: "Any industry that would have experienced the same downsizing and replacement (as the parenting industry of the 1980s and 1990s) with less qualified personnel would experience a decline in quality" (p. 56). He does not criticize working parents or single parents, but he is concerned that parents and children do not have time together. Parenting is commitment. Whether it is one parent or two, it is the scope of commitment that is important (p. 56). Children require a commitment of time, energy and self (p. 56). He cites the National Commission on Children Report (1991, cited in Etzioni, 1993), which called for the revaluation of children's situation and the need to show a greater respect for children by making parenting a less taxing and more fulfilling experience (p. 161).
To bolster the family, Etzioni (1993) recommends concentrating on community building. He finds that we have lost the traditional community and now live in a society of individuals isolated from one another, with a lack of caring for one another, and with exposure to rowdiness and crime (p 117). The following new forms of community are emerging:
To strengthen new and traditional forms of community, Etzioni suggests that we change orientation in terms of how we use our energy, invest our time, and allocate our resources--changing our concepts of "making it" and "habits of the heart"; work out conflicts between working and serving community; redesign our physical environment (e.g., workplace, home, public spaces) to be more community-friendly (e.g., places to mingle, enhance sociological mix); and foster volunteer endeavors that make wise use of our commitment to the common good--that is, ways that make it count (pp. 123-131).
The first line of community building is maintaining and establishing community institutions. Educational institutions have historically played an important part in building communities. They are part of the common core of institutions for all members of society (p. 134).
In writing about the core competencies required to be effective in community building, Brown and Isaacs (1995) recommend the following areas of focus:
Writing in the same collection of essays as the previously cited authors, Gerald and Teurfs (1995) reinforce the importance of conversation to community building and the role of dialogue in the process. They note that productive dialogue will require skills at uncovering and correcting incoherence through
To add to this understanding of the models and techniques for building community in personal relationships, neighborhoods and cities, and workplaces, Shaffer and Anundsen (1993) recommend developing the following skills and processes:
Beyond the central lifeplaces of work, family, and community, there are many overriding ways in which the context of life is changing on entering the 21st century. Among these are the changes occurring in organizations, learning systems, communications and media, social accountability, health care, and criminal culture. Each of these changes impact roles and responsibilities in work, family, and community and, in turn, the learning outcomes expected of TYIs.
We know instinctively that the world is opening in different ways and that it is volatile (Tapscott & Caston, 1993). Walls to competition are disappearing; an era shift is also occurring in organizations. The new organization or enterprise is dynamic and can respond quickly to changing market conditions. It is flatter and team oriented (p. xii). This is due to changes in technology from computing architectures of personal-to-workgroup computing, from system islands to integrated systems, from internal to inter-enterprise computing--linked with suppliers, distribution channels, and consumers--and workgroup commuting (p. xii).
The Second Era of Technology (Tapscott & Caston, 1993) is open and networked, modular and dynamic, and based on interchangeable parts. It distributes intelligence and decisionmaking to user networks made possible because of common standards to integrate data, text, voice, and image information--the backbone of team-oriented computer work groups. The integrated technology blurs walls between enterprises, enabling the recasting of external relationships. This technology is affordable and achievable for all organizations (p. xii). The business environment and other work environments will be driven by increasing productivity of the knowledge worker, quality improvements, responsiveness to rapidly changing markets, reduction of time from production to delivery, removal of government barriers and regulations, mergers and alliances, outsourcing and partnering, and social and environmental responsibility (pp. 6-9).
Learning in the 21st century will be "trans-disciplinary" (Gibbons et al., 1994). The emphasis will be on group problem solving. Through problem solving, learning and knowledge are generated and sustained in the application. The new learning will develop its own distinct theoretical structures, research methods, and modes of practice. The diffusion of results of 21st century learning will be accomplished in the course of participation. Once a specific problem is solved, the practitioner will move on to new problems. The knowledge will be disseminated and contained in the learners' communication network. The learning/knowledge may not be formally disseminated. Learning will be dynamic; exactly how it will be used and how it will be developed are difficult to predict (pp. 5-7).
There will be an increase in the number of sites where knowledge can be created--no longer just in colleges and universities, but in non-university institutes, research centers, government agencies, industrial laboratories, think-tanks, and consultant groups as well (Gibbons et al., 1994, p. 6). The sites will link with one another in a variety of ways--electronically, organizationally, socially, informally--through functioning networks. Educational institutions will be in the linkage, but may not control the participation and product.
In the Post World War II, Second Wave, Second Industrial Revolution, and First Technological Era, the mass media standardized the message. Even though there were multiple messages in the environment from school, church, friends, and community, there was a powerful mass standardizing message from the broadcast radio, television, and film industries. Mass media had the power to turn its image into an icon, to implant a message into the memories of millions of people at once (Toffler, 1980, p. 167). This created a universal image file for the culture to draw upon. This, in turn, produced the standardization of behavior or, at least, public behavior of the American society. Mass media followed along with the Second Revolution of mass production and mass consumption.
In the 1990s, mass media is being forced to share access and influence with other networks, vendors, and forms of communication. The "de-massified" communication includes publications, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, radio stations, cable and satellite television, CD-ROMs, Internet, and video and audiotapes. The audience is targeted and diverse.
De-massified media has had an effect on public opinion. The Third Wave (Toffler, 1980) culture is diverse. The de-massified communication facilitates and accelerates diverse images. The net effect is less consensus at all levels on issues and goals. The individual must contend with "blips" or information shards. It is for the individual to sum up and to organize the shards into a whole (p. 165). The individual must also select and manage input to avoid being overwhelmed.
The Third Wave world requires that individuals invent the reality by which they live (Toffler, 1980). For a time, it will be possible to live in a Second Wave culture by controlling the selection of information, entertainment, news broadcasts, and publications and through retention of a position or work begun in an earlier decade. Because society is both diverse and differentiated, the amount and types of information are increasing exponentially. The computer is the vehicle that manages the info-sphere of multiple strata of information (p. 179). The information organizer of the Second Wave was the file cabinet. It managed systematic records. It was linear. The Third Wave is a matrix. The computer is the information organizer of the Third Wave. It can record and interrelate in "fine grained detail."
The nature of social accountability will also change as we enter the 21st century. New sectors of the economy will arise, diversity will take on a new form, and wellness and crime will present new challenges.
The 21st century economy will be comprised of the market sector, government sector, and a third sector--community builders (Rifkin, 1995). Participants in the third sector work in nonprofit organizations. Volunteer participation is a strong theme in the literature on social accountability. The volunteers may be managed by paid staff. A significant work of the 21st century will be building community.
The literature reviewed for this section reframed the race-specific diversity issues of the 1980s and early 1990s into a general discussion of the collapse of consensus and a democracy of minorities (Toffler & Toffler, 1994). In Creating a New Civilization , the Tofflers recommend institutional changes to recognize diversity beginning with "semi-direct democracy" (p. 96), a shift from representation to self-representation.
Diversity is the context of the turn of the 21st century. The advantage of being a majority will diminish. Individuals, in relationship with others, must plan for themselves. There will not be the clear path to success or security provided by institutions or lifetime employers (p. 96).
A theme identified by the National Design Group as emerging in the new century is public health--a return to an earlier concern for the spread of disease. This concern is different from the concern for adequate health care services for all Americans. To be able to address the concern will require immunization or the control of communicable diseases. However, the health of Americans adversely affected due to poverty, unemployment, job changes, and lack of health care benefits is an ongoing challenge.
Embedded in the discussion of work, family, and community are concerns for health and safety. Rifkin (1995) refers to a criminal culture that indicates more than youthful misdirection, but an alternative economy based on criminal activity, often the buying and selling of drugs. Banach and Lorenzo (1993) note in Toward a New Model for Thinking and Planning , "over 900 addicted babies are born every day" (p. 12). It will cost $40,000 per child to prepare them for kindergarten (p. 12).
The cost of crime is great for American inner-city youth. Homicide by firearms is the leading cause of death among 15- to 19-year-old African-American males and third for Caucasian males (p. 12). The August 13, 1995, New York Times (Butterfield, 1995) reported that homicides for the first six months of 1995 were down in most major cities. This is due in part to the incarceration of 1.5 million persons. The incarcerated are in the 25 and older age group. The article quotes criminologist, Alfred Blumstein from Carnegie Mellon University, as attributing the reduction in crime by this age group to the fact that a large number of those age 25 and older are in prison. Persons who commit crimes and persons who are incarcerated are a challenge that has been faced at other times in this country. Blumstein notes that the homicide rate (those who commit murders) in 1993 was 10 in 100,000; today, it is 9.9 in 100,000, but had been as high as 10.9 in 100,000 in 1991. What is of grave concern is that when the statistics are separated out for teenagers, between 14-17, the rate is 18.6 per 100,000 teenagers, up from 6.2 per 100,000 in 1984. Teenagers are not being deterred from crime by the incarceration of those a few years older than themselves. The number of teenagers is expected to grow by 15% between 1995 and 2005, which could cause another rise in the homicide rate.
Clearly this brief review of the challenges and opportunities of work, family, and community life on entering the 21st century has profound implications for education at all levels and throughout a person's lifetime. The changes now with us and before us in these three realms of life will make challenging demands on educational institutions.
First, work, family, and community roles and responsibilities interact and overlap in significant ways. Success in family life contributes to success in work life and vice versa. Without successful community life, neither a successful family nor work life is very possible. The learning outcomes of educational institutions must seriously and effectively address all three of these domains of life and do so in combination.
Second, the challenges and opportunities of work, family, and community life require attention to many of the same problems and needed areas of competence. For example, all three domains of life require skills at communications, solving problems, making decisions, building and sustaining relationships, and continued learning. The learning outcomes of educational institutions must capture the general as well as the specific skills needed across all three domains of life.
Keeping closely in mind the design specifications for learning outcomes for the TYIs presented earlier in this section and the results of the review of literature on the changing nature of work, family, and community life and their implications for education, NDTYI first took an initiative to develop an illustrative set of learning outcomes. The outcomes moved through several rounds of discussion and modification by the NDTYI Work Group, National Design Group, and project staff. The resulting set of learning outcomes is shown as Exhibit 5.
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Learners will leave the two-year institution with added general and specialized competence in the context of work, family, and community responsibility in order to do the following:
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During the NDTYI project time line, staff were also on the watch for existing institutions that had developed and were using a set of learning outcomes that were responsive to the design specifications for learning outcomes and the literature review on the changing nature of work, family, and community life. As the project drew to a close and the presentation of a preliminary report was invited by an international conference on learning technology and the learning environment in Australia, a set of learning outcomes was identified that had been in use for several years (and recently updated) by the Torrens Valley Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in South Australia. Their set of learning outcomes is shown in Exhibit 6.
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The purpose of this section was to extend the design-down process for the TYI from learning context and signature to learning outcomes. Learning outcomes communicate the aims of the institution in terms of how it promises to add value through the institution's work. The outcomes should speak to and capture the full array of educational programs and activities undertaken by the institution. After drawing implications from learning context and learning signature for the learning outcomes, a series of concepts important to discussion and thinking about outcomes was advanced. These concepts included addressing a wide range of interests, wide range of lifeplaces, wide range of talent and human development, future orientation, change agents, excellence, consensus, and expedience. Using these concepts, a set of design specifications was advanced to guide the review/selection/development of learning outcomes for an educational institution.
One of the design specifications was that the learning outcomes should address the changing nature of work, family, and community life roles and responsibilities. With this in mind, the section includes a brief review of the major changes being faced in the United States in these realms of life and their implications for education. Using this information and giving due consideration to all of the other design specifications for learning outcomes, two sets of learning outcomes were presented to illustrate new designs for learning outcomes. One set was developed as a part of the NDTYI project, with involvement of the NDTYI Work Group and National Design Group. The other set was selected from existing practice and represents the learning outcomes used by a college of technical and further education in South Australia.
In the end, the learning outcomes for a particular institution will have to be worked out by that institution. The design specifications and illustrative new designs for learning outcomes proposed in this report should be helpful in that process.
The learning process needs to be designed to respond to the learning context of a TYI and its learning signature and learning outcomes. The prior selection of learning outcomes should play a central role in designing the institution's learning process. In short, the learning process must be sufficiently powerful to effectively and efficiently produce the desired outcomes. The learning process is traditionally described in terms of curriculum (content), instruction (method), and assessment (evaluation). We are recommending that design of the learning process for NDTYI move from these concepts and artificial divisions to others that are more integrated and better suited to the design specifications for learning outcomes and the illustrations of new designs for learning outcomes presented in the previous section. The design specifications for the learning process will, in turn, provide the basis for design specifications for the organization of learning described in the next section.
The element of learning process follows on the design elements of learning context, learning signature, and learning outcomes. The design of the learning process brings attention to the pedagogical challenge of assuring the achievement of the promised learning outcomes with the learning context and learning signature kept firmly in mind. What learning experiences (e.g., events, episodes, or activities) will result in effectively and efficiently advancing the learning outcomes with diverse learners? What are the desired features of the pedagogy?
The process of developing the design specifications for the learning process in NDTYI and selecting illustrative new designs for the learning process involved review of related research and best practices in view of the design specifications for learning outcomes and the illustrative sets of learning outcomes we had in mind. We also held a focus group interview with administrative staff at Red Rocks Community College in Colorado to provide insights to designing an appropriate learning process. The results of these activities were shared with the National Design Group, and the discussion and follow-up staff work led to the design specifications shown later in this section.
The focus group interview with attention to learning process occurred at Red Rocks Community College, located in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. The interview involved several of the administrative staff at the college. In response to the key question about the characteristics of the learning process where learning was really felt to be occurring in the college, the interview participants described the following desired characteristics:
In order to develop a learning process with the above characteristics, the interview participants suggested the following needed changes in the learning process:
The National Design Group had access to an early draft of this section (with its review of literature), the results of the focus group, and the benefits of their discussion on learning context, signature, and outcomes as they worked through their ideas on learning process. Some of the points made regarding learning process were as follows:
The learning process has to build on the skills and competencies of each learner and help develop self-esteem. Many of the people we see do not believe that they can succeed in higher education.
In addition to these statements of intent for the learning process, the National Design Group subsequently reviewed a draft statement of the proposed design specification for the learning process. Each statement was discussed, and many revisions were made. The National Design Group also suggested illustrative examples of learning processes that they were familiar with that met many of the design specifications for the learning process. Two of these examples are included in a later part of this section entitled "New Designs for the Learning Process."
As noted previously, if a coherent and consistent learning experience is to follow, the design-down process should flow from the design specifications for previous elements in the design process. Care has already been taken to align the learning outcomes with learning context and learning signature. The emphasis here will be on relating learning process to each of the learning outcome specifications as follows:
Together, the implications of learning outcomes for learning process suggest a formidable challenge to designing the learning process for an effective TYI. Major changes in the specifications for the learning process, in contrast to what is typical today, should be expected and will need to be firmly supported if there is to be integrity to NDTYI.
Learning processes now in place in TYIs are largely discipline-driven. They are drawn from a compartmentalized view of knowledge, which holds that each set of ideas and evidence is unique. History has its own specialized structure, and only historians know how it is to be learned. The masters of the disciplines have raised walls at the boundaries of their domains and created political systems to ensure autonomy and survival. For the student, the result is a puzzling array of options where special languages rule. Furthermore, students have no way of assessing the costs and benefits associated with the choices they face.
As knowledge enters an era of explosive growth, it also begins to manifest increasing complexity. Old disciplinary boundaries can no longer contain a knowledge dynamic that transcends the historical experience of the academy. This means that students can no longer sit at the feet of master teachers who know all of the destinations on the roadmap of their subject. Clearly, a new learning process is called for--one that is free from disciplinary constraints and open to the informed choice of students.
It is the thesis of this section that learning must shift from instruction of students to the construction of meaning by the learner. In effect, teaching becomes a matter of facilitation of student choice that is informed by direct interaction with a dynamic knowledge base. Students, too, must change in response to the knowledge explosion. They cannot survive--let alone prosper--unless they take responsibility for their learning experiences and hone the skills that will make them lifelong learners (Seidman & Ramsey, 1996).
The argument we offer in support of this thesis is one that deviates from the traditional perspectives on teaching and learning. Instead, it is drawn heavily on individual life in learning organizations and the skills needed to be involved in ever-changing institutions and communities. We take the position that it is the cognitive sciences and the sociology of knowledge in learning organizations that, together, offer the insights needed to reform the learning processes in TYIs (Thomas, Johnson, & Anderson, 1992).
At the same time, there are important issues and developments that affect the future of postsecondary education. Rapid changes in knowledge, work, and social life require a "just in time" response from educational institutions--responses which must conform to the concern for quality that permeates organizational thought. Global communities require learning on a similar scale; parochial ideas and practices are already obsolete and must give way to international perspectives. And, the learning process of the future will surely be positioned between diverse demands and limited resources.
As we begin our journey in search of new learning processes, it is important to review our starting point. One way of putting it is that we are beginning from a static and settled view of knowledge and learning and going to one that is ever more dynamic. To understand our journey, we need to see clearly how our institutions and our own experiences determine the pathways we might select.
There can be little disagreement with the observation that our colleges are organized around a static perspective on both knowledge and the student. Every new college we develop and, unfortunately, most new and revised programs of study, has the familiar academic landscape of the subject matters. The very foundations of instruction can be found in the relationship between knowledge and the academy. Historically, the academy has been the sole generator of knowledge for all practical purposes, the owner of the subject matters. In this context, the professor is the necessary mentor of those who want access to knowledge. He or she has both the power and the skills needed to instruct.
There is much of the monastic metaphor at work in the traditional college. There are high priests in each subject matter who are served by earnest monks. They, in turn, are the instructors of the novices who are called to the intellectual apostolate. And, all too often, what these people do is not of the world. Rather, it is disconnected from the mundane world of work, family, and community.
Like the church, there are canon laws that make higher education every bit as resistant to change. The Carnegie Unit, student credit hours, and full-time equivalents are permanent features of the academy to which any new program or approach must conform. When one considers the convoluted bureaucracies that have grown up around the subject matters, it is little wonder that higher education is characterized by tradition and not innovation.
The traditional academy is now threatened by the knowledge explosion (Sterman, 1985). As more and more highly trained people work outside the academy, there are new sources of knowledge--sources that are much more closely linked to the world of practice. Corporations, human service agencies, and governments are all populated by persons with the capacity to produce useful knowledge and the resources to communicate ideas outside the academy. Furthermore, the sources of support for its traditional work have eroded to the point where whole disciplines are without the resources needed to be vital players in the business of knowledge generation (Sommer, 1995).
The shift in knowledge production and distribution away from the academy has been documented by several writers (Crain, 1972; Dordick & Wang, 1993; Drucker, 1993; McCain, 1990; Mulkay, 1991; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Tapscott & Caston, 1993). The "invisible colleges" identified by Crane (1972) have been found to be extended beyond the boundaries of the academy (McCain, 1990). These "colleges" are constantly changing groups of knowledge workers who follow and contribute to the development of subject matters according to their interests (Mulkay, 1991). All of this has been facilitated by two factors: the exponential growth of telecommunications (Dordick & Wang, 1993; Tapscott & Caston, 1993) and the increased value of knowledge in the marketplace (Drucker, 1993).
There is a growing "electronic community," which opens access to knowledge and allows increasing numbers of interested parties to exchange their ideas on issues (Ammentorp, 1993). Construction is precisely what goes on in these communities. Knowledge is produced and valued for its contribution to economic and social development. In sum,
(the new mode of) . . . knowledge production is characterized by closer interaction between scientific, technological, and industrial modes of knowledge production, by the weakening of disciplinary and institutional boundaries, by the emergence of more or less transient clusters of experts, often grouped around large project[s] of various kinds, and by broadening of the criteria of quality control and by enhanced social accountability. (Gibbons et al., 1994, p. 68)
The traditional academy is now but a player in a larger arena of knowledge production and use--an arena in which both teacher and student are obliged to construct their own perspectives.
We can visualize construction in action by thinking of students and teachers wandering on an "infoscape" like that shown in Figure 8 (Roca, Ammentorp, & Morgan, 1995). Each dimension of the "infoscape" reflects a critical attribute of knowledge as seen from the user's point of view. Accessibility refers to the extent to which the "common speech" of users can lead them to information of interest to them. Connectedness speaks of links among clusters of information, which enables users to construct knowledge in appropriate configurations. And relevance is a measure of the value of information to a community of users. As these measures are applied to a particular knowledge base, the result is a grouping of media in "islands" on the landscape. It is the task of teacher and learner to navigate this landscape to discover the "peaks of relevance." When they ascend a particular peak, they have the capacity to add to relevance, to make that collection of knowledge even more valuable through their own constructions.
Accessing knowledge continues to be dependent upon understanding the language of those who create and store information. In the past, this was largely in the hands of librarians and authors. Today, it is the electronic network and its many users that define the common speech of the subject matters. Each Internet server creates its own roadmap to the Infoscape, and those drawn to that site add to accessibility by refining the ways information is addressed (Heylighen, 1995).
Knowledge is created when information is connected, as we find in the AAI (All Aspects of Industry) movement (Bailey, Koppel, & Waldinger, 1994). We see this clearly in electronic databases where "pointers" create networks of connected information, and the user can navigate according to her or his interests.
Relevance comes about through user experience in discovering knowledge that addresses important problems. In the Infoscape, knowledge is not simple propositions narrowly applied to single fields. Instead, it is made up of a variety of media that can be brought to bear on the issue at hand. As information media are increasingly enriched, they provide for the features of the Infoscape: "Multimedia technologies can provide the three-dimensional landscape of mountains instead of the two-dimensional flatland of current presentations" (Anderson, 1992, p. 138).
Finding one's way around the Infoscape is a challenging assignment. To wander without a guide, or at least a map, runs the risk of missing the relevant "peaks" needed to be functional in work, family, and community settings. Building a roadmap to the Infoscape is what the learning process is about. Figure 9 shows the subsystems that constitute the learning process in TYIs.
Figure 9 is the minimal collection of systems required to treat the totality of the learning process. We cannot, for instance, proceed without a perspective on the state of knowledge--that is, how it is accessed and developed. In fact, we will need a thorough understanding of the Infoscape. Similarly, our constructivist approach demands an explication of constructive behaviors in learning settings. And such behaviors do not take place without the engagement and involvement of learners. To make the matter even more complex, we must also pay attention to the interactions among these systems. For it is in the "cracks" between systems where creative management can come into its own, and new designs can be tested.
Each box in Figure 9 contains a model, which details the dynamics of the learning process. In the paragraphs below, each model is developed to show how they are linked in typical educational settings.
If we de-emphasize instruction in favor of construction, what is it that students "construct"? How do they build a view of knowledge that can accommodate rapid change? And, how do they keep track of information that is of value to them? These questions are at the core of a learning process that emphasizes the development of paradigms and models by each student; they provide unified perspectives that can themselves evolve in pace with changes in what is known and how it is put to use (Copa, 1992; Richardson, Andersen, Maxwell, & Stewart, 1995).
Paradigms and models are critically important to an information-driven world. They determine how information becomes knowledge and how individuals navigate the Infoscape. In fact, we can use a model of the Infoscape to illustrate this point.
In this model, the driving force comes from the environment as complexity. Work, family, and community are all increasingly complex, and neither individuals nor organizations can cope with their demands without access to equally complex information (Vacas, 1990).
The construction of new knowledge (products) has two principal resultants: (1) contributions and (2) model power . These variables serve to link students, teachers, and knowledge workers into the network of information. Contributions add to the knowledge base and to the connectedness of information. In this way, information becomes knowledge and can be applied to problem-solving and design activities. Contributions are embedded in conversation as people talk about knowledge and put it to use. Because knowledge is becoming more and more "social," it is increasingly cast in what Zadeh (1987) calls "commonsense" or linguistic forms. Knowledge is framed by the concepts and heuristics of everyday work, family, and community life and shaped by what we might label as an "ecology of complexity."
However, knowledge is not merely conversation. Those who produce and use knowledge take on over-arching perspectives or paradigms, which enable them to visualize knowledge of interest to them and to discourse about it. Such paradigms are what Kuhn (1970) had in mind; they are ways of putting knowledge in order so that it can facilitate problem solving.
Learning in an Infoscape dominated by paradigms and models is a matter of construction, engagement, and involvement . Construction means that students and teachers collaborate to produce knowledge as well as tangible products of knowledge. Engagement speaks to the learner's relationship to knowledge and the processes whereby it is developed and acquired. Involvement deals with the social aspects of knowledge use. Together, these attributes define a learning process quite different from historical experience and the traditions of today.
The idea of construction is probably best captured by Harel and Papert (1993) when he says, ". . . (construction) . . . happens in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether it's a sand castle or a theory of the universe" (p. 1). The key ideas in this definition are engagement (the learner is actively involved in working with knowledge and not a passive receptor of information) and product (there is a result to learning that can be shared with others) (Bragg, Hamm, & Trinkle, 1995).
We now have three dimensions that define the learning process: (1) construction, (2) engagement, and (3) involvement. Let's look at these to see how they might shape the activities of teachers and students in postsecondary institutions (see Figure 11).
Through construction, learners acquire expertise in a field of study. This is a matter of solving the problems posed by complexity in work, family, and community. As problems are transformed into products, learners reduce their uncertainties concerning major issues and tasks. This places the learner in the sort of environment envisioned by Newell and Simon (1972). From their perspective, learning is a matter of constructing an internal representation of the task environment faced by the student. Construction, however, goes a step beyond internalization of a task or problem. It generally involves creation of specific products that represent the learner's capacity to integrate the knowledge and skills appropriate to the task at hand. Thus, we can see the results of learning in the "public entities" produced by students.
The central place of problem solving in this view of the learning process is especially important for TYI educators. The vast range of backgrounds and objectives of learners puts severe limitations on the utility of traditional pedagogy. There is literally no way that pre-set content or experiences can guarantee students access to the knowledge and skills required by their personal circumstances and future plans. They are creatures of their task environments, where their capacity to function is determined by their ability to use knowledge in the problem-solving process.
Figure 11 also shows that construction is even more complex than Harel and Papert (1993) suggests. Once we place construction in a social environment and add faculty to the mix, we have a set of relationships that, acting together, determine the course of knowledge production and learning. By tracing the linking of "circles, boxes, and pipes" in this schema, we can see how construction might work in a typical education, work, family, or community setting. To do this, we focus on the two submodels--engagement and involvement--and their relationships.
Learners cannot solve problems nor construct products unless they are engaged in the use of information and the tools for manipulating and transforming knowledge, energy, and materials. Engagement refers to the motivational state where the learner's attention is directed primarily to the task at hand (Gettinger, 1986). It is more than a passive reception of information offered by teachers; it is active search and discovery, which may well range far beyond the bounds of any curricular design.
Engagement is linked to construction through the three variables shown in Figure 12 (products, relevant knowledge, and learner direction). These define the inputs and outputs of engagement. Products determine the development of both learner engagement and faculty expertise. Relevant knowledge is not only augmented by engagement, it "feeds back" to effect changes in engagement (through the exchange variable). At the same time, engagement affects teamwork, the central factors in our view of construction dynamics. This factor, too, is involved in "feedback" to help determine changes in both learner involvement and faculty expertise.
The model reflects the key role to be played by faculty in the learning process. Faculty are the navigators who assist students in discovering and applying relevant knowledge to the problems at hand (Fischer, Lemke, Mastaglio, & Morch, 1991). In other words, there are no "textbook" solutions to modern problems--only a landscape of evidence that may or may not be relevant--hence, navigational support is the key to productive engagement. By helping learners find productive connections in evidence, navigators assist in producing the models and paradigms that shape opportunity for learners (Checkland & Scholes, 1991). Faculty continuously review learner products with the goal of continuously improving the product and the learning process. This brings faculty expertise to bear on learning outcomes and helps to determine how learners will be engaged in the future.
There is another critical "feedback loop" involved in engagement. This has to do with the building of faculty expertise. What this "loop" does is value the products of learning for faculty and makes possible the further development of their personal models and paradigms (expertise). As Figure 12 shows, teamwork is a central factor in this process. Faculty are no longer aloof from the learning process; they are themselves engaged and become the beneficiaries of cooperative work.
All of this takes place in a context of learning opportunities. These are jointly created by learners (learner direction), faculty (expertise), and the institution (organizational support). Here our learning process deviates widely from the conventional practices of higher education. In place of rigidly scheduled classes, seminars, and laboratories, we have the whole range of human problem-solving settings reflective of life in work, family, and community. Because these opportunities are jointly created, they are valued by all stakeholders and are relevant to the best of the abilities of those involved.
Involvement is what makes learning "social." It is like engagement in that it expresses a motivational condition; however, the motivating force here is social. Learners are involved in social exchanges where they find reference points for learning. But more importantly, involvement provides opportunities for developing social skills and value clarification that transfers to work, family, and community life (Tinto, 1989).
Learning is not merely an interaction between students and subject matters. It is a process that is made more effective by teamwork . This is quite different from the learning activities that characterize the traditional classroom. Teamwork involves assisting learners in navigating the Infoscape. Experts (faculty) are the navigators who add value to the learning process by forging links between knowledge and social construction. But they do it in cooperation with learners; all are members of a team. This brings the learning process into line with the kind of organizational life facing students outside the school (Castle & Estes, 1994).
To see how these factors help to structure the learning process, we must look more closely at learner involvement in postsecondary institutions. In Figure 13, we show involvement at the center of a cluster of four social variables.
What makes involvement possible is the involvement options in the learning environment and the involvement potential of learners. In fact, it is the social side of learning that gives the educational institution its reason for being. If there were no need for social construction, there would be no need for schools and colleges. This aspect of the learning process may be the most challenging for those designing new educational environments. The wide ranges in age, the variety of objectives, and the diversity of learner groups mirror the realities of modern social life. As such they define new forms of social life, which transcend the boundaries of convention. Thus, the involvement options of an effective learning environment must be configured to help learners acquire the skills that will enable them to function in a turbulent social milieu (Astin, 1984).
But options alone do not define social behavior. Values play a critical role in setting the conditions under which choices are made. We reflect this fact in Figure 13 by recognizing that there is pro-social behavior that draws people together and fosters involvement. Over time, such behavior builds into a pro-social culture, which can accommodate the diversity of contemporary student populations. This is not to say that the institution forces a value perspective on learners; instead, it is a forum for discussion of alternative values and an environment where the implications of varying beliefs can be tested. The pro-social culture also serves to support learning through involvement and teamwork. As learners become a part of the culture, they focus their energies through the social system of the organization and take advantage of the opportunities it provides (Lipetzky & Ammentorp, 1991).
The principal "driver" for these dynamics is the commitment of faculty. To the extent that they see the benefit in social construction, they can themselves be motivated to become engaged and involved in the learning process. This means that designs must be directed at building relationships between students and faculty so that mutual benefits flow from the social construction of knowledge . And it is organizational support that sets the conditions under which social life can develop.
If
commitment is the "driver" of learning, technology is
the instrument whereby learning can take place (Stuebing, 1992). Time and space
limits for educational activities are eased by information technology. In
addition, technology allows learning to be
self-paced
and sensitive to different learning styles and contributes to progress being
accessed continuously (Massy & Zemky, 1996). Investment in technology makes
teamwork "go"
by enabling learners to access information and construct knowledge. This is the
hypertext environment where information takes on life and becomes knowledge. In
Barrett's (1992) words,
Hypertext is an embodiment in a machine of the social construction of knowledge in the human domain of thought and language. Hypertext, hypermedia, [and] multimedia support all of the functions that define social construction: the collection and classifying of texts, the review and deconstruction of these texts, the exchange of texts among peers, [and] the empowerment of the individual through the ability to create marginalia (which may eventually take center stage). And computer media can do all of these things quickly, with fine or coarse-grained thoroughness, and with complete documentation of every interaction with a text or another individual. (p. 9)
But technology alone will not suffice to shape the learning process. In our models, we have isolated several other design elements that can be used to organize and manage learning in TYIs. Foremost among these is organizational support. Support ranges from resource supply to the organizational culture, which may or may not nurture the social construction of knowledge. If new designs are to realize the potential inherent in the above systems, schools and colleges must themselves become learning organizations (Senge, 1990). They must construct new social realities that reflect all aspects of the learning process.
The other key variable that cuts across our systems is that of faculty expertise and commitment. In the past, colleges have left this resource in the hands of individual faculty and paid little, if any, attention to its potential as a learning resource. This is no longer sensible; faculty are just as valuable to the college as players are to a professional sports team. They must be nurtured, developed, and shaped to respond to the demands of complexity and diversity. Each faculty member must become what Schon (1983) calls a "reflective practitioner," evaluating experience to help form the collegiate culture into a social milieu where construction is encouraged, informed, and facilitated.
To get a sense of the "well-constructed" student, consider the attributes of a modern software "agent," an alter-ego who can probe the intricacies of electronic databases. A software agent is a computer program that acts in meaningful ways in a social context. According to Etzioni and Weld (1995), characteristics of such agents are as follows:
These are, of course, precisely the attributes that a well-educated student needs to be an effective player in an information-rich environment. They are also the characteristics of an effective performer in a modern learning organization (Senge, 1990). When they are compared to current learner outcomes, we can see an overlapping of objectives that draws the learning process into the learning organization.
Although each new educational design must be unique, there are certain criteria that must be honored if the design is to be relevant. Foremost among these are the following:
The transition to a constructionist perspective on learning probably lies along a continuum like the one shown below:
| Instruction | Work-Based | Team | Goal Directed | Construction |
 | ||||
| Learning | Learning | Learning | ||
Each point on this scale includes all those to its left. Team Learning includes both Work-Based Learning and Instruction. This scale pictures a range of learning alternatives that can accommodate many different student needs and styles as well as the following roles for teachers:
With this background in mind, the design specifications for the NDTYI learning process are as shown in Exhibit 7. The major dimensions of the learning process are that it is relevant, engaging, involving, and constructive for learners.
|
With the learning process, the tact taken in describing exemplary new designs was to identify and describe two examples of existing learning processes in TYIs that illustrate several of the recommended design specifications. Undoubtedly, there are many such examples in practice of which we are simply unaware. We chose examples recommended by the National Design Group from institutions with which they were familiar.
Project Synergy (Miami-Dade Community College, 1995) is based out of Miami-Dade Community College and is being used in several colleges across the country. In essence, the purpose of the project is to provide an opportunity for learners to manage their own learning of developmental/remedial skills, which are prerequisite to pursuing more specific programmatic study. The project is computer-based and draws on a wide variety of learning materials to learn particular skills. The learner has multiple options in the materials that are used, so an individualized learning process can be designed. Assessment is built into the learning experience in a continuous way. Learners can start at a variety of points as a way to take credit for what they already know and build from there. Since the learning experience is computer-based, students can access the learning process anytime and anyplace where a computer, which is networked to the system, is available.
Project CWELL (Consortium for Workforce Education and Lifelong Learning) (Sticht, 1994) involves the San Diego Community College District in a partnership with San Diego State University and the Applied Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Inc., with funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Teams of students, guided by a faculty member, are engaged in learning projects that focus on doing research and development in the community of San Diego. Students are viewed as student researchers and produce products needed in the community (e.g., a recent team was recognized in the local newspaper for developing a new curriculum to improve GED preparation). Students are involved in selecting the problem to be addressed, designing the problem-solving approach, doing the needed research and development, and producing a solution. Collaborative problem-solving is central to the learning experience, as is the use of internal and external standards, along with viewing the TYI as a source of research and development with student participation.
Throughout this section we have emphasized the social construction of knowledge. Individualized, academic control over knowledge production and distribution is rapidly giving way to a diffused social constructionism where all users of information--individually or through an organization--are involved in transforming understanding. This is the central dynamic that informs all new designs for postsecondary education.
What we hope to leave with our students is, first of all, an appreciation of complexity; respect for the unknown along with the confidence to do something about it. Secondly, it is the task of educators to build the conversational foundations for understanding. Students must speak the languages of relevant subject matters and must be able to master new dialects as they appear. Finally, they need to possess useful mental models of the human and material worlds they inhabit so that they may construct knowledge and its useful products.
First we need to clear up what might be an initial confusion in the use of the term, learning organization. The reference is not to learning organization in the sense used by authors such as Senge (1990). Rather, our intent is to refer to the organization for learning in the TYI with the organizing being supportive of the learning context; learning signature; learning outcomes; and, specifically, the learning process specifications already set forth in NDTYI. When considering what dimensions of an educational institution can be organized, the typical dimensions that come to mind are the organization of students, time and time schedules, learning settings (i.e., on or off campus), staff, learning processes (i.e., pedagogical arrangements and infrastructure), and decisionmaking. Organizational attention might also go to technology, resource allocation, and functions within the institutions (e.g., admissions, guidance, instruction, placement, institutional development).
With this said, the idea of learning organization in the Senge sense will be given attention in this section because learning organization with this meaning is a good backdrop for organizing learning in NDTYI. It models the dynamics in organizing for learning that we have in mind.
The purpose of the learning organization element in the design process is to address the structure and infrastructure of the TYI to ensure that it is aligned with and supportive of the other elements of the design process, particularly those elements that have already been addressed. In turn, the design specifications for the learning organization will have direct implications for the design process elements to follow such as learning partnerships, learning staff, and learning environment. It is at this point in the design process that the reality of the degree of change that will be required to work effectively in the projected learning context and with the recommended learning signature, outcomes, and process becomes apparent. With the design specifications for learning process, some feeling of the change is noticeable, but many of these concepts are already part of the higher education rhetoric and jargon. Now as the organization for learning comes into focus in response to seriously supporting the envisioned specifications for learning process, those involved in the planning and operating of institutions begin to see that they will face major changes.
At this point, the educational designers and stakeholders have at least two clear options: (1) keep going and map out the design specifications for learning organization with the idea that what has come before is really true and the organizational changes are only speaking more of the truth; or (2) go back and alter the design specifications for learning context, signature, outcomes, and process as really not needed. The learning organization element of the design process will take the first option and is used to provide guidance to the organization of time, students, staff, learning process, learning settings, decisionmaking, technology, facilities, and governance.
As with the learning process element of the design process, the design specifications for learning organization were developed on the basis of a review of literature and best practice, a focus group interview with TYI staff at DeKalb Community College in Atlanta, and discussions by the National Design Group. The literature review is presented under the later heading of "Key Concepts Regarding the Learning Organization." Highlights from the focus group interview and National Design Group discussions are presented in this section.
The focus group interview which dealt with learning organization was held at DeKalb Community College in Atlanta, Georgia. DeKalb Community College has three campuses serving the downtown and suburban areas of Atlanta. The interview was done with about 20 members of the faculty, student services staff, and administrative staff. The group was split into two small groups, and the interviews were done simultaneously by two members of the NDTYI staff. The lead question for the interview asked the group to think about times when they felt learning was really going on and then to describe how things were organized to support the learning. Indications that learning was taking place were as follows:
A major portion of one of the National Design Group meetings was devoted to a discussion of learning organization, and later meetings were used to review drafts of the design specifications for learning organization. The major ideas and suggestions that emerged in the discussions were as follows:
The ideas from the focus group interviews and National Design Group discussions were used to shape an initial draft of design specifications for learning organization in TYIs. The draft specifications were then reviewed by the National Design Group at a later meeting.
The preceding steps in the design process have set the stage for a transformation of the TYI. The design specifications for learning organization suggest fundamental changes in the organization, operation, and management of higher education. We can see the signposts of change in the organization of learning in each of the design specifications for the previous design element--the learning context, signature, outcomes, and process. The learning organization must be fitted to the design context for TYIs described by the concepts of imaginative, directive, responsive, collaborative, accountable, and resourced. Taking responsive as an example, the organization of learning must be attuned to the goal of accessibility in terms of cost, time, learning style, age, geographic location, readiness, and ethnicity:
The learning organization has become a central concept in both the language of organizational practice and in the literature of organizational theory and research. It represents a productive response to the uncertainties of a turbulent environment. Despite the popularity of this idea, we find little evidence of such learning activities in educational institutions. Instead, we find schools and colleges that can be labeled teaching organizations, where there is little use of information for purposes of organizational learning. NDTYI attempts to change the collegiate metaphor from teaching to learning. It defines the information flows needed to foster student learning and to link the academy to its environment. Through the use of modern organizational research, NDTYI develops a design for the learning college. This design takes shape in models of the essential systems needed to promote organizational learning.
In developing this chapter, we attempted to strike a middle ground between emphasis on structure versus emphasis on process. Such a middle ground lies between the conceptual approaches to organization design and structural designs like those described by Richardson (1991). Our approach is very much in line with Senge (1991), if one includes his analysis of microworlds in the design process.
The transformation called for in these steps is one that changes the college from a teaching institution to a learning organization. If the college is to be about learning, it must learn about itself, its work, and its environment.
Schools, colleges, and universities have one basic characteristic in common--they are teaching institutions. They teach in the sense that information is supplied to students by experts. The information they provide is lodged within a curriculum that is relatively static in the short run and only marginally dynamic in the longer run. They are institutions in the sociological sense of the word. That is, they exhibit certain patterns of organization and standard sets of roles for both staff and students.
More to the point of this section, the teaching institution is a prisoner of a paradigm that cuts across all educational organizations. This is a perspective that sees the work of schooling through the lens of resources. Students are counted only as FTE (full-time equivalents), who generate an average level of tuition so that revenues can be estimated. In the case of the school, the concern is limited only to enrollment or ADA (average daily attendance) since there is no other revenue. On the expense side of the ledger, it is the FTE faculty and their average salary that expresses costs. This gives rise to a narrow view of productivity where SCH (student credit hours) are the bearer of the costs of production embodied in faculty (Massy, 1991).
Nowhere in this paradigm is any attention paid to learning. Not even in the limited sense of costs per unit gain. Learning is assumed to take place whenever SCHs are delivered. And the magnitude of learning is reflected in the amount of "seat time" spent by students to accumulate "credits" toward some license or degree. There can be no argument with the proposition that education is instruction and that, for the most part, it takes place in the institutional frame defined in the above paragraphs.
Here is the starting point for the organizational design process. To be seen as credible, any new design must begin with the concepts and language of the "Financial Management Paradigm" (Bruegman, 1995). There are at least three reasons why this paradigm must be taken into account. First, the institutional system of higher education speaks this peculiar dialect. Students attempting to move from one organization to another must measure the value of their learning in terms of "credits."
Second, those who staff and manage schools and colleges see their world in terms of this "ruling paradigm." They see students as seekers after "credits"; they allocate resources according to the variables of "FTE" and "tuition"; and they organize themselves in divisions and departments that house "credit-based" subject matters. Finally, the buyers themselves, the students, expect organizational forms and practices consistent with the paradigm. They know that "credits" are the coin of the realm, and they are unconvinced that alternative products such as learning outcomes have value in the marketplace.
These attributes define an organization that is, in every sense of the word, "collegiate." It is hierarchical in structure and committed to the symbols of status that hold the university in highest esteem and relegate the TYI to the lowest echelon. It is an organization that is balkanized into departments that reflect ancient subject matters; divisions which, in subtle ways, speak to a hierarchy of prestige. The attributes of "collegiality" can be summarized as in the following:
| Signature | ---------- | Logo |
| Outcomes | ---------- | Subject Matter |
| Learning Process | ---------- | Instruction |
| Organization | ---------- | Collegiate |
| Staffing | ---------- | Tenured |
| Partnerships | ---------- | One Way |
| Environment | ---------- | Campus |
| Celebration | ---------- | Graduation |
| Finance | ---------- | Line Item Budget |
The "collegiate" organization is managed from a bureaucratic perspective which uses the budget cycle as its principle point of reference. In effect, managers use a "single loop" structure that uses year-end data to plan for the next year. The result is a ponderous organization, ill-equipped to function in a rapidly changing, global environment (Pew Higher Education Roundtable, 1994). And it is this environment that is forcing a new design on the academy--one that is able to foster learning and has the capacity to learn about itself and its future prospects.
In the turbulent environments of modern organizations, survivors, to say nothing of those who will succeed, are the businesses, agencies, and schools that are able to learn. To quote Senge (1990),
This, then, is the basic meaning of a "learning organization," an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future. For such an organization, it is not enough merely to survive. "Survival learning" or what is more often termed "adaptive learning" is important, indeed it is necessary. But for a learning organization, "adaptive learning" must be joined by "generative learning," learning that enhances our capacity to create. (p. 14)
Thus, learning implies both the capacity to "fit" to the environment and to shape it toward a productive future for the organization.
As we move toward this objective, it is necessary to leave inappropriate organizational metaphors behind (Morgan, 1986). Old paradigms rely on hierarchies, bureaucracies, and, in education, instruction/finance. They have no survival value in a modern, global society. In their stead, we need organizations that can generate new knowledge and the systems to put it to work (Mason, 1992). This means that a new organizational design cannot be framed exclusively in student credit hours, full-time equivalent faculty, and credit-based courses. Instead, design must be described in a new language where learning takes center stage (Barr, 1993).
The language of the learning organization centers on information. This is in marked contrast to other metaphors where roles, structures, and power are the topics of conversation. In education, the work of the organization is compartmentalized by the subject matters owing their form to ancient philosophic principles. These same organizations manage day-to-day affairs by simple divisions of labor that hearken back to the colonial foundations of the academy. To make it possible for these organizations to learn requires more than a little cultural transformation. The current management culture must alter its financial base to incorporate partnerships and innovation. And the academic culture must alter its view of subject matter and accommodate a learning perspective.
Such fundamental transformations require a radically different perspective on the structure of the college. The collegiate model so familiar in educational organizations will be replaced by dynamic structures that foster innovation within the organization, adaptation to the environment, and, above all, responsiveness to learners (O'Banion, 1995).
If the NDTYI is to foster learning, it follows that the organization must be constructed from this starting point. When learning is shaped to the capacities of students and the requirements of social and economic life, the foundation of the learning organization is in place. In Figure 14, we show the flow of information associated with the learning process.
The "Learning Process" of this new organization is at the center of Figure 14; it includes the set of activities that facilitate student interaction with knowledge and with one another. It is the organizational site where construction has replaced instruction.
In order to put the Learning Process in an appropriate framework, we must provide for the use of information in organizational learning. Information about the results of constructive learning activities must be "fed back" to effect changes in the learning process. This is essentially a "Continuous Quality Improvement" (CQI) function in which student assessment is used to improve the performance of the learning process (Langford & Cleary, 1995). Figure 14 shows that the college has a goal for the Learning Process in the form of "Desired Level of Competency." Based on information about work and social life, the college can determine what the student must know and be able to do in order to be a fully functioning citizen (Astin, 1995).
The standard of Desired Level of Competence is used to evaluate the results of assessment of "Student Competency." By comparing assessments to the standard, the college can initiate "Adaptations" that modify social "Involvement" and learning "Engagement." These modifications lead to changes in the "Construction" experiences of students to bring resultant Student Competency into line with the Desired Level of Competency.
Loops of this type replace the traditional hierarchical structures in the learning organization. They use information that compares current conditions, processes, and outcomes against desired standards to initiate corrective actions. The quality of the resulting performance depends upon the accuracy of information passed along the loop, the speed at which the loop processes information, and the extent to which key processes and actors are included in the loop (Richardson, 1991). These are also the attributes of CQI structures as they have been implemented in education (Spanbauer, 1992).
Figure 14 is the "fast loop" in the learning organization. It produces change on a time scale that is measured in days or hours to adapt learning experiences to the student. As learning experiences are aggregated over time, there is a larger concern having to do with the match between the "Desired Level of Competency" and the demands of work and social life. The "learning loop" that addresses this match is shown in Figure 15.
Using worklife as one context for developing and assessing learning outcomes, in the "Learning Goal Setting" loop, information is used to compare current goals with regard to Desired Level of Competency with "Employer Demands." By taking measures of student functioning in the workplace, the college can assess the extent to which it is preparing students appropriately. These comparisons lead to discrepancies between "what is" and "what is required" and are indicative of needs to engage in "Goal Adaptation" which, in turn, leads to changes in the Desired Level of Competency. "Responsibility Centered Management" (RCM) is the name of this process. College resources are directed to those goals that are most in line with the expectations of employers (Robbins & Rooney, 1995). Over time, changes in societal expectations are followed by the college so that students are prepared for current realities.
This loop is somewhat slower than that shown in Figure 14. However, it is a loop that must function much more rapidly and accurately than the traditional college program advisory committee if it is to respond to the accelerating pace of change in modern economic life. It is also a loop that is in continuous operation as the college engages in environmental scanning and goal adaptation.
There is, of course, a larger issue having to do with the capacity of students to function effectively in family and community, as well as in the workplace. To address the associated competencies, the college must make decisions concerning which learning goals it seeks to emphasize. In effect, the college must set priorities among learning goals to give students the best possible preparation. In Figure 16, we show the information flows associated with this decision.
"Priority Setting" is where the organization learns about the efficacy of its "Mission." If Mission does not address the "Demands" of social and economic life, new organizational goal priorities must be determined. This involves "VCM" (Value Centered Management), where stakeholders debate what the organization is about and how effectively it prepares students (Whitaker, 1994).
Finally, there is an overall concern with organizational vitality--that is, the capacity of the college to survive and prosper in the very long run. Vitality is ensured in the learning organization by information flows that speak to the needs for NDTYI as shown in Figure 17.
Constant attention to "Vitality"--that complex of resources, market presence, and staff motivation--is the driving force behind "Design" efforts. As the college experiences its relationship to the environment--the local, national, and global realities of modern life--it can determine whether current "Mission" emphases guarantee future "Vitality." By tracking organizational performance on key indicators, the college can make a general assessment of current Vitality and gather important insights into future prospects (Community College Roundtable, 1993). In the "Design" process, the institution shapes Mission to the ever-changing dynamics of the environment.
The four loops pictured in Figure 17 constitute the structure of the learning college. They are "nested" within one another and connected by key relationships. For instance, the Design loop is connected to the Goal Setting loop by the "Organization Mission." Thus, design decisions help to set goal priorities and the effects of these decisions are felt throughout the organization. This example does not, however, imply a hierarchy of cause and effect. What happens is that Design decisions find their way to the Learning Process, which takes many other factors into account in shaping student competency. And it is student competency that relates the college to its environment to complete the circle.
Interdependency among learning loops can be shown by the "nest" displayed in Figure 18. Structure in the learning organization is found in the exchange of information within and between these loops. At any point in time, there will be an observable structure, but it will be temporary. As the environment changes, so will structure. Organizational learning is the result; the college becomes a continually adapting system of relationships, which ensures its vitality in a turbulent world (Yates, 1987).
Given the above ideas and concepts, the recommended design specifications for the learning organization are shown in Exhibit 8.
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A more detailed explanation of each specification is as follows:
As with the learning process, two existing strategies of organization of learning will be used to illustrate the design specifications for learning organization in practice. Each represents attention to different aspects of organizing for learning in imaginative ways.
Saint Mary's University (n.d.), with headquarters in Winona, Minnesota, portrays and manages its operation as a solar system with its sun being its mission statement (not the founding campus or the board of directors and central administration). The university is made up of many enterprises rotating around the mission statement, and essentially operating as somewhat autonomous units (as long as they relate to mission) in terms of costs and revenues. With this way of thinking about learning organization, small, responsible communities are developing with the flexibility to be responsive in unique ways to their clients and feeling free to operate in sensible ways. Enterprises can easily come into existence or be discontinued in response to needs and without major disruption of the rest of the organization.
The San Diego Community College District delivers nearly half of its instruction in 450 satellite learning centers blended into the city of San Diego and its surroundings. These centers are located in strip malls, churches, fire stations, K-12 schools, government agencies, workplaces, housing units, and a host of other settings. In this learning organization, shared learning environments are a mutual gain, access to learning is significantly enhanced, and opportunities to contextualize are often very convenient.
In this chapter, the implications for organization of learning were presented for careful review and discussion because they call for some major changes in higher education. If the learning context, signature, outcomes, and process are taken as givens, then supportive learning organization must be created. Areas of organization particularly noted were organization of learning time, students, staff, learning settings, learning processes, technology, physical environment, decisionmaking, and governance. The attributes of a learning organization, in the Senge sense, were brought to play in showing the contrast between focusing on learning as compared to teaching. Key themes running through the recommended design specifications for learning organizations were flexibility, decentralization, community, integration, and access.
The purpose of this section is to define and apply the construct partnership to NDTYI. Research and best practices relating to partnerships in education and other inter-organizational contexts are reviewed. The meaning of being partners, the process of partnerships, and the links between TYIs and various categories of partners are explored. Design specifications for learning partnerships follow from this review and exploration. Finally, examples of new designs for learning partnerships are presented.
One of the major assumptions underlying NDTYI with direct implications for learning partnerships is the notion stated by Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers (1996) that, "everything participates in the creation and evolution of its neighbors. There are no unaffected outsiders. No one system dictates conditions to another. All participate together in creating the conditions of their interdependence" (p. 14). The point is that NDTYI has little opportunity of being realized without serious and constant attention to the inevitable relationships among the major players inside of TYIs (e.g., students, faculty, administrators, support staff, and governing boards) and the TYIs themselves, as well as relationships with other organizations. In reality, partnerships may not be a sufficiently powerful enough concept to describe the complex and dynamic patterns or web of relationships that must be considered, the symbiotic nature of relationships that must be sought after, and the responsive and supportive infrastructures that must be nurtured to reach the learning outcomes that have been set forth earlier in this report.
The purpose of defining an element in the design process labeled "learning partnerships" is to bring as much attention to the importance of partnerships as to other more typical elements of educational design such as learning outcomes, learning process, and learning organization. As with all of NDTYI, the role of learning partnerships proceeds from the era of which we are a part. In the current knowledge era, creating, processing, and distributing information have become the work of millions (Matthews & Norgaard, 1984). In the agrarian age, production was rooted in the family unit; in the industrial age, production was organized around anonymous fabrication. Our current age is transformed by the conveyance and alteration of information. People and organizations and their interrelationships have become the focus of production.
For example, looking at internal partnerships in British Columbia, Canada, Capilano College developed a partnership, termed a covenantal relationship , among faculty, staff, administration, students, and its governing board (Jardine, 1995). A covenantal relationship was to move the college from hierarchical interactions among stakeholders to one that "tolerates risk and forgives errors," making the organizational culture "hospitable to the unusual person with unusual ideas" (p. 13). At the same time, the provincial government passed legislation assertively encouraging faculty, staff, students, administration, and governing boards to consult and advise each other as partners in the participative management of colleges. This legislation responded to a call for community ownership and public interest in postsecondary education as well as collegiate fiscal responsibility and responsiveness.
A partnership-centered approach to TYI management should extend to student learning. Attending to the student as customer or co-producer means that programs are developed quickly; planning cycles match the economy's and culture's changing needs; competency-based learning replaces seat-time-based learning; the learner is very active in the design of the learning experience, and information technology becomes a regularly used tool (Jardine, 1995, pp. 30-31). The role of learning partnerships in the design process for NDTYI originates in this notion of inclusive internal and external participation of important stakeholders in an information-abundant setting.
Developing the design specification for learning partnerships involved reviewing the research and best practice on educational partnerships, particularly in higher education; a focus group interview with TYI faculty and administrators and community representatives; and a TYI site visit and discussions by the National Design Group.
During February 1996, a focus group with attention to learning partnerships was conducted at Miami-Dade Community College with participants from the Entrepreneurial Education Center, Kendall Campus; Microcomputer Education for Employment of the Disabled (MEED) Program; Business Advisory Council of the MEED Program; Metro-Dade Recreation; Metro-Dade County Courts; and Medical Center Campus. The focus group participants made the following points in discussing the characteristics of successful learning partnerships:
The National Design Group began its attention to learning partnerships with a visit to two of the campuses of Miami-Dade Community College. Its assignment was to look for implications for desired characteristics of learning partnerships (among other aspects). Following the visit and the sharing of the focus group's results reported above, which had been conducted by project staff the previous day, the National Design Group discussed the basis and forms of design specifications for learning partnerships. The following points emerged from the discussions:
Both the results of the focus groups and the discussion by the National Design Group, along with the review of research and best practice, were used by project staff to develop an initial draft of design specifications and to seek ideas for exemplary new designs. The National Design Group had an opportunity to review the design specifications at a subsequent meeting before they were put in final form as presented later in this section.
Walk into the classroom of the first-grade teacher of today who is preparing students for TYIs of tomorrow. The teacher sits by the window rocking a student and listening as a favorite book is read. In one corner, a group of students builds towers with assorted construction materials. In another, students are sharing their writing assignments, rich with metaphors describing science. In another room in the building, other classmates are using interactive instructional technology to manipulate fractions of objects. In another classroom, students from the Nutrition Club are demonstrating the food pyramid and outlining their leadership roles in setting school lunch alternatives. Parents, community members, educators from the neighboring university, other school staff, third-grade mentors, and the students themselves assist the teacher in preparing TYI students for the year 2008 and beyond.
One teacher and 25 or more students require a linearly structured teaching environment: all desks in a straight row and facing forward; all students on the same page; one person speaking with the others in silence so all can hear; and uniform learning expectations determined by content, calendar, and page number. However, add some partners, a parent, a secondary-school volunteer, a scuba-diving grandparent, and a local computer operator, and learning possibilities increase exponentially.
More than any other human endeavor, education is relational and founded on trust. The context of learning is information-laden, global, and diverse. The NDTYI's signature represents people connected to learn over a lifetime. This view of learning is not solitary. The fictitious hermit needs only to learn what enables continued survival. In a society composed of families, communities, cultures, and intertwined futures, learning outcomes are owned by all. Many should be partners.
In keeping with the design-down process, and focusing more specifically on the link between learning organization (the previous design element) and learning partnerships, the following implications can be drawn:
As can be seen, the design specifications for learning organization have direct implications for learning partnerships, and vice versa. In order to make the expectations for learning outcomes, process, and organization at all feasible, partners and effective partnerships must be considered of primary importance. The next section introduces some of the key concepts and best thinking and practices of developing and sustaining learning partnerships.
Pertinent literature about partnerships is bountiful and multidisciplined. In addition to education writings, the private sector, community-based organizations, and health fields were used as sources of information. Finally, recent publications about the role of technology in groupwork were instructive regarding the tools needed to perform and document partnership work.
One of the most useful sources of literature concerning partnerships was found outside education literature in the interorganizational relations writings of organizational theorists. Beginning with Emery and Trist's (1965) discussion of the effect of environmental turbulence on organizations and organizational coping mechanisms, theorists have examined the emerging relations formed among organizations. According to Whetten's (1981) seminal review of the field of interorganizational relations, research began with case studies of practitioners and expanded in the 1960s. Organizations form relationships with other organizations to increase coordination, to manage external resources, and to control environmental uncertainty. Almost two decades ago, Whetten found that the demand for education and training in a community influences the density of relations in a network of agencies.
Other prominent writers in the area of interorganizational relations include Van de Ven (1976), later joined by Walker (Van de Ven & Walker, 1984) and by Ring (Ring & Van de Ven, 1989; Van de Ven & Ring, 1991); Gray (1985, 1989), later joined by Hay (Gray & Hay, 1986); and by Wood (Gray & Wood, 1991; Wood & Gray, 1991); and Mattessich and Monsey (1992). Because legislation and client service needs led health, social service, and community-based organizations to form interagency partnerships earlier than education, these interagency activities provide models for educational counterparts (Magrab, Flynn, & Pelosi, 1985).
In education literature, much of the writing about relations between educational and non-educational institutions has been anecdotal, many containing lists of requirements for successful partnerships. Gullickson (1997) found in her study of partnerships among K-12 and TYIs that "many of the `gotta-haves' for collaboration successes listed in education literature are not necessary conditions. Rather, they may reflect the writers' perceptions of what made the reported collaboratives work" (p. 136).
One education writer who has developed a model for partnerships is Goodlad (1991). His model consists of a concept, a purpose, an agenda, and a structure for partnerships involving educational institutions. The concept is a formal, mutually beneficial interinstitutional relationship. The purpose is the process and structure of equal parties drawing on each other's strengths to advance self-interest. The agenda is to solve problems affecting the exemplary performance of each party. The structure is the organization of the relationship. Many education writers focus on the structure of partnerships with less attention to their concepts, purposes, or agendas (Gullickson, 1997).
Pease and Copa (1994) depart from the emphasis on structure in their description of the characteristics of partnerships. The characteristics involve a level of cooperation (purpose); shared goals, vision, or enterprise (agenda); mutual respect and trust (purpose); contributions of resources (agenda); shared power (purpose); and shared accountability (purpose). By suggesting a less significant role for structure in partnerships, these authors move closer to the design specifications, which will be recommended for learning partnerships in NDTYI.
There are many different ways to view the multifaceted gem called partnerships. Held one way, the light of the gem produces insight about partners. Held another, the process of partnership is reflected. Turned yet another way, the benefactors and beneficiaries of partnership glisten. The following portions of this section offer perspectives from these three views.
One way to talk about learning partnerships is to examine partners. In NDTYI, partners include the learner partner, the intra-institution partner, and the inter-institution partner. Among the design specifications for learning outcomes presented in Chapter Four are outcomes that are directed toward the context and challenges of the 21st century and that represent goals for all learners in TYIs. The new designs for learning outcomes developed by NDTYI include working independently and collaboratively. Learning partnerships begin with the learner.
Learners are asked to use new skills as they build partnerships. Rather than acting as receptacles for facts, they must process information. They must use information about an issue and its culture and other expertise to create knowledge. Learners with wide ranges of experiences and talents are placed together in TYIs. The opportunities for partnerships among learners abound. Partnership-making is learned, assessed, and valued.
The next type of partnership is intra-institutional. Underlying this type of partnership is the collaboration of teachers, schedulers, media specialists, facility planners, administrators, lab technicians, management information specialists, and other educators. Teachers of different subject areas must integrate curricula. Students will be unaware (and not concerned) that they are not in a sociology class, business class, human services class, or an automotives class. Teachers, facilitators, and resources will be available as needed and ordinarily via technology and over distances. Draft solutions will be crafted electronically for the groupwork. Facilities and equipment allow for simulation, anytime meetings, or virtual meetings. Learning materials will be obtainable over distances. Learners will employ multimedia presentation skills and equipment. This kind of intra-institutional partnership is not very common in TYIs today. Badway and Grubb (as cited in Dykman, 1997) found only 27% of surveyed community colleges had curricular examples of integrated academic and occupational subjects. Only 12% of the colleges said that they purposefully integrate these areas.
This kind of a learning experience also brings another set of partners to the "virtual" table: inter-institutional. An example would be a sociology student may be in Toronto, a business student may be in Milwaukee, an automotive student may be in rural Nevada, and a human services student in Pittsburgh. An expert on preparing automotive technicians may live in Germany. A person on the jury assessing or evaluating the solutions may live in Minneapolis. Some of the resources for the solution may reside with the National Automobile Dealers Association. A companion problem-solving team may exist at a high school in Alaska. Business owners, interested in preserving their family automotive businesses, may have resources to contribute. And, finally, the competencies gained through this learning experience assignment may be recognized by other educational institutions and by business and industry.
Through the design process, room is made for all three learning partners--learners, intra-institutional, and inter-institutional. Few partnerships should be constructed without representatives from each partner group.
The partnership process represents a second perspective of partnerships. Process and purpose may conflict or become lost in one another when designing learning partnerships for TYIs. Almost without exception, however, the purpose of learning partnerships in NDTYI should be to improve student learning. The value of a partnership should be demonstrated in the answer to the question: What is the effect on student learning as a result of the formation or activities of this partnership? If the focus of a partnership is on the institution and the community's desire to build a wellness center, rather than that the institution and the community want to improve the health and wellness competence of learners and other community members, something is lost. If the focus is on increasing the amount of equipment donations, rather than securing equipment to improve learning, vital considerations are overlooked. A learning focus is vital to successful learning partnerships.
The process of educational partnerships has both a political and a practical side. Ignorance or neglect of either side may be fatal to a partnership. Practically or politically, educational partnerships are often formed in response to a need for resources (Bodinger-deUriarte, Fleming-McCormick, Schwager, Clark, & Danzberger, 1996, p. 2). Each organization may be required to change policies and procedures to accomplish the work of partnerships. The partnership will need to fit the culture of the community and may represent the blended cultures of the organizations. Often, organizational boundary spanners may be the source of innovative partnerships. A shared vision and commitment may overcome design flaws. Partnerships may be institutionalized even with changing membership or without clarity. Leadership is critical in a complex partnership and is most successful when it is evidenced as commitment rather than facilitation. Having committed and skilled staff to do the work of the partnership is also critical to its success. Other important activities are identifying and solving problems, establishing flexible planning, breaking complex partnerships into components, and giving and receiving feedback to strengthen partnerships.
After reviewing best practices, Bodinger-deUriarte et al. (1996) suggested a three-step process to partnership formation and functioning. First, participants should conduct a needs assessment and reach consensus on expectations and project goals. When partners do not have a common view of the problem, implementation issues are more likely to arise. By conducting a needs assessment, discussion about the project needs and goals, participant sorting of ideal and real expectations, and information sharing may occur.
Next, strategic staffing should be arranged around partnership needs (Bodinger-deUriarte et al., 1996). Identification and recruitment of participants are often neglected but unavoidable tasks. Management and technical staff charged with the work of the partnership should know what to do, how to do it, and be given resources to continue their understanding throughout the process. Both commitment and contribution levels from staff should be clear.
Finally, necessary activities should be determined and implemented (Bodinger-deUriarte et al., 1996). To implement activities, staff must be matched to tasks and trained. Matching technical staff or content assistance with project goals is particularly important. Pertinent to NDTYI, "for projects concerned with systemic reform, including curriculum and instructional improvement . . . , staff development is especially important because without training and support it is difficult for teachers to initiate and maintain any meaningful change in practice" (p. 31). The strength of the partnership is not necessarily related to the number of its activities. Rather, first relationships must be built or old relationships rekindled around new goals. An existing network may be expanded to accommodate a new project. Effective partnerships are relational and trust-bound.
The process of partnership occurs each time a partner associates with another. Relationships are constantly checked and balanced. Gains and losses are evaluated. Resources are counted and recounted. At times, attention to process may overshadow attention to results. This is especially true in learning partnerships.
The third perspective in learning partnerships is that of benefactors and beneficiaries. In the best partnerships, these roles are not always clear. This section addresses the benefactors and beneficiaries of partnerships.
Copa (1995) describes "parents and other family members as important sources of information and opportunities" (p. 10) for learners. As volunteers in the learning process, families may provide opportunities for contextual learning, expertise in learning outcome rubrics, and support for learning outside and inside the TYI. NDTYI emphasizes family-centered as well as learner-centered services and advising the TYI can be a place of multigenerational gathering and learning. NDTYI is concerned about building families that care about learning and institutions that care about families.
Connecting families as partners in the NDTYI process is not episodic. Like most other design elements, fundamental change and integration will occur as a result of forming partnerships between the TYI and families. Effort and other resources are required. For example, imagine the following learning opportunity:
As part of a learning outcome, learners are required to demonstrate effective decisionmaking. Learners investigate teacher and other instructional sources for effective decisionmaking facts, knowledge, and evaluation criteria. They examine decisionmaking presentations. Family members also are introduced to decisionmaking information as part of a family-centered curriculum. Together with their families, learners select an authentic decision to demonstrate their newly bolstered skills. All participants, including family members, evaluate the effectiveness of the process and of the learning. Opportunities for continued learning are available electronically. A next level of outcome is suggested for those wanting to continue after satisfying the first outcome threshold.
The roles of NDTYI and business and industry partnerships settle around economic and educational development. Business and industry do not donate to learning partnerships but, rather, invest resources and tie them to future gains. Partnerships result in long-term pay-offs and operate with varying levels and kinds of activities over time. Education already receives more than a third of corporate giving as part of enlightened self-interest (Brumbach & McGee, 1995).
TYIs can serve economic development functions by (1) performing basic and applied research, (2) offering technological and management assistance, or (3) providing education and training programs (Powers, Powers, Betz, & Aslanian, 1988, p. 15). All three functions are among existing capabilities at Iowa's Kirkwood Community College: contracted training to meet specific business and industry needs, training for new employees, retraining for existing employees, business and industry pretraining analysis, technical assistance and consultation, pre-employment and pretraining employee assessment, research and development, and a joint center on quality (Ovel & Olejniczak, 1992, pp. 29-30).
In Canada, the Canadian Network for Total Quality (CNTQ) was formed in 1991, in response to an economic downturn, to assist Canadian businesses in global competition (Bourgeois & Gauvreau, 1993). Operating at the sector, community, provincial, functional, and national levels, the CNTQ meets the needs of private businesses, government agencies, public entities, and community and labor groups. Because of its inclusive and comprehensive nature, this network is able to cut across, over, and through the economy to raise quality standards. One of its many joint products is a catalog of all total quality courses available through CNTQ members across Canada.
Powers et al. (1988) present three reasons for education to seek partnerships with business and industry: (1) to improve financially; (2) to improve instruction, research, and the advancement of knowledge; and (3) to increase the numbers of learners in high demand career fields. Business and industry may support TYI or TYI learners financially, through volunteer services, joint programming, shared staffing, conference sponsorship, recruitment, and shared facilities. Specifically, employers are interested in the work ethic, basic literacy skills, and technical competencies of learners.
Business and industry partnerships may experience conflict in these areas: project management, institutional policies and practices, contractual agreements, administrative oversight, personal integrity, and professional responsibility (Powers et al., 1988, p. 170). During the formation of partnerships, these areas should be raised as potential "hot spots" to be managed as they arise.
For learners, partnerships between business and industry and TYI mean more tangible resources, greater flexibility through workplace learning and other possibilities, better prepared teachers, and a cumulative effect of learning from one place to another (Brumbach & McGee, 1995). Again, learning improvements are the primary consideration.
Work-based learning is a mode of partnership with business and industry that is gaining in visibility and impact (Bragg & Hamm, 1996; Bragg et al., 1995). Recommendations for policy changes to assist in facilitating work-based learning included attention to fiscal resources, incentives, clear standards and guidelines, and support for government and professional associations (Bragg et al., 1995, p. x). Based on case study research in eight TYIs, the following factors were found to contribute to effective work-based programs:
Next to business and industry, perhaps the greatest expression of interest in partnerships has occurred among TYI and other educational institutions. Ironically, TYIs appear to face their industry neighbors with less reticence than their educational siblings. However, the strongest learning partnership gains and ultimate learner benefits, may flow from the middle school next door rather than from the Fortune 500 company down the street.
Edgar and Parnell (1996) hold up Ohio as a benchmark to establishing a statewide approach to Tech Prep. The Ohio model contains six components accepted by all stakeholders that are significant to the NDTYI process. First, the emphasis is on systemic change at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels. Second, all students are part of the initiative. Third, the partnership is among secondary education, higher education, employers, and labor. Fourth, beginning in grade nine, curricula are progressively coordinated around student career plans. Fifth, academic, occupational, and employability competencies are evidenced at the end of K-12 education and upon graduation from the TYI. Sixth, unduplicated and technically responsive curricula are developed systematically to prepare students through school-to-work, apprenticeship, or associate degree completion. Tech Prep is co-administered by K-12 and higher education administrators at the state level. Local staff training, not only for programmatic needs but also for leadership development, is coordinated statewide. Labor, business and industry, and university leaders are active partnership members. Formative and summative evaluation has been built into the partnership process. As an example of the creativity desired in NDTYI, one Ohio city is granting tax abatements to companies sponsoring student summer internships. Among the reasons this network of partnerships seems to be working are strong state higher and secondary education leadership; clear and supported vision and mission statements; ties to broader education reform; employer and labor support; seamless and contextual curricula validated by industry; and the integration of this movement with others (Edgar & Parnell, 1996).
Interorganizational theorists suggest that even competitive organizations will form a partnership if participants perceive resource dependence, awareness and commitment to an implementation issue, and consensus on issue resolution (Gullickson, 1997). Participants will come together because a partnership is a vehicle to gain access to resources. Partnership members will forfeit some autonomy for access to these resources. One of the best examples of partnership among two-year and other institutions is the East Valley Think Tank (EVTT) in Arizona. It also serves to support interorganizational theory.
EVTT was formed as a result of the sudden announcement in the fall of 1991 of an air force base closure, making available a 4,000-acre site in Phoenix (Ronan, 1994). A clear vision guided the process as follows:
The goal would be a one-stop-shopping approach to educational services, with benefits to all segments of education--elementary, high school, community college, university, and adult training. The partnership among the diverse providers of education in this futuristic "mall" would offer education opportunities and enhance the technological skills of students of all ages and abilities. (p. 46)
By July 1, 1993, one university and five community colleges submitted complementary documents requesting transfer of the base from the Department of Defense to the consortium. This partnership was built on a former cooperative relationship among the institutions and included K-12 members as well. An out-of-state member, the University of North Dakota aerospace program, was added as a partner in the consortium.
According to Bodinger-deUriarte et al. (1996), EVTT members have said in hindsight that more time should have been spent on brainstorming and personal networking (Ronan, 1994). They credit the success of the educational consortium to finding a CEO champion, starting and not waiting for ideal conditions, personal contact, informal steering processes, both a hands-on and relational mission statement, mutually beneficial projects, determining funding and staffing needs, embracing an innovative and futuristic community perspective, and meeting to review projects and strategize about the future.
The number and quality of relationships among educational institutions give pause when surveyed. Perhaps insight may be gained during this moment of reflection from a remark made by the chancellor of a Phoenix community college. The original cooperation from which the EVTT was engendered came from a meeting between this chancellor and a local school district superintendent. Teenage pregnancies, drug problems, and climbing dropout rates were threatening the city: "We decided that what we needed most was an atmosphere to think together" (Elsner, 1994, p. 49). There may be no better definition for partnership.
The Beacon College Project was supported between 1989 and 1995 by the American Association of Community Colleges and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation as an effort to build communities both within and outside TYIs (Barnett, 1995). Twenty-six TYIs nationally were selected to collaborate with others across the country and internationally to design and implement change to enhance communities.
Among the recommendations resulting from the efforts of more than 600 institutions in 36 states are that community building should be part of the mission of TYI and that training for TYI leaders should include community-building techniques (Barnett, 1995). Service learning and issues affecting workplace and interpersonal relationships should become parts of instructional methodology and content. The TYI should be a part of the heart of the community, and partnerships can be a form of connective tissue.
Roueche, Taber, and Roueche (1995) surveyed 14 colleges known for community partnerships to describe their activities. They found that the size and nature of the collaborations varied from two to 30 members among business and industry, health care, government, the military, the religious community, and other countries. The partnerships were formal or informal and very new or as old as 20 years. Resource use, college leadership role, and formality also varied. They also found that the term community was not a traditional service district or area, but could refer to almost any group of constituents. Differing terms were used to refer to the partnerships: collaboration, alliance, consortium, and convention. The partnerships may have been formed for economic, community, individual, organizational, or resource development. Variety appeared the constant. The authors concluded that "community colleges that do not master community collaboration and partnering simply cannot survive in times of escalating costs and diminishing sources of funding" (p. 39).
This section examined the benefactors and beneficiaries of learning partnerships. Many examples of best practices exist in TYI today, and some are included later in this chapter. However, the mainstreaming and thoughtful use of partnerships require constant and serious attention in NDTYI. The next section of this chapter provides direction for learning partnerships.
Exhibit 9 provides the recommended design specifications for learning partnerships. The design specifications synthesize and prioritize what was learned from experts, stakeholders, literature, and best practice.
As with the other elements of NDTYI, we looked to our National Design Group for examples of learning partnerships in TYIs that exemplify the design specifications for partnerships that were being recommended. Three that were suggested are briefly described below.
The Technology Incubation Center at the downtown campus of the San Diego Community College District takes up the space formerly occupied by the Auto Mechanics Program. The space was remodeled to serve as a temporary home to ten small businesses. The Technology Incubation Center is part of a state and city sponsored, regional, economic-development strategy. The college provides space with secretarial, small business management, and computer support. The businesses are selected by competitive proposal; they can use the sheltered environment of the college for three years. Then, they move into the city and new business ventures are selected for nurturing at the college. During their stay at the college, the businesses have access to faculty and students to help with their work. Here we have a learning partnership with many players, both learners and supporters; a wide variety of real work experiences to draw upon in designing learning; and win-win relationships for the learners, wider community, and college.
One of the programs of the Rocky Mountain Education Center, located at Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, Colorado, is the OSHA (Occupational, Safety, and Health Administration) Training Institute serving the western United States. The OSHA Training Institute is a partnership of Red Rocks Community College, Trinidad State Junior College located in Denver, and the federal government. The Training Institute is located in what was formerly the maintenance space at Red Rocks Community College. Through a competitive grants program, the consortium of two colleges has gained considerable resources and regional visibility for very high-quality training in a major industrial sector. And the federal government has a source of dependable training in a closely regulated area of their authority. The colleges and the federal government are all closely involved in designing the curriculum and delivering the OSHA training.
Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has taken a novel approach to learning partnerships by using its campus and central location in the United States as an asset. It has entered into a long-term, formal agreement with the AEGON Corporation, an international insurance organization, to build a $10 million corporate data center on the campus. The Center houses the mainframe computing center for AEGON USA, with some of its employees working on the Kirkwood Campus. The lower level of the building houses the Kirkwood Information Technology Center, which serves as a training facility for both the corporation and the college. The partnership results in maintaining an up-to-date information technology training center on the campus at a low cost to the college and access to internship settings for those in the insurance-related educational programs. The partnership is also a source of adjunct faculty as well as a faculty development setting for regular college faculty.
This section has defined and broadened the application of the construct partnership in relationship to NDTYI. The role of learning partnerships is central to the effectiveness of TYIs in the knowledge age. Although there are no standard patterns for learning partnerships, the design specifications presented in this chapter should guide their formation and evaluation. Clearly, the implementation of learning partnerships makes possible what may appear, at first glance, as impossible in NDTYI.
The purpose of this chapter is to describe and rationalize a set of design specifications for the learning staff and staff development for NDTYI. The recommendations regarding staffing and staff development are to follow from and be consistent with the design specifications for the previous design elements. The design specifications for staffing and staff development were formed from the results of a focus group interview with TYI staff and administrators, National Design Group observations and discussions, and a review of best practice and research in the United States.
To the extent learning experiences are planned and guided by someone other than or with the learner, there is a need for a learning staff. And for the staff to keep up-to-date with a changing context, changing learners, and changing knowledge base, the staff must be continually involved in renewal or professional development. The purpose of learning staff and staff development as an element of the design-down process is to underscore the importance of the staff to NDTYI. If an institution is not willing to make the needed changes in staff and the investment in staff development, then undertaking the NDTYI process is ill-advised. The attitude and competence of staff with regard to NDTYI are central to feasible implementation.
The recommendations presented for design specifications regarding learning staff and staff development are carefully drawn from the design recommendations of previous elements of the design process as well as the focus group findings, National Design Group discussions, and the review of best practices and research. At this stage in the design process, the implications for each subsequent element in the design process are building to the point of being fairly prescriptive. A particular path is being taken with regard to the design of the TYI, and the usefulness of more general ideas from focus groups, and the review of best practices and research are more limited. Rather, the focus is more narrowly on the practices, insights, and research that is more or less specific to the direction being taken in the design process. With this in mind, the next section will review the results of the focus group interview on staff and staff development and the discussions of the National Design Group.
The focus group on learning staff and staff development took place at Miami-Dade Community College at the same time, but a different place, from the focus group on learning partnerships. The interview was with faculty and administrators, including representation from the Teaching and Learning Center, which will be described later in this section as representing an exemplary new design for staff development. The focus group interview was formed around the question of desired features of staff and staff development when the learning process in TYIs was particularly effective. Key points made by the participants in the focus group were as follows:
The National Design Group had the benefit of an oral summary of the focus group interview noted above and a site visit to two of the campuses of Miami-Dade Community College (including the Teaching and Learning Center, which was designed to support and deliver staff development) just prior to its discussion of the design specifications for learning staff and staff development. The following are the major points made during the National Design Group discussion of staff and staff development:
The above points of view from both the focus group and the National Design Group were used to draw out the implications of design specifications for prior elements in the design-down process as a basis for developing the design specifications for learning staff and staff development. The results of this deductive process are presented in the next section.
The strength of the design-down process is in assuring that each of the design specifications for each of the added design elements contributes to and enhances the specifications for previous elements. There is also the reverse process of checking-up to ensure careful alignment and coherence to the complete design. As with previous elements, the focus at this point is on explicitly examining the implications of the design specifications for learning partnerships (the immediately previous element) for the design specifications for learning staff and staff development. The implications appear to include the following thinking about staff and staff development based on each of the design specifications for partnerships:
Clearly, the design specifications for partnerships have implications for the design of staffing and staff development. The implications are basic to and have a significant effect on defining staff, how staff members must work together, and what it means to be and remain competent.
Educational institutions no longer have a monopoly on learning and learning organizations. Corporate America is being called upon to form learning communities, learning companies, and learning organizations--systems where people are constantly upgrading their resources and updating one another about their current reality (Campbell, 1995, p. 14). The following discussion, taken from Campbell's work, was directed at a business and corporate audience, but the message seems applicable to NDTYI.
Organizations can achieve restructuring by creating new organizational processes that put all aspects of the organization in immediate interactive communication with one another. People from a variety of fields, including some whose values or work styles feel foreign or threatening, will learn with and from these interactions and through this interaction will develop a "more adequate, more complex" response to the given situation (Campbell, 1995). The new organization will require leaders who are comfortable sharing decisionmaking with people who have no special rank or position. It will mean sharing information with colleagues working on similar problems instead of keeping important discoveries to oneself to protect turf. The new organization will require high levels of trust in self and others, so that little time is wasted covering mistakes so that the organization and the learning can move forward. In fact, "The exploration process will require individuals who are trustworthy, change-worthy, and learn-worthy" (p. 24).
For individuals to change and to learn, the educational institution or learning organization will have to develop and foster trust. Galbraith and Shedd (1990) in the article, "Building Skills and Proficiencies of the Community College Instructor of Adult Learners," state that instructors must possess personality characteristics and interpersonal skills that engender an image of caring, trust, and encouragement. Referring to the learning organization, Campbell (1995) says that decisions based on adjustment rather than control will use information and experience. A fundamental question that learning staff will need to ask is, "What does the current situation require?" (p. 24). Knowing how to learn and the learning process will be more important than being right or knowing the right thing to do.
It is the end of "solo" instructors and the beginning of an era of team or ensemble players in the learning organization. Teamwork requires public learning (Campbell, 1995). To be a team player is to be a team learner, placing more value on the team's learning than on the personal needs to be right, to be accepted, or to be in control. Team learners listen, publicly acknowledge mistakes, share perceptions, participate in discussions that raise conflicts to the fore, respectfully differ in public, connect one another to the organization, and become partners to help the organization realize its goals.
The learning staff and staff development are key to the implementation of NDTYI. If the designs are to have congruity, the learning staff will manifest the same qualities and competencies as the learning outcomes, practice the learning processes, organize learning to support the learning process, and be responsible for continually building and using learning partnerships. Staff development will need to be consistent with these expectations:
American organizations cannot evolve any farther than the individuals who work in these organizations. If we want our institutions to be more change worthy, individual workers will need to undertake the personal learning necessary to perceive change as it is happening. (Campbell, 1995, p. 13)
Educational institutions as learning communities must be caring organizations that are interested in the potential of all members (Orlich, 1989, p. 1). A caring institution will invest in staff development to transform and to change.
NDTYI includes all staff in the definition of learning staff--support staff, student service, technical staff, faculty, and administration, as well as outside partners in the learning process. In 1995, the National Association of State Directors of Vocational Technical Education Consortium and University Council for Vocational Education convened a Task Force on Vocational Technical Teacher Education. Their report defined learning staff as "all those who engage learners in purposeful learning activities or operating the enterprises within which people learn" (p. 5). Cross wrote in the foreword to The Teaching and Learning Enterprise (Jenrette & Napoli, 1994), referring to a highly successful institutional reform at Miami-Dade Community College, that it was accomplished by "ordinary people." By this she means that existing learning staff, a biology teacher (Jenrette) and a social studies teacher involved in faculty governance (Napoli), both respected by their peers, directed the staff development program--the transformation of an institution.
The community colleges and technical colleges across this country are not going to make wholesale changes in staff; rather, the institutions implementing NDTYI will use a combination of staff development programs, role changes, new hires, adjunct faculty, and new partners to transform the institution. The major difference will be in the level of flexibility characterizing the organization in order to implement new design specifications. Flexibility is necessary because the learning staff will not be able to identify all the unplanned and unanticipated learning needs and opportunities of learners (Galbraith & Shedd, 1990, p. 10). Flexibility will mean flexible time, ability to change roles, and add or use different skills.
As stated earlier, there will be many outside partners in NDTYI. An example of an outside learning partner is the LaGuardia's Co-op Seminars for School-to-Work Programs (Grubb & Badway, 1995). The instructors came from different backgrounds, some from the college, some from local businesses. The students reported that they found the "true stories" of the workplace fascinating (p. 14). The instructors from the workplace were able to teach the customs and folkways of the workplace. Grubb and Badway noted that the outside instructors did not have access to staff development. NDTYI proposes to include the needs of all learning staff in the planning and delivering of staff development.
Of all staff in higher education, 20% are employed in TYIs. Of the TYIs, 91% of staff are employed in public institutions. The institutions that are less than two-year are largely private (70% private) (National Center for Education Statistics, 1996, p. 13). According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 57% of TYI staff are faculty members. TYIs have a lower percentage of support service professionals than four-year institutions (18% in four-year institutions and 8% in TYIs) (p. 16). From 1970 to 1993, there has been growth in the number of faculty employed by TYIs due to an increase in the number of part-time faculty. In 1993, 64% of faculty employed in TYIs were part-time.
Table 2 is adapted from the National Center for Educational Statistics (1996, p. 9) to show the TYI totals for employees; men and women; full-time and part-time; faculty and non-faculty; and professional and nonprofessional.
|
|
|||||||||
|
Two-Year
Institution
|
Total
Number |
Men |
Women |
Full-
Time |
Part-
Time |
Faculty |
Non-
Faculty |
Professional |
Non-
Professional |
|
1989
|
476,868
|
226,076
|
250,801
|
259,308
|
217,560
|
261,295
|
215,573
|
334,940
|
141,928
|
|
1991
|
505,212
|
235,708
|
269,504
|
277,710
|
227,502
|
256,095
|
249,117
|
355,672
|
149,540
|
|
1993
|
543,607
|
247,546
|
296,061
|
285,690
|
257,917
|
309,958
|
233,649
|
387,051
|
156,556
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
Two-Year
Institution |
Total
Number |
Men |
Women |
Full-
Time |
Part-
Time |
Faculty |
Non-
Faculty |
Professional |
Non-
Professional |
|
1989
|
476,868
|
47
|
53
|
54
|
46
|
55
|
45
|
70
|
30
|
|
1991
|
505,212
|
47
|
53
|
55
|
45
|
51
|
49
|
70
|
30
|
|
1993
|
543,607
|
46
|
54
|
54
|
47
|
57
|
43
|
71
|
29
|
Note: Professional staff include staff in the following occupational categories: executive/administrative/ managerial, faculty (instruction/research), instruction/research assistants, and professional (support services). Nonprofessional staff include technical and paraprofessionals, clerical and secretarial, skilled crafts, service/maintenance, and other employees. National Center for Education Statistics (1996), p. 9.
Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, "EEO-6 Higher Education Staff Information" Surveys, 1989 and 1991; and National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), "Fall Staff" Survey, 1989, 1991, and 1993.
The role of the staff in NDTYI will need to be reconsidered and may be redefined in significant ways. Galbraith and Shedd (1990) described an instructor's role in the teaching and learning transaction as role model, counselor, content resource person, mentor, learning guide, program developer, and institutional representative (Galbraith & Shedd, 1990, p. 9). Other roles for learning staff will be navigator, facilitator, coach, and mentor. Staff will share roles within the institution and with external partners.
In NDTYI, those who do the work of teaching and learning will do less instruction and more facilitation of knowledge construction and problem solving with students. Learning staff will connect the learner to a learning context such as a hospital, private firm, or government agency, and in other instances the connection may be through simulations and case studies. The learning staff will serve as navigator in guiding the direction of the learning enterprise and individual learning through the vast storehouse of information now available. Among the learning team will be staff with pedagogical expertise and content expertise. The learning teams will require various skills, backgrounds, and expertise. These are not revolutionary concepts. In 1980, Knox suggested that the general characteristics and interpersonal skills for a facilitator of adult learning entail three areas of core knowledge: (1) knowledge of content, (2) knowledge of adult development and learning, and (3) knowledge of instructional methods (Galbraith & Shedd, 1990, p. 9).
The institutions that prepare learning staff will be encouraged to consider the principles proposed in the Task Force on Vocational Technical Teacher Education, Final Report (National Association of State Directors of Vocational Technical Education Consortium and University Council for Vocational Education, 1995). These include the following:
The learning staff role is more easily understood in the context of the NDTYI learning environment. The learning enterprise will be the unit for delivering and managing the pedagogy around a unifying idea such as interest areas or occupational/industry areas. Enterprises will be self-defining groupings of learning staff and students. These enterprises will organize themselves around a set of standards or criteria that will be derived in conjunction with real work environments in the community. Members of the learning staff will have the ability to build teams as needed and collaborate with other enterprises both within the institution and outside--such as businesses. The role for the faculty will be to negotiate, to link, and to maximize resources by connecting with the community of interest outside of the institution.
A review of Cohen and Brawer's (1989) basis for hiring community college faculty found that "regardless of degree, titles, and types of programs, an emphasis on breadth of preparation and on people sensitive to the goals of the community colleges and the concerns of their students has been a standard recommendation" (p. 70). These characteristics will be valued in the NDTYI.
The first step in the design-down process is the learning signature, which articulates either graphically or in writing what is special or unique about the TYI. Cross (cited in Jenrette & Napoli, 1994) wrote that Miami-Dade Community College started the Teaching/ Learning Project in "textbook-perfect pattern, with a statement of agreement about the values of the college, and then went on from there to develop one of the most far reaching and potentially powerful reforms of our times--times that are critical of the quality of teaching and learning" (p. ix).
At Miami-Dade Community College, a clear delineation of college values was selected as a starting point. They reviewed the college's publications and written documents to identify both explicit and implicit values. A survey was developed and sent to all college personnel as well as a sampling of students and community members. Miami-Dade identified seven institutional values related to teaching and learning: (1) learning, (2) change to meet educational needs and to improve learning, (3) access while maintaining quality, (4) diversity in order to broaden understanding and learning, (5) individuals, (6) systematic approach to decisionmaking, and (7) partnership with the community. In the Miami-Dade experience, institutional values were the starting place for learning staff and learning staff development (Jenrette & Napoli, 1994, p. A-11).
Learning outcomes in NDTYI are integrative of subject matter areas and contextually linked or applied (because they are derived from real-world problems and opportunities). The learning staff must be able to integrate vocational and academic areas and work in interdisciplinary teams. The staff will be expected to demonstrate the outcomes expected of students.
The learning process operated by staff will involve a combination of instruction and construction, requiring that the learning staff be able to guide group problem solving. Galbraith and Shedd (1990) describe problem solving as critical questioning, critical incident exercises, role playing, crisis decisionmaking simulations, and discussion. NDTYI recommends including and moving beyond these pedagogical strategies to increase focus on knowledge construction (Gibbons et al., p. 6). Problem solving will move outside of the classroom to the community. It will be the equivalent of "on-the-job-training" for both the learning staff and the learner to gain needed skills and knowledge through "experience, trial and error, modeling, peer groups, collegial contact and collaborative efforts, as well as through self-directed study that utilizes human material resources" (Galbraith & Zelenak, 1989, p. 128). Integrated technology will blur the lines between learning and other life activities such as work, family, and community responsibilities, enabling the recasting of external relationships (Tapscott & Caston, 1993, p. xiii).
"Just in time" learning experiences will involve the use of resources and talent to provide a "just right" response to the changes in knowledge, learning needs, and the learning situation. Learning experiences will be developed in the self-defining enterprises through intersecting sets of pedagogical and supporting skills.
In 1986, Daloz drew a picture of a learning staff that would develop learning interactions that are challenging, active, and supportive by maintaining standards and high expectations for adult learning. Students were to have challenging tasks that call for closure, while at the same time providing insight into how knowledge is applied to the learners' lives. Instructors should provide for realistic and varied practice opportunities that help adult learners persist and apply what is learned (Galbraith & Shedd, 1990, p. 11). Several authors support educational encounters that require the adult learner and the instructor to act and to think critically and reflectively (Brookfield, 1987; Galbraith & Shedd, 1990; Schon, 1983).
Stern and Tsuzuk (1996) discuss such an endeavor in their description of a career major as a coherent sequence of courses or field of study that prepares a student for a job by integrating academic and occupational learning; including school-based and work-based learning; and establishing linkages between secondary and postsecondary educational institutions.
The more sophisticated the learner, the more the learning staff can work with the student's experiences instead of treating the student as an empty vessel (Johnson, 1991, p. 54). The current reality is that the average community college student is 29 years of age and most are employed (p. 54).
Learning staff will need to be trained in theory and skills of educating adults. In order to facilitate the interaction among the learner, the situation, and the content, the learning staff will need to be knowledgeable of the following:
TYIs already have a knowledge base in the field of adult education. The learning process that Brookfield (1985, as cited in Saul, 1990) recommends is praxis or an action reflection model. Brookfield writes, "praxis is at the heart of adult education; participants are involved in a constant process of activity, further reflection and collaborative analysis of activity, new activity, further reflection and further collaborative reflection" (p. 53). In a similar way, Johnson describes a strategy facilitating experiential learning as helping the student to "process out" the experience into learning (cited in Saul, 1990, p. 51). The basic experience must be worked over, processed, and dealt with in some manner in order for the student to learn from it. Johnson calls it moving from the experience, to the analysis of the experience, to the generation of a personal theory (p. 55).
Through facilitated learning or experiential learning, the learner will find fulfillment and be better able to manage change (Johnson, 1991). According to Johnson, these strategies will enhance the employability of the student. Employers are more impressed with students who are able to learn from their experiences--to learn on the job (p. 56). Increasingly employers want to be involved in student learning and are willing and able, with some support from educational institutions, to assume a substantial role in the education process (p. 56).
Experiential learning can be internships, cooperative education, service learning, and other outside-the-classroom educational programs. Experiential learning should include scenarios in which the student's experiences are the starting point of the learning, rather than simply the final application. A facilitative staff would manage to find the learning resources in each student's experiences (Johnson, 1991, p. 55).
Assessment in NDTYI will mean both diagnostic assessment to determine the needs of the learner, appropriate placement, and prior learning, as well as assessment for improving the learning process. Cross and Angelo's (1988) work is summarized in Classroom Assessment Techniques (see also Cross, 1988, 1993a, 1993b) as a means to maximize learning through frequent assessments of how well students are meeting the goals of instruction. Learning staff will need to have some level of proficiency in collecting data from students throughout the learning process for use in improving the learning process. Cross and Angelo (1988) offer 50 Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs), some for assessing course-related knowledge and skills; others for assessing learner's attitudes, values and self-awareness; and still others for assessing the learner's reaction to instruction.
Saul (1990) encouraged TYIs to offer training for adult educators in the community, external to the institution. The many learning partners necessary to fulfill the implementation of contextual learning warrant consideration by the TYIs of developing training programs for community partners. Possible training topics include adult learning and adult development; techniques for teaching adults; focus on specific learner groups; focus on specific learning situations--basic literacy, training in business and industry, human resource development; research methods--action research, research application in practice, and the practitioner as researcher; management of internships; train-the-trainer; practitioners in literacy, working with volunteer agencies and business; lifelong learning skills; and self- and peer assessment techniques (p. 55).
NDTYI incorporates all staff in the discussion of learning staff. For example, Miami-Dade Community College chose the teaching/learning environment as one of its conceptual areas of focus in improving learning (Jenrette & Napoli, 1994). They recognized the role of support services in the following comments:
while highly skilled teachers and willing learners are required for excellent teaching and learning, high quality services are also essential to create an environment that facilitates teaching and encourages learning. Creating new environments is not necessarily the solution; it may be maintaining and modifying existing environments is more appropriate. The environments need to be supplied with equipment in good working condition, and there needs to be clerical and custodial services as well. In short, the commitment to excellence must be shared by all personnel whose efforts support the teaching and learning process, even in the most indirect way. (pp. 7-8)
Miami-Dade also recognized that the equipment and maintenance of the learning environment are of utmost importance and are often the most difficult budget category to support. Jenrette and Napoli (1994), offering Miami-Dade's experience, wrote,
Their Teaching and Learning Subcommittee recommended processes to ensure support of operational practices of all service areas: user feedback be solicited, faculty regularly be invited to talk with service providers, annual objectives be developed which include recognition of each area's contribution to teaching and learning, and that items relating to those objectives be included in the annual performance review of all service area personnel. (p. 8)
The Miami-Dade experience discovered that it was more challenging to relate and recognize the purchasing department, budget office, and personnel office relationship to teaching and learning (than other areas) (p. 8).
The staff development strategy at Miami-Dade Community College is comprehensive. Staff development is designed to revitalize careers and bring focus on the institution helping the individual learner to be successful. The effect was to create a successful learning environment for both students and staff within a complex, diverse urban environment with all of the attendant problems of lack of skills and limited access to technology and socioeconomic constraints. None of these conditions prevented the learning staff from creating an exciting and caring learning environment.
The learning staff of Miami-Dade recommended that staff development programs meet the following criteria:
The main steps for the staff development program at Miami-Dade involved identification and agreement in the following areas:
In order to ensure a long-range institutional commitment to staff development and institutional implementation, Miami-Dade instituted Teaching and Learning Centers with full-time staff, including a director, support staff personnel, and a substantial budget, given the institution's size and commitments. The role and program focus of the centers were determined by those affected, faculty, and others (Jenrette & Napoli, 1994).
Incorporating learning staff specifications into the institution begins with reviewing principles and practices for hiring and acculturating new staff members. Excellence should be defined for all areas as it relates to learning. Standards exist for faculty that can be used as models for definitions of excellence for other learning staff positions. Definitions of excellence give both the hiring committees and the applicants an opportunity to know what is expected. As suggested by Jenrette and Napoli (1994), from the definitions should flow the interview protocol "to elicit information about the critical aspects" of the learning staff's role.
Orientation and training will take on greater significance in NDTYI because of greater participation in and by community members in the learning process. Miami-Dade developed a faculty orientation program beginning with a week of workshops, presentations, and meetings conducted by appropriate personnel. New hires were given a separate contract, which paid them to attend the orientation and follow-up activities continuing through the first year (Jenrette & Napoli, 1994).
Mentoring is also a part of the Miami-Dade program for new hires. It is continued through the first year of employment. Mentoring enables the learning signature to be transferred from one "generation" of staff to the next and across areas. The extension of support and connection to the institution through mentoring reinforces the learning signature: "Mentoring improves and accelerates the process by which new faculty (and others) become knowledgeable about the institution, effective in their positions, and comfortable as members of the learning community" (Jenrette & Napoli, 1994, p. 9).
Just as business crosstrains its employees, NDTYI encourages crosstrained staff so that staff can be comfortable with role exchanges. Crossfunctional teams or task forces help to integrate the parts of the organization and can guide staff development. Job rotation promotes a continuous process of learning and staff development. It broadens the learning staff's knowledge in ways that open up new approaches to meeting the institutional goals. Crosstraining and role exchanges foster broad mastery of the process and understanding of each individual's contributions to the team and the team's contribution to the enterprise.
The learning staff is responsible to conduct continuous assessment of students to determine what changes are needed to improve the learning process and organization. One example of how continuous improvement can work in higher education comes from Marchese (1991, as cited in Cross, 1993b). Marchese was one of the first to publicly link higher education with Total Quality Management (TQM). He identified 12 major themes of TQM for higher education, while Cross and Angelo (1988) contributed classroom assessment techniques. Cross (1993b) combined the two works into 12 strategies for continuous improvement: (1) focus on quality through simple daily routines; (2) focus on student learning (i.e., the customer); (3) make changes or adjustments as the need arises; (4) understand the process and know how to improve it (i.e., cognition and human learning processes); (5) extend the mindset to know the background, preparation, and prior experience of students entering the classroom; (6) share and use data collected on the student with the student--for example, asking "how effective is the learning situation or learning interaction in meeting its goals and the student's needs?"; (7) eliminate rework or remediation by identifying weaknesses when they appear; (8) emphasize teamwork through self-directed workgroups--interact about what works and what does not work; (9) empower people to review work processes and to make the necessary changes; (10) invest in training and recognition; (11) make explicit the teaching goals--what students should learn; (12) hire leaders who are vision givers, listeners, team workers, committed to quality and customer needs, but are patient for long-term ends (Marchese, 1991, p. 6, as cited in Cross, 1993b, p. 19).
The design specifications for learning staff and staff development drawn from the focus group interviews, review of research and best practices, and the discussions of the National Design Group are shown in Exhibit 10.
Two illustrations of new designs for learning staff and staff development were suggested by the National Design Group. Both focus on staff development.
The Center for Teaching and Learning at Miami-Dade Community College has a long history of operation and impact on learning experiences available on its campus. The Center was established with much involvement of faculty and staff. It has its own space on the campus and provides a wide array of staff development opportunities for all categories of staff at the college--support staff, student services, faculty, and administrators. Training can be informal or through formal, credit-earning avenues done in consort with four-year colleges and universities. Competency profiles and standards have been developed for each classification of campus staff. Performance reviews and rewards are linked closely to competency development and demonstration. The Center has staff and technical assistance to support the staff development functions underway.
Maricopa Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, has set aside space for staff development that is exemplary in modeling the "classroom of tomorrow." The staff development space provides opportunity all in one area for display, collaboration, concentration, information access, product production, and relaxation.
NDTYI proposes that the role of each member of the learning staff be recognized and developed for its part in the learning experience. The learning staff is viewed as needing to share roles to provide institutional flexibility. Movements that are in keeping with this view of learning staff are high-performance work groups and professionalization of the workforce. At the same time, exemplary models of staff development, as found at Miami-Dade Community College, foster institutional change while strengthening and focusing the skills of staff to better support the goals of the institution.
This section focuses on the learning environment and includes attention to both the technology and facilities needed to support the design specifications recommended in previous elements of the design process. The learning environment can have a very significant effect on the kind of activities that are encouraged and those that are discouraged. Key questions addressed in this chapter concern the desired nature of the relationship between learning experiences and learning environment, design specifications for the environment, and exemplary new designs for the learning environment of TYIs.
Buckminster Fuller was quoted as saying, "Reform the environment, stop trying to reform people. They will reform themselves if the environment is right." Because the learning environment can be so influential, it is included as a major step in the design process. Making matters more complicated than implied by Fuller, there is the admonition that one can learn in a closet, or a classroom, or a cathedral, which suggests that the relationship between learning and environment may not be as straightforward as form following function. The connection of learning experiences and learning environments may be better understood as patterns in a cultural context, rather than linear relationships of learning activities to the most appropriate learning settings. The development of design specifications for the learning environment responds to these dilemmas.
On another dimension, study and investment in the learning environment are beginning to shift from "bricks and mortar" to technology. A significant impact of information technology is increasing expectations for learning performance and for access to learning anytime, anyplace, and any content. The design specifications for learning environment speak as much to learning technology as they do to facilities.
While there were no focus group interviews held to address the learning environment because it came late in the design process, the National Design Group did discuss the design specifications for the learning environment at three of its meetings. In contrast to the other elements of the design process, the efforts in developing a description of the desired features of the learning environment turned to exemplary new designs as a way to communicate what was felt to be needed. This shift in effort will be seen in this section with more of it devoted to a description of an exemplary new design for the environment of TYIs than was the case in other sections. The project staff thought that the National Design Group was able to be more specific in its critique and suggestions in relationship to actual design plans and pictures of the environment than in relationship to the narrative design specification statements. We have also found that the presentation of the learning environment is a re-telling of the whole story of NDTYI in a way that integrates and makes more concrete the meaning of the design specifications for all other elements of the design process.
The National Design Group had an opportunity to review and discuss the design specifications for the learning environment at several of its meetings. The key points emerging from these meetings were as follows:
As with the discussion under this section in prior chapters, attention in developing the design specifications for the element in focus (in this case, learning environment) must be aligned with all previous elements. But for the sake of brevity, special care is taken to draw out the implications of the design specifications for only the previous design element (learning staff and staff development) for learning environment. Some of these implications, organized by the design specifications for learning staff and staff development, are as follows:
As we begin to think about the right environments to support the learning experiences expected in NDTYI, several principles begin to surface:
A response to these principles is to plan and design learning environments by a "Settings Web" approach. That is, to identify those aspects of the learning settings that support the various learning experiences and reveal their connections. It is also necessary to acknowledge in such a design challenge the dynamics of other community and social issues.
To create learning environments solely from within the perspective of the learning institution would fall short of creating quality environments. A broader strategy is required; therefore, this study is expanded to create settings which are educationally sustainable, environmentally sustainable, and economically sustainable. What follows is a series of concepts or "code" that should be considered in designing the learning environment for the TYI.
In a society that emphasizes teaching, the students (including adults) become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only experience personal growth in a society that emphasizes learning instead of teaching. Therefore, instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a fixed place, the learning staff should work in piecemeal ways to decentralize the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the community: workshops, at home, walking through the community, professionals willing to take on the young as helpers, students teaching each other, museums, traveling, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, and so on. We should conceive of all these situations as forming the backbone of the learning process. Survey all these situations, describe them, and publish them as the community's learning opportunities, then let students weave together for themselves the situations that comprise their "school," paying as they go. Build new educational facilities only in a way that extends and enriches this network.
When an institution is built up as a campus, separated by a hard boundary from the community, it tends to isolate its students from the people in the community and, in a subtle way, takes on the character of a glorified high school. Therefore, we should encourage the dissolution of the boundary between institution and community. Encourage parts of the community to grow up within the institution, and parts of the institution to grow up within the community.
People develop a great need to learn by doing, to make their mark on the community outside the home. If the setting is right, these needs lead people directly to basic skills and habits of learning. Therefore, in addition to building central learning sites, we should set up tiny, independent sites, one at a time. Keep the site small and locate it in the public part of the community, with a storefront and small groups of students.
No one enjoys a task if he or she is a cog in a machine. Therefore, we should encourage the formation of self-governing groups of 5 to 20 learners. Make each group autonomous with respect to organization, learning style, relation to other groups, assessment, and schedule. Where the learning task is complicated and requires larger organizations, several of these units can federate and cooperate to proceed.
The fundamental learning situation is one in which a person learns by getting help from someone who really knows what they are doing. Therefore, arrange the events in every grouping of learners in a way that each is an opportunity for learning. To this end, organize around a model of navigators and learners and support this form of social organization with a division into workgroups--one or two navigators and several learners--where they can meet together.
Create a kind of space that is specifically tuned to the needs of learning, and yet capable of an infinite number of various arrangements and combinations within it. Therefore, we should lay out the space as areas of open space, with freestanding columns around its edges. The columns define half-private and common spaces opening into one another. Set down enough columns so that people can fill them in over the years, in many different ways, but always in a semi-permanent fashion. If you happen to know the learning group before you build the space, then make it more like a house, more closely tailored to the group's needs. In either case, create a variety of spaces throughout the area--comparable in variety to the different sizes and kinds of space in a large old house.
When more than half a dozen people learn in the same place, it is essential that they not be forced to work in one huge undifferentiated space, but that, instead, they can divide their workspace up, and so form smaller groups. Therefore, we should break institutions into small, spatially identifiable groups, with less than half a dozen people in each. Two to four small groups could be brought together into clusters. Arrange the small groups so that each person can be seen at least partially by the other members of the group; and arrange clusters so that they share a common entrance, food, office equipment, drinking fountains, and bathrooms.
The larger meetings are, the less people get out of them. But institutions often put their money and attention into large meeting rooms and lecture halls. Therefore, we should make at least 70% of all meeting rooms really small--for 12 people or less. Locate them in the most public parts of the building, evenly scattered throughout the institution's learning environment.
People cannot study or work effectively if their workspace is too enclosed or too exposed. A good workspace strikes the balance; therefore, we should give each workspace an area of at least 60 square feet. Build walls and windows around each workspace to such an extent that its total area (counting windows at one-half) is 50% to 75% of the full enclosure that would be there if all four walls around the 60 square feet were solid. Let the front of the workspace be open for at least 8 feet in front, always opening into a larger space. Place the desk so that the person working at it has a view out, either to the front or to the side. If there are other people working nearby, arrange the enclosure so that the person has a sense of connection to two or three others; but never put more than eight workspaces within view or hearing.
When the area devoted to parking is too great, it destroys the land. Therefore, we should divide the campus-based learning environment into sectors, and keep the area of parking lots and garages in every sector to less than 9% of the land.
Through-traffic destroys the tranquillity and the safety of pedestrian areas. This is especially true in campus districts, where the creation of quiet precincts is crucial to the work. Therefore, to bring the traffic and the pedestrian world into the right balance, we should make the local roads that serve the area form a system of loops or cul-de-sacs, so that through-traffic is impossible.
Large agglomerations of students and staff and heavily centralized academic facilities kill variety, academic freedom, and student opportunities for learning. Therefore, we should concentrate the major functions of the campus area of the learning environment--the offices, labs, lecture halls, sports, and facilities--along campus streets. Streets should be public and essentially pedestrian, 20 to 30 feet wide, with all the activity of the TYI opening off them; always locate new buildings to amplify and extend the TYI streets.
When buildings are spread evenly across a campus area, they do not generate small centers of public life around them. They do nothing to help the various "neighborhoods" in the campus area to coalesce. Therefore, when locating buildings, place them in conjunction with other buildings to form small nodes of public life. Create a series of these nodes throughout the campus area in contrast to the quiet, private outdoor spaces between them, and knit these nodes together with a network of pedestrian paths.
When people work extremely close to large, open green areas, they visit them and use them often; but even a fairly short distance will discourage them. Therefore, we should provide a green outdoor park, at least 60,000 square feet in area, at least 150 feet across in the narrowest direction, within 600 feet of every building in the system.
When a grouping of students and staff is too large, students and staff become alienated; it becomes hard to run successful programs there, and hard to maintain the proper educational milieu. Therefore, we should limit the size of student groupings (termed an enterprise). Our current best estimate for the tolerable maximum is 400 students plus staff. When enterprises grow beyond this size, they must be split to form new enterprises (even if they share the same thematic focus).
If an institution is too small, it suffers from lack of variety; if it is too large, it no longer works as a human organization; and if it grows too fast, it breaks down because it does not have the chance to absorb or adjust to change. Therefore, we should limit the growth of any enterprise to a rate of 2% per year, and limit the absolute size of any single enterprise to 600 students.
When students work or live too far from the campus area, they cannot be part of TYI life. Therefore, we should decentralize learning settings to be near places of work and living, so that learners are integrated with work activities in residential areas, thus supporting an enterprise center.
When an enterprise is too spread out, people cannot make use of all it offers. Therefore, we should plan to distribute all classes evenly within a circular zone that is not more than 2,000 feet in diameter.
The impact of the car on social life is devastating: it keeps us off the streets and far away from each other. The first step in bringing the car under control is to stop using it for local trips. Therefore, we should embed the enterprise in a local transport area, one to two miles in diameter. Except for very special cases, encourage local trips within this area to be made on foot, bikes, scooters, carts, perhaps even on horseback. Adapt paths and roads to these modes of travel, and slow down cars with circuitous streets. At the edge of the local transport area, build high-speed ring roads.
Students who want to live close to the campus area also want their housing integrated; yet most housing provided today is zoned separately. Therefore, we should provide sites that integrate housing of the student population within the smaller clusters of student workgroups and enterprises. Do not zone off the enterprises.
Overemphasis on the individuality of enterprises helps to fragment knowledge by keeping it in watertight compartments. Yet each enterprise does require its own identity. Therefore, we should give each enterprise a clearly identified home base, but spread the parts of the enterprise within a radius of 500 feet, so that they interlock with the parts of other enterprises. No one of these parts should contain less than five workgroups.
Spaces do not work properly if they are overcrowded, or if they are under-used. Empty, desolate spaces are as bad to work in as overcrowded ones. Therefore, we should give each enterprise a balance of area of net usable space, appropriate to the number of faculty, staff, and students. Laboratories and special areas must be figured separately.
System administrative services are often overcentralized: all the branches are located together in one imposing complex, when, in fact, various parts of administration could operate more effectively if they were located according to the connections each requires in the community. Therefore, we should locate different administrative services independently, each one as near as possible to the center of gravity of its particular community. Never create one vast administrative territory for all the services.
If dormitories are too small and too communal, they become constraining. If they are too big or too private, then the idea of group living is lost. Therefore, we should encourage the formation of autonomously managed cooperative housing integrated into the clusters of base units and the community.
When a single building on the campus area is designated as student territory, it raises the feeling that the rest of campus is not student territory. Therefore, we should create many small social places across the enterprise, so that there are no classrooms or offices farther than two minutes from the nearest one within the enterprise. Give each small center at least a coffee bar and lounge/reading room.
When human organizations are housed in enormous buildings, the human scale vanishes, and people stop identifying with the staff who work there as personalities and think only of the entire institution as an impersonal monolith, staffed with "personnel." Therefore, to maintain human scale in public buildings, we should make them small, not more than three to five stories high; not more than 20,000 square feet in total indoor area and the total floor area. If more than one small building is being constructed to house related functions, the buildings should be conceived as a collection, connected by arcades, paths, or bridges.
In many modern public buildings, and in many parts of cities, the problem of disorientation is acute. People have no idea where they are, and they experience considerable mental stress as a result. Therefore, we should arrange buildings so that it is possible to identify a nested system of realms in every building complex, so clearly marked that every realm has an identity that can be named. Give each realm at every level a clearly marked entrance to one another so that it is possible to see and walk from one to the next in more than one way.
The excessive use of artificial light in modern buildings is inhuman; buildings that displace natural light as the major source of illumination are not fit places to spend the day. Therefore, no occupied space should be without natural light. It can be provided through the use of windows, clear stories, skylights, and courts.
You cannot get a good education in a place which runs like a factory, with a hectic work pace and never the chance for a relaxing physical diversion. Therefore, arrange wellness facilities in the enterprise, so that every point is within 400 to 500 feet of a place which is designed for wellness and leisure--a swimming pool, fitness center, sauna, or tennis courts.
Have you ever tried to hold an intimate seminar for 10 students in a huge classroom that has 70 or 80 seats? Then you will agree that we should construct ample small group rooms in the enterprise. And, encourage privately owned and managed shops, restaurants, cafes, and theaters to locate in the community, on busy corners, so that they are accessible to both the learners and the general public.
Arcades--covered walkways at the edge of buildings, which are partly inside the building, partly outside--play a vital role in the way that group territory and the society at large interact. Therefore, whenever paths pass beside buildings, we should create deep arcades over the paths, and open the group territory inside the building to these arcades. Gradually knit these arcades together until they form a covered system of paths throughout the community.
Based on the National Design Group discussions and the principles and concepts noted above, the design specifications recommended for the NDTYI learning environment are as shown in Exhibit 11.
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Using the design specifications for learning environment as a backdrop, along with the principles and concepts from an earlier part of this section, an example of the learning environment for NDTYI is presented from an organizational perspective. This is one way that the learning environment might be constructed to reflect the design specifications for NDTYI. Other learning environments could also be constructed to reflect the design specifications.
Note in the example presented here the focus of the environment is the enterprise. This is a grouping of learners and staff around a central theme. Examples would be "Human Resources," "Life Services," "The Environment," "Engineering," and "Technology." An enterprise is a community of learners engaging an integrated curriculum in its thematic area. Learning time, staff, partnerships, technology, and governance would reflect this grouping.
The optimum size would be 400 learners plus appropriate staff. An enterprise could grow to a maximum of 600 students at which time it would divide, cell like, into two 300-student groups. More than one enterprise could focus on the same thematic area.
The enterprise is like a solar system. On the one hand it is made up of a center (the sun) and other bodies (the planets, moons), which would be unique to its inherent nature. On the other hand, it is part of a larger structure called the collaborative (the galaxy). Several collaboratives, along with other learning phenomena, networked together would compose the network, the largest learning entity (the universe).
The components of the enterprise would vary depending upon the requirements and nature of its theme. Typically it would be composed of several (5-10) domains of 50 to 100 students. Domains, in turn, would be composed of several (5-10) workgroups of 5 to 20 students.
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Unit
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Number
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Metaphor
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Individuals
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1
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Particle
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Workgroups
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5-20
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Satellite
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Domain
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50-100
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Planet
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Enterprise
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300-600
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Solar
System
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Collaborative
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up
to 10,000
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Galaxy
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Network
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Everyone
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Universe
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This organization of individual, workgroup, domain, enterprise, collaborative, and network is designed in response to the goal of providing a sense of identity, meaningfulness, a feeling of belonging, and an understanding of relational place for both the people and the multiple communities of which they are members.
The enterprise is made up of several domains. The center or heart of the enterprise would be a social hearth. Within the hearth would be a lounge, enterprise mail, refreshments, supplies, small library, student information, and so forth. The other elements (moons) of the enterprise would be those places necessary to support the varied learning experiences, including laboratories and studios. These places would be a combination of spaces owned by the enterprise and spaces used for learning experiences through partnerships.
Although enterprises could form in a variety of contexts, four prototypes are proposed:
The domains that make up the enterprises are a combination of several workgroups and flexible, yet technologically advanced, production/resource facilities to support the learning process, especially those learning experiences related to projects and products. In addition to the space of the domain, it is anticipated that roughly 50% of the learning experiences organized at the domain level would take place in their real-world settings through partnerships. This is the interface between the general skills and the specialized skills that make up the designed learning experience.
To facilitate this interface, the domain is physically woven into the community fabric. The setting is multiple use and needs to accommodate a variety of changing activities. Therefore, an infrastructure that is designed for flexibility is necessary. This "armature" of space and utilities (e.g., water, sewer, power, telecommunications, HVAC) needs to be categorized into levels of intensity in order to balance cost with need and circumstance. Four levels of domains are proposed to this end. These levels are on a continuum in the intensity of use for educational purposes. Starting with the most intense use, the first modular domain would serve the greatest variety of uses. The second and third levels represent medium intensities and the fourth is primarily residential. Any enterprise would draw on domains at each level. The primary exception would be the urban core enterprise where domains would mostly occur in the existing multistory buildings. The domains described below would be new facilities at either the suburban edge or as in-fill for city neighborhoods or towns. An option would be to use or renovate existing buildings (particularly in city neighborhoods or rural towns) along the concepts of the domains as described below:
The workgroup is the home base for the learning process (see Figure 24). This is the classroom of the future. The zones within this space include a place for research, assistance, production, and formal and informal meetings. It is the basic building block for the postsecondary learning experience. Workgroups can be located in settings such as residential environments, in office buildings, and in shopping centers. Workgroups are located in these settings when the thematic nature of the enterprise requires learning experiences that benefit from proximity to these resources.
An example would be the following image. Seven elements of a settings web of learning are intermixed into one environment:
These learning events and settings are brought together, not just because they complement each other but because they also address the need for flexibility/adaptability by allowing change in use from hour to hour, day to day, and week to week.
A basic building block is the individual workstation (see Figure 25). Each learner has a place to study and do small projects, keep books and papers, put personal belongings, and connect into the technology network. Each learner has a notebook computer. This is certainly learner focused; however, it is weak in addressing the educational concept of teaming. Combining the individual workstation with the desire for teaming leads to the idea of a small, flexible group space that would accommodate several personal workstations. This building block needs the support of spaces for instruction, production, resources, and demonstration. This arrangement is referred to as the workgroup and is similar to many real-world work settings.
Up to this point the focus has been on the more intimate, closely-knit enterprise and the components of its structure. The collaborative is a collection of enterprises (see Figure 26). The objectives of making connections between enterprises are obvious: the sharing and mutual support, the economics of scale, and the opportunities for institutional learning. The pattern of this relationship has been around for a long time and is exemplified by Oxford University, a collaborative of 30+ colleges of several hundred students each. The implications for environment are approached from two perspectives. The first is the environment of the real world. Here there should be little or no impact. Unlike Oxford, there is no structured hierarchy and therefore no need for a headquarters, either functionally or symbolically. This leads to the second environment, that of the computer network. Here there are some implications. The objective would be to serve a nested hierarchy, or one of relationships. From a facility perspective, this type of reality is dependent upon communications technology and the collaborative therefore comes into being through computer linkages.
The environment of the network is similar to that of the collaborative (see Figure 27). However, whereas the collaborative has some degree of a local dimension, the network is global in nature and the focus is on information through the technologies of computers. Extensive material has been produced on this subject and will not be repeated here other than to make note of this dimension to the learning environment.
The "Settings Web" presented earlier in terms of individual workstation, workgroup, domain, enterprise, collaborative, and network could be assembled in many different ways. One example would be to think of a TYI as a medical clinic. Students come with their individual needs and go through the following process:
The place at which this example occurs could, in fact, be many places including at the "clinic," at places with state-of-the-art equipment, at work sites, at home, at virtual settings, and at places for collaboration. Ultimately, the learning experience is not fixed in time or space, but, rather, it becomes a web of learning events and settings. This is what the NDTYI's learning environment should reflect.
The design specifications for the learning environment in NDTYI were developed on the bases of the design specifications for previous design elements, discussions by the National Design Group, and a series of environmental principles and concepts that were thought to merit special consideration. Based on the design specifications for learning environment, special efforts were made in this section to develop a prototype for the NDTYI learning environment as a way to communicate in more concrete ways what was expected.
Learning costs and public expenditures for higher education are on a collision course. The decade of the 1980s was a time of inflationary higher education prices, and the 1990s promise a parallel dramatic reduction in the level of public support for the postsecondary educational enterprise. At the same time, many institutions of higher education are pricing themselves out of the market with tuition and fees that exceed student and family ability to pay.
The TYI is at the center of these financial dynamics. It is increasingly the preferred alternative to the four-year experience--in many instances the practical capstone to a baccalaureate. At the same time, the TYI is competing for public support with both K-12 and four-year graduate systems. When these dynamics are coupled with the exploding demand for both technical and general education, the result is a crisis of resource supply that calls for new ways of gathering and managing resources.
This section outlines an approach to financial management that links institutional resources to NDTYI and its work. This approach is based on a view of the TYI as a learning organization--one that can respond to new challenges and opportunities in a timely way.
As should be evident from the above introduction, learning finance is very critical to the implementation of NDTYI recommendations. Although the resources available to TYIs come in many forms, eventually they are converted into a bottom line for the institution--either it is financially healthy and stable, or the institution moves into crisis mode, eventually going out of business if financial matters are not turned around. Each of the previous design elements has implications for finance. And so, like the learning environment, addressing learning finance becomes another opportunity to integrate the design specifications resulting from other elements and to communicate in more concrete terms what is expected by NDTYI.
As with the learning environment, there were no focus group interviews conducted to assist with developing the design specifications for learning finance. The National Design Group had the benefit of staff working on reviewing the research and best practices as it discussed the direction to be taken by NDTYI as regards learning finance at two of its meetings.
The following were the key points made by the National Design Group regarding the learning finance of TYIs:
Financial policies and resource management come together to make all of the previous design decisions in NDTYI a reality. The truth of this statement is easy to see in the implications it holds for steps in the design process:
Surely any new design that has any hope of widespread adoption in the postsecondary community must provide for both adequate funding and warrantible stewardship. These are the two starting points that undergird our understanding of financial policies and resource management for NDTYI.
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