Jerry Manahan
The dynamic environment in which we live challenges us as educators to mold our students into life-long learners. Developing life-long learning skills instead of certifying present achievement levels poses new challenges to both the students and the instructors. Some of these challenges are outlined below:
Information flow. How much do we give to the students and how? Do we continue to give information via lecture, relying on the tribal tradition of oral story telling, or do we hand out preprinted packets or perhaps utilize web pages and URLs? Do we shift the computing and printing costs to the students and thus disadvantage some students while enabling others? Textbooks and support materials must be chosen for their clarity and ability to enable the learning process not just for their content. The syllabus must be developed as the course guide, not just as a set of rules for the class. How do we facilitate feedback? Do we utilize web enabled discussion groups?
Course/Section information. How do we inform students about individual courses and unique sections before they enroll? Aren't they entitled to an accurate description of the product before they purchase it? Putting instructor and department web page addresses (URLs) in the class registration directory would be a start.
Attendance. While the research shows that class attendance is an excellent predictor of classroom performance, is it that simple? Do students with good attendance perform well because of their attendance or does good performance (results) encourage attendance and thus the research is backwards (a simultaneous equation model might sort this out)? Are there other activities, such as chat boards, that promote the desired learning without physical attendance?
Mandatory attendance days. Perhaps a solution to the attendance issue is to have one mandatory attendance day per week for class housekeeping chores and testing. Many firms using flex time require employees to meet together at least one day per week to facilitate communication and support morale.
Discussion versus content courses. Is attendance really necessary in content oriented courses such as statistics, computer programming, mathematics and fine arts? Obviously there are many courses where classroom discussions by the students are crucial, but there are other courses where class time is really an inefficient way of helping individual or small groups of students solve particular problems and are a waste of time for the other students. How will the students learn this type of material after college?
Physical Classroom. Should we continue to build tiered lecture halls and flat "flexible" seating classrooms or should we design classrooms for the learning task i.e. "kindergarten" rooms? Rooms with counter space around the walls containing resource books and computers, round tables in the middle of the room for group work and white board on the walls for problem solving and multiple projections. We could then pick/assign a problem and solve it as a class or individually using all of the resources in the room.. The teacher could navigate around the room helping each individual or group as needed. Don't we need more out of the classroom learning experiences such as field trips and community involvement projects? Wouldn't these be better ways of creating life-long learners than lecturing/explaining content from the front of a large sterile classroom?
Testing. If we are going to create life-long learners we must certify their knowledge at various steps in the process. This requires testing labs with standardized or normed tests given under controlled conditions similar to the student's final workplace. The testing needs to be application oriented. In order to do this we need computer labs with individual cubicles, access to software controlled by a central server and ID security for each student. Ideally we would do the testing after the completion of a program not just during or at the end of each course.
Evaluation of instruction. Will the evaluations of the instruction be influenced when the instructors hold student's responsible for their own learning? When student's fail to receive a simple direct answer will they claim that the instructor is not helpful, or not available when needed?
Support services. The library and computer labs must have friendly support personnel who are capable of reading an assignment and determining how much help the instructor would expect them to provide. Obviously, this requires excellent communication between the support services and the instructors.
Changing our objectives from dissemination and acquisition of knowledge to the development or creation of life-long learning skills will challenge both the students and the instructors. Hopefully all will survive.
Thanks to Cynthia Ruszkowski and Jenny Doutt for their helpful comments.
