Accepting Responsibility for Student Learning - The Diigo Meta page

• 09 Mar 08
  

  David Donica

  instruction learning paradigm slo

  • The world is very different from the one  in which colleges and universities evolved. Technology has transformed the way people do  business and the way they live. It has extended the research capacity of higher education.  Yet it does not seem to have changed educational practices on campuses to any great  extent. The college students of the early 1900s do not have a lot in common with today's  students, yet classroom practices are probably not much different.
  • Some of America's most respected educational leaders, seeing the need for change, have  urged colleges to give more attention to undergraduate teaching, to improve institutional  effectiveness, to institute Total Quality Management techniques, to become more  customer-responsive, and to make better use of technology in teaching. However  well-intentioned these recommendations are, they are not likely to have any significant or  lasting effect on higher education unless we shift to a paradigm in which colleges and  universities accept responsibility for student learning.
  • Under the new paradigm--the "Learning Paradigm"--colleges will be responsible  for student learning. Students, of course, will remain responsible for their own learning,  but that does not relieve the institution of its own responsibility. Everyone on campus  should be evaluated based on contributions to student learning, and the focus should be on  continuous improvement of the environment for learning. Institutional leaders should be  concerned about success for a diverse group of students, and institutions should meet  goals for improving learning outcomes.
  • As institutions shift from the Instruction Paradigm to the Learning Paradigm, the criteria  for success will change.
  • In the Learning Paradigm,  however, institutions that have identified goals for learning and student success outcomes  and that can document achievement will be the most successful. Rather than focusing on the  quality of entering students, these institutions will be concerned about the quality of  exiting students and how much those students have learned.

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