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.
[*] The part of this section focusing on "Key Concepts Regarding the Learning Process" and the initial draft of Design Specifications for Learning Process were written by William Ammentorp. The remaining sections and overall editing was done by George Copa.