Implementation

Well, what all of our colleges need to remind themselves is that they can have these gorgeous pathways and wonderful websites and so on for students, and if there’s not quality in teaching and learning going on within those pathways then that was all for naught. And so a primary emphasis here with regard to the quality of the educational experience can be described in several ways.

One is, first, it’s about being clear about what are the student learning outcomes that need to be attained by students as they move through this newly aligned series of courses in their pathways. Those learning outcomes do need to be aligned so that they accrue over courses and over time to program-level outcomes. And those program-level outcomes need to be connected to transfer and to the employer communities so that pathways are not, as Uri Treisman says, “six-lane highways into a swamp,” but rather lead to real places that are important for students. So learning outcomes, learning outcomes alignment that’s one.

But if you want to have strong learning outcomes then you have to attend to the process that produces those outcomes, and that process is teaching. So everything that we’ve learned over the past number of years about what is effective teaching practice — it’s about connecting with students, it’s about active and collaborative learning, it’s about student/faculty interaction. And there are strategies and techniques that bring that knowledge to life, and so we’re working with faculties, for example, on ensuring that every single student pathway has embedded within it multiple opportunities for active and collaborative and applied learning. We say to faculty, “Where are the internships, the field work, the clinical placements, the group projects outside of class, the service learning, the co-curricular activities that are going to help students to not only learn geography but learn to do geography? Not only learn welding but learn to do welding? Not only learn history but learn to do history?” Those are highly powerful experiences for community college students, and we need to be far more systematic in ensuring that they’re a part of that educational experience.

Through our Institute for Academic Excellence, we provide all kinds of training in active learning strategies. And we have something called an endowed teaching chair that faculty can apply for if they develop an innovative technique or solution that it’s funded through the foundation. We have a couple of those in place right now that are focused on active learning strategies, and so they offer their workshops and their training to faculty through the Institute for Academic Excellence. It’s also a topic at several of our faculty meetings. There will be demonstrations and almost teasers to get faculty to then check out whatever’s being offered in the Institute related to active learning strategies. So it’s definitely a big topic here.

Teachers that caught my attention, they were kind of passionate about what they were talking about. Because for me, if you’re dragging on something, I don’t really pay attention, but if you’re talking about it like it means something to you, it catches my attention. It makes me wanna learn more. So teachers that catch my attention, they’re probably really passionate about it.