2011 Archive - Lane Community College - Strategic Learning Initiative

Background Report on Lane's Strategic Learning Initiative for the Lane Community College Board of Education
May 8, 2002.
Prepared by the SLI Leadership Team.

The Strategic Learning Initiative is Lane's commitment to systemic improvement of the learning environment.

The following report on Lane’s Strategic Learning Initiative (SLI) is offered to Lane’s Board of Education as it deliberates over the extent of financial resources available and projected, the extent of expenditures committed and projected, and the wise use of college human and financial resources.

First, there is a review of SLI, followed by several points of perspective. The review provides:

1. In terms of funding, the SLI is appropriately viewed in a framework of optimally balancing efforts to operate most effectively and efficiently within current capacity and efforts to enhance our capacity.

1. Among a number of capacity building efforts involving faculty, SLI is key and needed.

2. SLI is integrated systemically into the college and has a track record of strategic innovation.

1. Fiscal year 2002-03 is a promising year for SLI in terms of campus conditions and in terms of what SLI can contribute as State revenues become an increasingly needed but unreliable source of increasing revenue for the college.

1. In terms of the national perspective of what colleges need to do to reform the learning environment, SLI is a significant achievement and a path forward with real potential.

In conclusion, student learning is the core purpose of the college. SLI is an integral part of the college aimed directly at fulfilling its mission effectively and efficiently. The SLI is set to make important contributions in the 2002-03 fiscal year and is worthy of continuing positive recognition and financial support.

Lane’s Strategic Learning Initiative (SLI) is the result of a shared appreciation of the opportunity and potential for improving student learning. The SLI is a faculty-led partnership with Lane’s administration to create increased capacity for innovation and to carry out major, systemic change of the learning environment at Lane Community College. The effort is built around widely engaging faculty toward four general aims:

1. To incorporate what is known about learning and student motivation to enhance the learning environment.
2. To incorporate technology to enhance the learning environment.

1. To fit the course and program formats to better meet the learning needs of current and potential students.
2. To create a college-supported practice of learning scholarship among faculty.

The specific, short-term projects of the SLI are woven together and focused by the Leadership Team with the aim of reaching and sustaining the above four aims. In this way, the students’ immediate learning environment will be improved systemically, as well as improving the systems through which faculty innovate and exercise collective responsibility for enhancing the students’ learning environment.

The SLI is structured as a joint faculty union *administration project, anchored in a collectively bargained agreement to provide stability and support. The agreement provides authority and resources to a predominately faculty Leadership Team that in turn charters faculty-chaired Project Teams to carry out specific projects. The faculty union president and Office of Instruction vice-president respectively select the faculty and administration Leadership Team co-chairs and faculty and management members, and select replacements due to resignations.

THE SLI LEADERSHIP TEAM
The SLI co-chairs are
Dennis Gilbert, faculty member teaching physics in Science Division
Cheryl Roberts, Vice-President for Instruction and Student Services
The SLI Coordinator, who serves with the co-chairs as project management, is
Eileen Thompson, faculty member teaching English in English, For. Lang. & Speech
The other members of the Leadership Team are
Katie-Morrison Graham, faculty member Teaching A&P and microbiology in Science
Craig Taylor, Director of Institutional Research and Planning
Margaret Bayless, faculty member teaching English in English, For. Lang. & Speech
Don McNair, interim chair of the Mathematics Division
Bob Barber, faculty member teaching computer science in CIT
Donna Koechig, Associate Vice-President of Instruction and Student Services
Russell Shitabata, faculty member teaching English in English, For. Lang. & Speech
Susan Swan, chair of English, For. Lang. & Speech
Bill Griffiths, faculty member teaching mathematics in the Mathematics Division

The focus is on learning. In contrast to research institutions and institutions imparting high social status to their graduates, community colleges and community college faculty traditionally take student learning as their highest priority. Yet this commitment is often not well examined and many indirect measures for learning are relied on. At a time of systemic change, even previously valid indirect measures of learning will no longer serve as good measures of learning, nor serve as guides for change. The direct focus on learning is needed. The focus on learning also offers an opportunity to re-examine college activities that do not contribute to learning.

The SLI is faculty-led. Faculty are the natural leaders of this change process because of their skills and expertise, their deep professional commitment to student learning, and the faculty’s commitment to the quality of their profession which suffers if it doesn’t actively improve itself. Practically, there are no realistic alternatives to faculty leadership. If major systemic improvements are to be made soon in the learning environment, the effort must be faculty led. The SLI is structured so that faculty and faculty values predominate at all levels from guiding the whole SLI to creating and carrying out specific innovations.

Why Must Faculty Lead
Instructional Restructuring?

Faculty are the natural leaders
No realiatic alternatives exist
It won't happen soon otherwise

The Form: "Faculty-Led Partnership"

There is partnership with the administration. While the SLI is faculty-led, it is also a partnership between the faculty and the administration. This partnership is structurally reflected in consensus decision making in the Leadership Team, insuring a voice for the diversity of faculty and administrator concerns. The partnership is also reflected in the exclusive role granted to the SLI for systemically changing the learning environment at Lane. Faculty leaders appreciate expertise and the essential contribution of managers and administrators and appreciate mutually shared values. Administration leaders respect the faculty’s expertise and commitment to student learning, and support the partnership because it best promotes the mission of the college.

SLI is about strategic, systemic change. The SLI is more than a collection of short-term innovations. It is aimed at fundamental, long-term improvement of the students’ immediate learning environment, so more students are learning more effectively. And it is aimed at fundamentally changing the infrastructure of that environment so Lane more effectively improves itself over the long term.

Short-term projects, widely engaging faculty, with long-term effects so that we incorporate into the learning environment:

Faculty are widely engaged in collective responsibility for the students’ learning environment. The SLI aims to widely engage faculty to allow faculty the maximum use of their skills, expertise, and intelligence. In addition, the SLI aims to build an effective infrastructure for faculty to exercise appropriate collective responsibility for the learning environment.

We are so actively engaged in change, yet certain fundamentals remain untouched. Like an old western movie set where a cowboy actor, elbows flapping, pistol smoking, sits on a stationary horse, painted scenery passing by on rollers. Every executive and manager in America has given at least one speech in the last year on the need for change. Every company in America has implemented at least one program intended to empower, one to improve quality, one to embrace customers... These efforts are sincere and each taken alone is generally successful. something larger, though like the cowboy's wooden horse in front of the camera, remains unmoved.

What remains untouched is the belief that power and purpose and privilege can reside at the top and the organization can still learn how to serve its stakeholders and therefore survive.

From" Sterwardship"
by Peter Block

SLI closes three gaps. Right now there is potential for significant improvement in the learning environment in three general ways: (1) incorporating what is becoming known about how and why students learn, (2) incorporating new technology, (3) changing the formats of courses and programs to meet the needs of current and potentially new students. The SLI aims to close these three gaps in what exists and what could exist at Lane.

SLI will establish a college-supported practice of learning scholarship. For the college to make best use of its resources to continuously improve the learning environment, faculty will be supported to engage in scholarship about learning. This systemic change in the infrastructure of the learning environment helps to ensure that Lane continues to close the three gaps above and to incorporate and create new improvements in Lane’s learning environment.

The SLI is a joint faculty union * administration project to support student learning. The faculty union is inevitably a central participant in the change process, because fundamentally restructuring the learning environment also restructures faculty working conditions and redefines the role of faculty. The collectively bargained agreement establishing the SLI provides the means to create stability that faculty and administration can count on in the long term. This protects the Initiative from changes in leadership in administration and in the faculty and seals the institutional commitment necessary to advance change. Union and key administration participation in the Leadership Team also provides power to move the initiative forward.

Specific innovations in the SLI are supported as parts of projects coordinated by project teams, which are chartered by the SLI Leadership Team. Innovations may fit into existing projects, or be part of new projects. Below are listed current projects and people to contact. In the boxes are some highlights and representative impacts.

Learning Communities. The aim of this project is to support the creation of new learning communities and create the infrastructure for all learning communities at Lane, so that Lane reaches and sustains learning communities on a large scale. For more information, contact the Learning Communities Coordinator, Maurice Hammington.

“[A]nother important quality of the Learning Community was the sense of ‘community’ which naturally organized around students in it. One of the clear advantages of a Learning Community was the support received not only from the other Community instructors (in this case Psychology and Anthropology) but from the fellow students connected with the class. This support not only helped to make a better research paper technically, but helped to stretch the researcher’s mind mentally.”

--Richard Miller, student
Learning Community FTE counts for academic year 2001-2002
Fall 2001 23.81
Winter 2002 30.63
Spring 2002 52.63

Instructional Technology Infrastructure. This project defines and establishes appropriate technology infrastructure for faculty. For more information, contact Joe Escobar, Ken Zimmerman, Roka Walsh, or Mark Williams.

Webservers (Linux):
1 staff.lanecc.edu: This machine houses user accounts and development efforts. It now has 144 user accounts being used primarily to house faculty web pages.
2. classes.lanecc.edu: This machine is the workhorse for online class delivery. Currently, there are 17 live classes and approximately 700 users being served.
Webservers (Mac):
148 user accounts (35 new this year alone)
48 WebBoards (newsgroup/chat/listserv)
13 secure TestPilot Online testing accounts
15 practice TestPilot Online testing accounts
At the end of Spring term 2001, only 6 instructors were using online testing using SLI ITI servers. This year the number has grown to 28 testing accounts

Assessment. This project’s goal is to foster widespread faculty expertise and use of effective learning assessment tools. This project also provides assessment support for all SLI projects. For more information, contact Assessment Coordinator Mary Brau.

This project funded several instructors participation in summer institute to help them begin to formulate a Native Languages program proposal at Lane. Biology instructor Jerry Hall evaluated the opportunity as a valuable assessment training:

“In our previous work, we discovered that there are perhaps dozens of Native languages with well-developed curricula. What we have learned from NILI is that we will have to spend a significant amount of time assessing those curricula for our use, and we gained tools for that assessment from NILI. Many curricula will need to be recast with more of a cultural context, and with games and other activities, which maintain attention and motivation. Fortunately, we have the skills now to develop new lesson plans.”

Discipline Contact with Current Thinking on Teaching. This project aims to define, establish and maintain contact between faculty in Lane’s many disciplines with the current thinking about teaching in that discipline. Funding available to each discipline, which was a part of this SLI project, has been mainstreamed into faculty professional development. The project is currently without a coordinator. More information is available from Jerry Ross or Dennis Gilbert.

Models, tools, and research information developed in national discipline organizations is a vast resource that can be tapped by Lane faculty. The goal of this project is for Lane to define and establish contact with the current thinking about teaching in their disciplines. One element of this project has been mainstreamed into a program of small grants to disciplines provided through Faculty Professional Development to support contact with the current thinking about teaching in the discipline. The other program element is providing one class release per discipline to define what it means to fully connect with the current thinking about teaching in the discipline and to establish that contact for the discipline. This is both a hard and relatively expensive investment, and has been moving slowly. Participating disciplines so far include physics, biology, literature, and sociology. The SLI Leadership Team is exploring possibilities of changing, ending, or creating partnership with other colleges to complete the project.

F-S-T Structure. FST is shorthand for a project to explore and support changing the basic structure of the student’s learning environment in terms of its faculty-student, student-student, and technology-student components. Developing assumptions to guide distance education at Lane is a responsibility of this project. For more information contact the FST Coordinator, Bob Barber.

This project continues to provide a forum for online instructors for conversation focused on how new technologies effect teaching philosophies and practices as well as how they impact student learning.

This project addresses the possibility of our courses having components where students meet with the instructor, work solely together, or work on their own with a variety of technological support. The project has explored along with students the promise of structured and supported peer learning. In response to a jointly sponsored forum between students and teachers facilitated by the FST project in the Spring of 2000, the Editor in Chief of the Torch, student Tonya Alanez wrote:

Service Learning. This project supports the creation and implementation of service learning, where community service is integrated into the curriculum. For more information, contact the Service Learning Coordinator, Jennifer von Ammon.

“This program] is unlike anything I have ever been involved with at the junior college level. The ability of this program to not only educate but to create an environment where students like myself can interact and effect the community they live in is invaluable…[it] not only opens the mind but expands the heart…promotes compassion and tolerance that exists long after the class has ended.”
--O. Gabriel Avila-Mooney, student

“This course provides an opportunity for students to gain experience working with the youth population through service-learning, while also providing a strong academic foundation in language arts. Students have access to an instructor with experience in both fields, adding strength to the course. Service-learning has the capacity to not only change the way courses are taught but also change the way students are engaged with the material.”
--Jenna Ramierz, Youth Advocate Specialist, SASS

Alternative Schedules/Formats. This project supports the creation, implementation, and infrastructure support for new ways of scheduling and connecting elements of the students’ learning environment. For more information, contact the Alternative Schedules/Formats Coordinator, Barbara DeFilippo

"Students need flexible scheduling and restructuring courses in ways that do not fit the traditional academic calendar and current instructional models, create problems that are difficult to handle. SLI provides a means for addressing these issues and coming up with effective solutions. In other words, SLI allows faculty to focus on facilitating student learning by addressing educational issues without the constraints of traditional models."
-- Don McNair, Chair of Mathematics Division

Great Teaching Seminars. This project aims to establish a regular practice of Great Teaching Seminars (GST) among faculty, and integrate the Seminars into the educational offerings at Lane so that faculty from other institutions may join with Lane faculty. The well-tested and successful GST format, where up to 30 faculty meet for 2-3 days to discuss crucial teaching and learning issues, provides infrastructure support for innovation at Lane and a college-supported practice of scholarship about teaching and learning. For more information, contact the Great Teaching Seminars Coordinator, Jerry Ross.

In its second year, the Great Teaching Seminars project is an opportunity for teachers to put the issue of student learning at the center of their interdisciplinary discussions at a three day conference. The GTS format encourages people to share their individual ideas, get feedback and thoughts from a group of peers, and then use that combination of individual and group ideas to more effectively carry out our important mission.

“We believe that the most powerful way to share ideas is through small groups of committed and concerned peers. In discussing what works and what doesn’t, the experiences of others are often directly relevant to our own. Finally, we look at discovering truths, knowing that some are counter-intuitive, and take time and reflection to experience.”

-- project coordinator Jerry Ross, CIT instructor

New Project Areas: New project areas are welcome. For more information regarding possible new projects, contact the SLI Coordinator, Eileen Thompson, or either SLI Co-Chairs, Dennis Gilbert or Cheryl Roberts.

Successfully mainstreamed project area: Faculty Connections. This project, in its successful third year, creates a structure to integrate and support new faculty. The structure of support continues through the 3-year probation of new contracted faculty, and on a term-by-term basis for new part-time faculty. In the new faculty contract, Faculty Connections was mainstreamed into faculty professional development. For more information, contact the project coordinator Beth Naylor.

1. Capacity utilization and capacity building need optimal balance. In terms of funding, the SLI is appropriately viewed in a framework of optimally balancing efforts to operate most effectively and efficiently within current capacity and efforts to enhance our capacity. Stephen Covey, of “Seven Habits for Highly Effective People” fame, identifies enhancing capacity as a necessary effort along with making best use of current capacity.

From early on, SLI has been envisioned as a capacity building institution within the college. Experience since SLI was founded confirms that lack of capacity to innovate was the chief barrier to making sustainable improvements in the learning environment. When there has been opportunity and support, there has been motivation and plenty of good ideas generated internally and brought in from discussion and practice elsewhere.

2. SLI is a key capacity building effort involving faculty. Of all vehicles for improving the learning for students, SLI is uniquely aimed at making systemic improvements in targeted areas, and providing the means to systemically establish improvements outside areas already targeted.

SLI invigorates faculty by engaging faculty across the college and creating an expectation and a means for removing roadblocks and establishing improvements over the long term. Participation in strategically targeted projects of the Strategic Learning Initiative aligns and supports other work of faculty: long-term course curriculum development as regular part of faculty work, course curriculum development beyond the normal workload, and faculty professional development.

SLI creates a stimulating and invigorating partnership among the variety of staff throughout the college.

3. SLI is integrated systemically into the college and has a track record of strategic innovation. SLI is:
Anchored in a collectively bargained agreement, which establishes its authority, membership and operation, dispute resolution, and a good faith commitment to funding support;

The College and Faculty re-committed themselves to this agreement in spring 2000.

Goal 3-A: Lane will support the work of the Technology Advisory and Coordinating
Plan, the Strategic Learning Initiative, Students First!, and other initiatives to 1) create an environment that supports the use of technology to enhance teaching, learning, and work processes, 2) use technology to increase effectiveness and efficiency for both staff and students, and 3) provide appropriate access for staff and students.

Goal 4-A: Lane will support new and existing initiatives which are key to the achievement of its vision, such as The Strategic Learning Initiative; Work Roles and Relationships; Process Redesign; and Students First!.

Supported in the Labor Management Committee’s long term goals;

The second long-term goal of the Labor Management Committee developed after its Relationships by Objectives mediation sponsored by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services dealt with SLI:

The college, in its academic climate and operation,
includes the work of the SLI as an integral part
is an intellectually lively place
supports flexibility for continued change
has a shared vision and supports professional development as essential

Supported in the President’s work plan;

President Spilde’s work plan, under the first heading of “1. Place students and their learning at the heart of what we”, the fourth ongoing activity is “Support Strategic Learning Initiative”.

Integrated into the culture and expectations of staff;

“SLI has become part of the everyday language and thinking of staff on the college, and this is a positive indication of its acceptance”
-- Craig Taylor, IRAP Director

Connected to a practice of mainstreaming innovation improvements;

Among the major mainstreamed innovations:
In 2001, the SLI Faculty Connections project, a two-day orientation seminar and mentorship program for new faculty, was successfully integrated into Faculty Professional Development offerings.
In 2000 and 2001, two Webmaster positions, integral to identifying, recommending, and implementing the resources needed to build the College’s capacity for technological innovations to enhance students’ learning environments, were mainstreamed into the Office of Instruction and Student Services. Similarly, the OISS assumed a permanent position for the Learning Communities coordinator.

4. Fiscal year 2002-03 is a promising year for SLI in terms of campus conditions and in terms of what SLI can contribute as State revenues become an increasingly needed but unreliable source of increasing revenue for the college.
The joint faculty-administration Leadership Team is looking forward to a productive year. The Leadership Team just finished a retreat April 13, which integrated new members and created unity, direction and momentum.

In an era or diminishing funding, it is useful to consider the experience of other enterprises of the knowledge-based economy, which rely on efforts to constantly renew and regenerate. Even in private industry where the cost per unit is expected to continually go down, it is realized that economic viability is maintained by making significant investments in Research & Development. SLI can be viewed as instructional R&D and seen as a strategic investment in difficult as well as good times.

Funding for SLI leverages dollars spent elsewhere. SLI provides reward and recognition, creates respectful and invigorating cross-college communication, attracts and sustains people, and aligns efforts as it focuses attention on the whole institution’s mission of supporting student learning.

“SLI was one of the main reasons that drew me to apply for my position at Lane. SLI provides the means for innovation to be systemic. I have heard faculty say that just the existence of SLI gives them encouragement to think bigger and work in longer term ways for successful student learning”.
Cheryl Roberts, Vice-President of Instruction and Student Services

5. Lessons from the national experience support SLI. In terms of the national perspective, SLI is part of a third wave of reform following two failed waves.

Terry O’Banion, former Director of the League for Innovation in the Community College, concluded that these first two waves were little more than “pruning the branches on a dying tree”, and that reforms would fail until they aimed at changing the fundamental architecture of education, particularly the factory model of human relations and a calendar and schedule following assembly line production and agricultural harvests.

RX: Change the architecture

SLI’s structure of faculty-led partnership and joint union-administration cooperation provided an appropriate human relations framework. The goals and project framework provided the college with the means to innovate in a variety of dimensions including the organization of learning time and format.

Innovation and Educational Reform

Because SLI exists, Lane is more a part of the national conversation about teaching, learning and innovation. Also, because SLI exists, successful innovative practices from elsewhere can be better considered and grow at Lane. As a result, there is greater access to and opportunity for our students and our community to have the best possible learning experiences.

In Conclusion….
Student learning is the core purpose of the college. SLI is an integral part of the college aimed directly at fulfilling its mission effectively and efficiently. The SLI is set to make important contributions in the 2002-03 fiscal year and is worthy of continuing positive recognition and financial support.