Sustaining The Learning College


Learning organization system attributes provided a foundation for the whole organization, not just the students to learn and enabled the College to develop a system that should ensure the stability and continuity of the strategic planning and assessment processes.


Procedural Integrity and Routines:

To ensure accountability for the new system model, Board policies and College job descriptions were reviewed and updated. Accountability for maintaining the learning college has, as a result, become a documented responsibility at every level of the organizational chart, beginning with the Board of Trustees. The committee charges, timeline, and written procedures for the planning and assessment processes ensure a reliable routine from year to year.


Shared Governance:

One of the first findings of the Internal Review Team was a lack of employee trust in administration. The system developing around the creation of the Learning college has resulted in a previously untapped level of shared governance by involving staff in all of the processes of strategic planning and budgeting. The committees involve a large number of staff in identifying issues, collecting and analyzing data, and examining, selecting and recommending potential solutions. The structure also gives staff serving on OPIC the responsibility of considering committee recommendations and deciding if they are adequately justified for funding. Although intrinsic to the learning college, the levels of input built into the system are not yet fully realized. OPIC members received training at their strategic planning retreat in the summer of 2005, and more professional development in the future on how shared governance can enhance the learning college.

 


Organizational Culture:

Faculty who returned to campus in the Fall of 2004 for the opening in-service, perhaps unaware of the work of the task force that had occurred during the summer, found the transformation to a learning college well underway. The coherence of the learning college system represented by the Organizational Planning and Improvement System and the committee charges was immediately appreciated, if not completely understood. Faculty continued to focus primarily on the tasks required to establish the academic assessment system, assuming that since they were teachers, they must always have been part of a learning institution, so what had changed? Staff struggled with the concept of how making student learning central to their actions was different, if at all from the strong customer-service focus they already practiced.

 

As it became clear that setting up a learning college philosophy and establishing a learning college system were not the same as embedding the learning college concept into the organizational culture, a diverse group of faculty and
administrators attended the League for Innovation's Learning College Summit (June 2005) in Oak Brook, Illinois. Reference The group returned from the conference determined to work toward both a better understanding of what a learning college is and a more intentional commitment on the part of the College community to pursue that model. Several initiatives were immediately put into place:

  • A presentation called Learning is Fundamental, which explained the basic principles of learning organizations and how those principles emerge within a learning college, was developed and presented to four sets of College constituents: the Board of Trustees, the OPIC committee at its strategic planning retreat, the full-time faculty and staff at in-service, and the adjunct faculty at in-service. Reference
  • Various surveys (including all faculty and staff, and the 24 members of the OPIC committee at the strategic planning retreat) show that the learning college concept is better understood and is supported as a direction in which the College should continue to move. Reference
  • Learning college concepts are included in student brochures (see Appendix Q) and as a learning outcome in the required orientation class, Psychology 100. (See Appendix T for the course outline.)
  • A video The Learning College: Before and After, shown at the fall in-service, presented a light look at how adoption of the learning college model at Sauk might impact communication, teaching, and student, faculty and staff attitudes about learning. Support
  • Consultant Roberta Teahen conducted special workshops on the learning college for college support staff and for the entire division of student services in October 2005. Reference
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