Article: College reading/study skills programs by Christ

Christ, F. L. (1970). Organization, development, and implementation of college reading/study skills programs: Some assumptions and conclusions. In F.L. Christ (editor). Combined Proceedings of the First, Second, and Third Annual Conferences. Los Angeles: Western College Reading Association. 59-64.

I thank the Program Committee for asking me, as President of Western College Reading Association, to keynote this Second Annual Conference of the Association. As I read our conference theme: "How Can College Students Be Helped To Read Better?" I thought of the hundreds of thousands of students for whom the difference between mediocrity or expertness, failure or success, depended upon us, their reading/study skills instructors and counselors. I reflected further that what happens to our students depends greatly upon our professionalism - our knowledge and expertness in organizing and implementing effective and efficient programs for them. This keynote address, entitled, "Organization, Development, and Implementation of College Reading/Study Skills Programs: Some Assumptions and Conclusions," is the result of those reflections.

There are ten assumptions that I would like to examine with you today. They are neither new nor original but like many old and unoriginal thoughts, they seem to have been forgotten. These assumptions are derived from published literature and research in the areas of psychology of learning, individual differences, reading and study skills improvement, counseling techniques, instructional technology, and

systems design.

Assumption #1: Learning Begins Where the Student Is.

This educational shibboleth is mouthed rather glibly at professional conferences, and forgotten under the exigencies and pressures of student numbers, inadequate budgets, and limited course preparation. College students are regarded as children instead of adolescents and maturing adults. Instructors fail to collect biographical data on their students. Diagnosis is often incomplete or inadequate. Personal pre-program conferences between student and instructor are nonexistent. Course objectives, class outlines, student materials, and instructional techniques remain unchanged year after year. The student as learner is forgotten.

Assumption #2: "How to Learn" Can and Must Be Learned.

If academic credit and other indications of importance are given to college courses in speech, discussion, writing, and thinking (Epistemology and Logic), can such recognition be denied to reading and study improvement courses? If learning, both in school and beyond the highest school, is contingent upon skills in time and task management, reading, and listening, can education afford to minimize or omit training in these skills? If the content of traditional subject areas, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and grammar is undergoing constant change in this era of the "information explosion" and technological advancement, will students be prepared to cope with new learning if they have not learned how to learn? Learning "how to learn" should begin in the earliest grade and be systematically developed through every level of formal education. Since this is not occurring in our educational system, the need exists for reading and study skills improvement programs -- programs that are focused on learning skills.

Assumption #3: Learning Must be Meaningful and Goal Oriented.

Before any learning skill or technique is required of students, its rationale, particularly performance objectives, must be explored. Before any survey or test is taken by students, reasons for the diagnosis and consequences of test performance should be discussed whenever possible. Students do learn better when they understand what they are doing, how they are doing, and why they are doing it.

Assumption #4: Learning How-To-Learn is a Process.

Learning is not just something for students to know about, it is something that they do. It is a dynamic interactivity occurring within students as well as between and among students and instructors. Learning, particularly in reading and study skills programs, is not listening to lectures about learning skills. It is technique rather than information. It results in something that students do rather than in something they know.

Assumption #5: Learning How-to-Learn is Not Always Easy, Nor is It Always Fun

For a rare few, learning a skill or technique is fun. Learning is quick. It is self-satisfying. For most others, learning a skill or technique is boring, slow, unrewarding. The "blood, sweat, and tears" of it is repetition, analysis, and change followed by more repetitions, analyses, and changes until the expected performance of a skill or technique is achieved. The fun or self-satisfaction occurs when the skill or technique is used expertly and easily, not in reading and study skill programs, but in the history classroom during a lecture, in a student’s room preparing for a chemistry assignment or philosophy test, or at a school desk taking a final exam in physics.

Assumption #6: Each Student is a Unique Person.

One textbook, one set of exercises, one type of activity, one learning sequence, or one instructional method is never adequate for any program in which two or more students are enrolled. A diagnosis of individual needs, aptitudes, abilities and limitations, reinforced by analytical observations of skills and techniques, will move the concerned reading/ study skills instructor to explore the possible usefulness of many different standardized tests and surveys, how-to-study manuals, reading exercise workbooks and kits, program instructional materials, and audiovisual instructional components so that each student is helped to learn at his own pace, in his own way, and at his own level of ability.

Assumption #7: Each Student Is Also A Fellow Human Being.

Sometimes we maintain a professional posture that separates us from our students. We forget that students have feelings. We play the role of an elite -- enlightening,

censuring, rewarding or punishing students as they meet our instructional demands. We forget that every person hides a complex human being who wants and needs our support, our sympathy, our encouragement, and our respect. If we could but remember what we experienced as students and perceive ourselves and our actions through our students' eyes, we would reach out more humanly to help students learn.

Assumption #8: Students Can and Do Learn By Themselves.

Self-directed activities, if they are systematized and rigorously programmed according to a student's needs and abilities, can release the instructor from many lecture hours and eliminate tedious and non-individualizing group drills or exercises. Ideally, the instructor initiates and guides each student during the begriming and early stages of an activity. He also explains and counsels the student as problems arise during his performance and encourages him to persevere at his task. Finally, the instructor, in conference with the student, determines subsequent learning sequences.

Assumption #9: Computerization Need Not Be Dehumanizing.

Occasionally I hear instructors voice their opposition to educational technology and particularly to the use of the computer in instruction and counseling. They lament the lack of any human confrontation or the absence of dialogue between student and instructor. They apparently forget that this same human confrontation and dialogue is missing in the huge lecture hall and in classrooms where one instructor "confronts" twenty to forty students in a daily forty-five minute monologue. Certainly, the computer, no less than the instructor, can be a deterrent to learning. 'But when the computer is used as a part of a learning system, it can assist both the instructor and the learner through its ability to store, process, and respond to data instantaneously.

Computer Aid to Instruction (CAI), Computer Managed Learning (CML) , and Computer Managed Counseling (CMC) can release instructors and counselors to devote more time to individual students. Before the development of the Survey of Reading/Study Efficiency, a diagnostic CML program aid, counselors spent many sessions interviewing students to determine their specific needs and many more hours, if they believed in individualized learning, matching students' needs and skill levels with appropriate exercise material. Now, as many as 500 students can take the 144-item SR/SE in less than two hours and get back twenty-four hours later an individualized computer print-out that analyzes each student's

learning strengths and potential problems. In addition, the instructor gets a computerized group profile enabling him to plan instructional modules needed by his students.

Under development is a second stage SR/SE program in which a student can dialogue via a teletypewriter with a computer to organize and implement an individualized and sequential reading/study skills improvement program.

A final reminder: computers do not replace instructors and counselors; they assist them.

Assumption #10: Diagnosis, Referral, and Follow-Up Are Inseparable from Learning and Counseling.

The instructional or counseling loop begins with diagnosis which attempts to determine where the student is. Concomitant with diagnosis is feedback, preferably individual and personal. This feedback should be more than the customary point on a graph or a number in a percentile. Based on this feedback, the student should be referred to an activity or sequence of activities for remediation or development. The instructor or counselor monitors and follows up the referral to achieve optimum results for the student and to prescribe further diagnosis or activity. The absence of any one of these three activities -- diagnosis, referral, and follow-up -- severely limits the effectiveness of instruction or counseling.

Conclusion:

Based on the ten preceding assumptions, I submit for your consideration this professional charge as you organize, develop, implement and sustain your reading and study skills programs. My charge can be epitomized in ten phrases, each of which is prefaced by the exhortation: “CHANGE”

from theory to application
from lecture to laboratory.
from classroom to carrels.
from information processing to counseling.
from being teacher-oriented to learner-centered.
from group to individual.
from content emphasis to activity.
from statistics to results.
from a traditional to the systems approach.
from reading centers to learning centers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Banathy, Bela H., Instructional Systems. Palo Alto: Fearon Publishers, 1968.

2. Blaine Graham B. Jr. and Charles C. McArthur, Emotional Problems of the Student. New York: Doubleday, 1966.

3. Christ, Frank L., Survey of Reading/Study Efficiency: Manual for Instructors and Counselors. Chicago, Science Research Associates, Inc., 1968.

4. Christ, Frank L., "The SR/SE Laboratory: A Systems Approach to Reading Study Skills Counseling" in Schick, George B. and Merrill M. May (editors), The Psychology of Reading Behavior, Eighteenth Yearbook of the National Reading Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1969, pp. 212-216.

5. Gagne, Robert M., The Conditions of Learning. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965.

6. Johnson, Stuart R. and Rita B., Developing Individualized Instructional Material. Palo Alto, California: Westinghouse Learning Press, 1970.

7. Mager, Robert F., Developing Attitudes Toward Learning. Palo Alto, California: Fearon Publishers, 1968.

8. Mager, Robert, Preparing Instructional Objectives. Palo Alto, California: Fearon Publishers, 1962.

9. Rogers, Carl R., On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

10. Smith, Karl and Margaret F., Cybernetic Principles of Learning and Educational Design. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.