Systems for Learning Assistance: Learners, Learning Facilitators, and Learning Centers

By Frank L. Christ in F.L. Christ (Ed.) INTERDISCIPLINARY ASPECTS OF READING INSTRUCTION, Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference of the Western College Reading Association, (Volume 4), 1971, pp. 32-41.

INTRODUCTION 

For the past eight years I have been evolving a professional raison d'etre to justify both my existence and function in higher education. I first attempted to articulate such a raison d‰etre in 1963 with a paper that explored "The Responsibility of the College Reading Director Beyond the Clinic Doors" (8). Five years later, at the National Reading conference, I redefined my position in a paper entitled: "The SR/SE Laboratory: A System Approach to Reading/Study skills Counseling" (9) and, two Conferences ago in Phoenix, expanded the underlying rationale of that NRC paper with some reflections on a systems approach to reading/study skills services (7).

During this time, I transferred, or was transferred, from an English department teaching reading in a classroom to an Education department where help was offered to students in a reading clinic; from Education to Psychological Services as part of a student conference Center team where students were counseled in a private office; from Psychological Services to Student Personnel Services as director of a reading/study skills center.

During this same time, the professional literature of higher education reflected a similar shift in emphasis from reading and study/skills classroom instruction to services with names like Education Development Center (14), Student Development Center (20), Individual Learning Center (16), and Learning Laboratory (2).

In this paper, I want to share with you same of the sources and resources that have stimulated me to expand my role from a reading/study skills instructor to that of a learning assistance program designer and learning facilitator. [p. 32]

LEARNING ASSISTANCE

Let's examine first the phrase "learning assistance. Although this phrase is not one that has been used previously in reading/study skills literature, I submit that it is a most appropriate phrase to describe what we can do for students. "Learning Assistance" has evolved from and can encompass the following descriptors that are so familiar in our professional literature: remedial reading, corrective reading, developmental reading, power or speed reading, study skills, reading/study skills, and academic skills. It includes also the educational functions (pedagogical and psychological) inherent in such terms as improvement, remediation, development, instruction, and counseling, as they are performed in places variously described as a class, clinic, laboratory, or center.

Learning assistance also includes the world of the learner, the environment in which and with which he must cope to remain in college and to graduate from college. This learning environment is made up of the learner, his professors, other students, courses of study, administrative procedures and regulations, as well as locales such as classrooms, residence areas, and the library. It does not exclude the inner world of personal problems that impinge upon and affect an individuals attitude toward learning.

Learning assistance is concerned with basic educational skills and attitudes that Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy (4) calls "...the most important product of any learning process..... learning to keep on learning." It is concerned with what Ralph Gerard of UC Irvine (12) once described as "....another problem of acquiring learning skills, which is not merely learning, but learning to learn." It is also concerned with what Dubin and Taveggia (11) have suggested as a major contribution of a college education: "....to develop the habits of study, which are, or may be, the preconditions of learning"--a suggestion offered after they had analyzed data in ninety-one previously published studies of college teaching technologies from which they concluded that "...there is no measurable difference among truly distinctive methods of college instruction when evaluated by student performance on final examinations."

Learning assistance differs from content instruction in its emphasis, not on facts and information, but rather on the learning process and on the skills and attitudes of the individual learner. These learning assistance skills and-attitudes, listed in the chart below, go far beyond the ordinary concerns of most college reading improvement programs yet are the skills and attitudes many college students need to develop in order to achieve academic success. [p. 33]

LEARNING ASSISTANCE SKILLS AND ATTITUDES*

*This taxonomy for a systems-oriented learning assistance center is adapted from the SR/SE Personal Profile originally published in survey of Readinq/Study Efficiency: Manual for Instructors and Counselors. Chicago: Science Research Associates, Inc., 1968. [p. 34]

A LEARNING ASSISTANCE CENTER

A Learning Assistance Center (LAC) is a facility where students (learners) come to effect change in their learning assistance skills and attitudes, particularly in areas of reading, writing, computation, and study skills. In addition to a main center, mini-LAC's could be located in the campus library, at EOP and Upward Bound facilities, in student residence halls, even in fraternity and sorority houses.

A LAC would operate most efficiently and effectively as part of a greater campus complex such as a Learning Center, Learning Resources Center, Instructional materials Center, or Multi-media Center. Descriptions of operational functions for such campus complexes can be found in a recent volume of selected readings by Pearson and Butler (21).

Although the primary function of a LAC is to help students "beat the educational system" by getting higher grades; i.e., by learning more in less time with greater ease and confidence, it can also serve five other functions:

1. as a place where the learner gets tutorial help. The LAC is ideal for such activity since it has learner-oriented equipment, software, and personnel.
   
2. as a referral agency to other helping agencies such as medical, psychological, financial, and spiritual. With the LAC acting as a central point, students will not get lost in an administrative game of hide-and-seek. Instead, students will be diagnosed, referred, and monitored in a follow-up to insure that their needs are taken care of.
   
3. as a library of basic study aids in the content field. The LAC working in conjunction with academic departments could house drill materials, collateral textbooks, taped lectures, and course outlines.
   
4. as a training facility for paraprofessionals, peer counselors and tutors. As early as 1965, Brown, a pioneer in student-to-student counseling (3), argued for this use of peer counselors to combat the decreasing ratio of personnel and financial resources to student population.
   
5. as an information clearinghouse to update faculty in latest research and methodologies. The LA could not offer the services that Vogel (25) describes in his model for an Innovation Diffusion Center where faculty actually see the innovative machine or materials. Instead, the Center could publish a newsletter that might serve not only to ameliorate the learning situation in campus classrooms but also would effect good public relations between faculty and the Center. [p.35]

SYSTEMS FOR LEARNING ASSISTANCE

Although there has been published in the literature a handful of articles (5) (10) with titles that seem to promise a reading/study skills or counseling service, we do not have yet a true operational system for learning assistance. Most reading/study skills programs operate in a vacuum as instructional extensions of English or Education departments, Psychological, or Counseling Services, or as an expedient, administrative innovation that services EOP, VEA, and other "minority" or "culturally disadvantaged" programs.

To serve the greatest number of students in a more effective and efficient way than is being done now, designers of reading/study skills proqram should consider adapting elements of systems design to their programs. One basic element in any learner-oriented system is its emphasis on specified, observable attitudes and behaviors as recommended by Mager (19), and by the Johnsons (18).

To date, no one has really specified in the professional literature what observable attitudes and behaviors differentiate the efficient, effective college learner from one less efficient and effective. Nor has anyone specified what observable behavioral and attitudinal changes should occur in college students who complete reading/study skills programs.

The system, as Silvern (24) and Banathy (1) have pointed out, would also make explicit both an analysis and a synthesis of existing information, personnel, time, methodologies, and equipment to determine current interrelationships and seek new, more effective interrelationships. Some of these interrelationships involve both data sharing and coordinated learning assistance strategies among campus offices and departments such as the following: registrar, financial aids, placement, counseling, psychological services, chaplain, health officer, speech pathologist, course instructors, faculty advisors, and department heads. Finally, provisions must exist in a system for feedback, Wiener‰s "cybernetics" (26), both for individual behavioral and "attitudinal" reconstruction and for program evaluation and subsequent improvement. Such an analysis and synthesis combined with a feedback routine is being attempted by the author in a paper model of a Computer Mediated Counseling System in which the computer stores, correlates, and updates learner data from all these sources to develop a profile that can be used as a starting point for learning assistance.

The complexity and enormity of the tasks facing a systems designer can be grasped by referring to Hosford and Ryan's model of a counseling and guidance system (15) in which they outline ten functions for developing generalized models of counseling and guidance programs: [p. 36]

1) study real-life environment; 2) define problem situation; 3) establish project; 4) design counseling/ guidance program prototype; 5) simulate to test program prototype; 6) pilot-test model; 7) introduce system; 8) operate system; 9) evaluate system; and 10) eliminate system.

Other design characteristics of a system approach to learning assistance that must be considered are the following: 1) availability of learner options, 2) modularity of space and materials, 3) mathemagenic activity, and 4) openness to change.

Learner Options. The learner must have available instructional options that include lectures, in person, on audio or video cassettes; learning material such as books, recordings, film, programmed instruction, and computer-assisted instruction; learner groupings ranging from one as in auto-instruction, to pairs either of learner and counselor or learner and peer learner, to small groups for encounters and discussion or large audiences for dynamic presentations and demonstrations. Learner options include choices of time patterns and even of actual learning times.

Modularity. The era of the single textbook, workbook, instructional approach or program for all learners is past. Designers of learning systems must think in space modules and learning units so that the learner has choices from among different options. Thus, the designer of a learning facility provides area, furniture, and equipment for individual study, for tutorial pairings, for small group instruction and even for large audience demonstrations and presentations with the possibility that all may be occurring at the same time in the same basic facility. Designers must also realize that commercially prepared materials, such as college reading and study skills manuals, do not provide sufficient practice exercises unless individual manuals are literally torn apart and reassembled to take their place as part of a collection of self-learning materials. Such a collection would include cassettes, film strips, slide programs, and programmed instruction booklets in addition to modular workbook materials. Provision for this modularity is included in the author's SR/SE Systems Approach where the learner can opt to read, to do, to view, to listen, to test, or to confer from over 140 self-instructional modules listed in the SR/SE Student Personal Program Guide (6).

Mathemgenic Activity. Rothopf (22) invented the term "mathemagenic behavior" to describe learner responses that give birth to learning. These learner responses are almost always overt behaviors. Thus a learner speaks, writes, or interacts with his learning material to promote learning. [p.37] James as early as 1899 in one of his famous Talks to Teachers on Psychology (17) reminded teachers of "...the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget" that in learning there is "No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression." Designers of learning programs must insure that the learner constantly reacts and responds to his instructional materials. Whenever this reactivity or responsiveness is not built into an instructional module, the designer modifies the module to include it. Learner participation and activity can make the kind of difference that is suggested by the wording of the following ancient Chinese proverb:

Openness to Change. Above all, a designer of learning systems must be open to change. He must maintain his currency by perusing professional journals, bulletins, newsletters, research reports, and fugitive documents as well as by actively participating in professional associations. He must constantly experience new materials and equipment, experiment with new learning methods, and exchange ideas with his colleagues. He must maintain his relevancy by dialoguing with his learners, using their criticisms to modify existing materials, facilities, and programs.

CONCLUSION

What I have described as a Learning Assistance Center, developed as a system with its concomitant characteristics, and functions, does not yet exist. It is slowly evolving out of what the literature describes as our reading centers, study skills centers, learning centers, educational development centers, instructional materials or resources centers, and innovative diffusion centers. Its evolution must be guided by professionals like ourselves who are genuinely interested in people-centered learning environments yet have a knowledge of system design and instructional technology.

Robert Havens writing in "Technology in Guidance," a special issue of The Personnel and Guidance Journal (13), stresses the role that we as, as counselors and personnel workers, should assume in meeting the educational challenges of technological innovation. He warns us that

". . every one in the counseling and personnel field should be familiar with the rapidly

developing technologies whether computers, system analysis, retrieval systems, or

multimedia techniques. Counselors must know how to communicate with the

technological specialist because technology will come to guidance. It must come. [p.38]

We need it. The important question is who will decide what it will do for people and to

people. We must determine, in consultation with technologists what programmatic

applications technology will have in guidance. We must not let the technologists define

our roles."

Havens, emphasis on "people" should remind us that any systems approach to learning assistance only uses instructional hardware and data processing computers to help the learner. Shure (23) sums up this human concern when he described New York Institute of Technology's Project Ultra, an instructional system at the college level designed to help dropouts and culturally deprived students, as "...a social activity involving people, ideas, methods, machines, communications, and various interacting systems. But always it comes back to people."

A Learning Assistance Center will be any place where learners, learner data, and learning facilitators are interwoven into a sequential, cybernetic individualized, people-oriented system to service all students (learners) and faculty (learning facilitators) of any institution for whom LEARNING by its students is important.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Banathy, Bela. Instructional Systems. Belmont, California: Fearon Publishers, 1968.

2. Brown, Edward T. "A Community College's Learning Laboratory," Wilson Library Bulletin (September, 1965) , 80-83.

3. Brown, William F. "Student-t o-Student Counseling for Academic Adjustment," Personnel and Guidance journal (April, 1965), 811-817.

4. Bundy, McGeorge. "What is Learning and Who Does It?" Personnel Administration (November-December, 1970), 4-7, 23-25.

5. Carman, Robert A. Systems Analysis of a Learning Re sources Center, Los Angele s: ERIC/CJC, 1970 ED 035411. pp.20.I

6.Christ, Frank L. The Manual for Instructors and Counselors of the Survey of Reading/Study Efficiency. Chicago:Science Research Associates, 1968 [p. 39]

7. Christ, Frank L. "Organization, Development, and Implementation of College Reading/Study Skills Programs: Some Assumptions and Conclusions" in Frank Christ (ed.) How Can College Students Be Helped to Read Better? Volume II, Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the Western College Reading Association. Los Angeles, 1970, pp. 59-64.

8. Christ, Frank L. "The Responsibility of College Reading Directors Beyond the Clinic Doors" in Clay Ketcham (ed.) Proceedings of the College Reading Association (1963), pp. 72-75.

9. Christ, Frank L. "The SR/SE Laboratory: A Systems Approach to Reading/Study Skills Counseling," in George Schick and Merrill May (eds.) The Psychology of Reading Behavior. Eighteenth Yearbook of the National Reading Conferences, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1968, pp. 212-216.

10. Cohen, S. Alan and Steven Reinstein. Skills Centers: A Systems Approach to Reading Instruction, Bloomington, Indiana: ERIC/CRTER, 1969, ED 030 539.

11. Dubin, Robert and Thomas C. Taveggia. The Teaching-Learning Paradox: A Comparative Analysis of CollegeTeaching Methods. Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon Press, 1968.

12. Gerard, Ralph W. "The New Computerized Shape of Education" in Werner A. Hirsch (ed.) Inventing Education for the Future, San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1967. pp. 99-113.

13. Havens, Robert I. "A Walk Down Sesame Street," The Personnel and Guidance Journal (November, 1970), 174.

14. Heller, Herbert L. "Strengthening Character Traits of College Underachievers," Phi Delta Kappan (June, 1968) 592-593.

15. Hosford, Ray E. and T. Antoinette Ryan. "Systems Design in the Development of Counseling and Guidance Programs," The Personnel and Guidance Journal (November, 221-230.

16. Hultgren, Dayton D. "The Role of the Individual Learning Center in Effecting Educational Change" in George B. Schick and Merrill M. May (ed.) Reading: Process and Pedagogy. Nineteenth Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1970. pp. 89-94. [p.40]

17. James, William. "The Necessity of Reactions" in Talks to Teachers on Psychology. New York: Dover Pub-iications, Inc., 1962. pp. 17-19.

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

19. Mager, Robert F. Preparing Instructional Objectives. Belmont, California: Fearon Publishers, 1962.

20. Parker, Clyde A. "Ashes, Ashes..." Claremont, California: College Student Personnel Institute. 0223-06. Paper read at the 20th Annual Institute for College Student Personnel Workers, University of Minnesota, October, 1969.

21. Pearson, Neville and Lucius Butler. Instructional Materials Centers: Selected Readings. Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Company, 1969.

22. Rothkopf, Ernest. "Learning From Written Instructive Materials: An Exploration of the Control of Inspection Behavior by Test-Like Events, " American Educational Research Journal (November, 1966), 241-250.

23. Shure, Alexander. "Educational Escalation Through Systems Analysis," Audiovisual Instruction (May, 1965), 371-377.

24. Silvern, Leonard C. Systems Engineering of Education I: Evolution of Systems Thinking in Education.Los Angeles: Education and Training Consultants Co., 1968.

25. Vogel, George H. " The Innovative Diffusion Center: A Potential Concept to Accelerate Educational Change," Audiovisual Instruction (January, 1971), 67-69.

26. Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human-Beings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1950. [41]

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