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Small Changes Make a Big Difference
101 Ideas for Becoming a Learning College
- Realize that the 21st century is the Age of Learning.
- Shift your thinking from Central Piedmont Community College as organization that exists to provide instruction to an organization that exists to produce learning.
- Set the stage in classes for problem solving activities.
- Understand that providing student access isn’t enough. We must serve our students better and ensure their success.
- Incorporate mind, body, and spirit into employee orientations and classes, since the Learning College is concerned with the whole person.
- Listen “deeply” to students.
- Make it a point to get to know the people with whom you work as individuals, not just co-workers.
- Believe that everybody’s learning is everybody’s responsibility.
- Create more opportunities for fun and celebrating our accomplishments; suggest an impromptu parade, hold class on the lawn.
- Provide appropriate advising and counseling to students, making them more likely to be successful in their learning experiences.
- Create and offer as many options for learning as possible, including student organizations, service learning, co-op experiences, and the like.
- Review periodically your processes and systems to identify any potential barriers to students.
- Encourage students to participate in career exploration.
- Identify and provide multicultural student resources that address a variety of communication and learning styles.
- Have a student Wall of Honor. Post photos of outstanding students on a prominent display board at each campus on a monthly basis. In addition to good grades, include community service, kindness to others around them, etc. in the criteria.
- Have lunch with students on a regular basis. Have fun with them.
- Be willing to take a risk and learn to do something new.
- Give praise for small accomplishments and give it often.
- Develop an atmosphere in class and in the work environment that embodies trust and pride.
- Print a shortened version of CPCC’s mission statement to be used on our stationery, business cards, and in offices and classrooms.
- Make a list of the things that we are already doing right and celebrate a good start to the learning college concept.
- Have a Learning College Day and provide professional development credit for sharing learning initiatives from all departments in the college.
- Make a list of best teaching practices and make it available to all full-time and part-time faculty.
- Have all students and employees read the same book and have the book discussed throughout the campus for the entire semester or year. A new book would be chosen in subsequent years-or semesters. Or try this on a unit or departmental level.
- Open meetings with “What have you learned lately?” Discuss possible applications to the College.
- Post photographs and write-ups of employees who have made a contribution or difference.
- Reconsider anything you do “because it has always been done that way”. Is there is a better way to accomplish your goal?
- Encourage students to compare, apply, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize, rather than just to listen and remember.
- Understand that the three core components for success for students are: to know the material; to be able to demonstrate that they know it; and to have an attitude that makes them want to learn, not just make good grades.
- Know what resources are available to help improve student learning including learning centers, financial resources, advising, and counseling services.
- Learn from each others’ successes and mistakes.
- Raise questions and challenge students to develop their own explanations and defend them.
- Begin where students are, not where disciplinary traditions might dictate; explanation should start with the simple and move toward the complex.
- Support the concept that teaching is scholarship and faculty members should be as familiar with the research on pedagogy as they are with research in their discipline.
- Expose students to techniques for developing competencies in personal, interpersonal, and thinking skills, in addition general education skills in math, communication, and computers.
- Review testing and placement to ensure that students are being placed into courses in which they can be successful.
- Remember that change is good, necessary, and doesn’t have to be hard.
- Seek information before you make judgments.
- Understand that access means more than just getting into the college, it means access to faculty, services, computers, and the like.
- Make a purposeful intention to improve your communication with other areas of the college.
- Give support and reward people who are investing in positive change.
- Be sure that when you give your word it constitutes a promise rather than just a statement.
- Build commitment to honest conversation and trust.
- Develop a culture of evidence to support learning.
- Consider what skills you need for the future in all hiring decisions.
- Develop strong assessment systems that look at students’ needs and outcomes.
- Continue contact with students throughout their educational career.
- Promote supplemental instruction in which students learn from each other as a part of the learning experience.
- Use active learning strategies, since students who have this experience will be better prepared for the workplace.
- Put student learning first as the context for resolving disputes and moving ahead.
- Include all part-time faculty as colleagues.
- Embrace working collectively to accomplish goals.
- Establish policies and procedures for the classroom which emphasize personal responsibility.
- Include some classroom time on a periodic basis for reflection, student input, group work, and critical thinking.
- Encourage students to participate in service learning projects as appropriate. Research indicates that service learning has a positive impact on students’ academic learning and improves their ability to apply what they have learned.
- Assess not only your students’ course content understanding, but also their ability to apply what they have learned in other contexts.
- Understand that becoming a learning centered college is a journey, not a destination and a process, not a project.
- Enhance options for independent learning, including self-assessments and practice tests with technological tools.
- Take the time to define problems and solutions collaboratively.
- Provide learning options that are alternatives offered to accommodate student-learning needs both inside and outside of the classroom.
- Realize that change takes a lot of time.
- Change can enable you to improve what you are already doing, or enable you to create and implement an altogether new way of doing something.
- Be more aware of the different populations of students that we serve.
- Help students continuously assess their goals, skills, abilities, values, and interests.
- Make learning the central focus for all activity.
- Organize a content-rich curriculum that is worth knowing.
- Accept that all learning is a life-long and continuous process.
- ppreciate that diversity improves learning.
- Hire intelligent, creative, caring, flexible, and diverse employees to facilitate learning.
- Understand that all students need orientation and a sense of belonging.
- Identify barriers and limitations to learning in your area and commit to resolving them.
- Meet the needs of both external and internal customers by fostering a college culture that is devoted to service.
- Look at different ways of using college resources that are more learning- centered.
- Involve more areas of the college and people in programs to increase efficiency and productivity.
- Examine what key college policies and practices have been linked to student success.
- Help students feel and become more in control over what is happening to them at the College.
- Incorporate learning communities into more areas since they are vital to the engagement of students in learning.
- Commit to constant personal renewal and learning.
- Help students to get to know each other.
- Maintain an attractive environment that makes the learning experience more pleasant.
- Develop strategies for increasing the involvement of all full-time and part-time faculty, administration, and staff so as to benefit from their wide-range of mindsets.
- Speak less so that students think more.
- Select all technological tools and training based on the best way to promote learning.
- Listen for new opportunities with an open mind.
- Measure student success by documenting learning.
- Believe that change is inevitable-except from a vending machine.
- Realize that learning is a social engagement and a shared experience.
- Focus on the nature and process of learning rather than the performance of the instructor.
- Be aware that becoming a learning college is a continual state of improvement directed toward student success.
- Ask yourself if you have the desire and ability to support in words and deeds Central Piedmont Community College’s goal of becoming a more learning-centered College.
- Adopt an adjunct. Adjunct instructors teach many of our classes and need to be part of the learning centered college. Mentor an adjunct teaching your subject and become a resource and point of contact for him or her.
- Encourage students to use their Central Piedmont Community College email to contact you and each other.
- Publicize successes and best practices as to how your actions improved learning, and constantly foster an organizational climate that promotes learning.
- Emphasize the importance of collaboration, involvement, empowerment, and personal responsibility for the success of the implementation and integration of learning throughout the College.
- Take a class. One of the best ways to understand your students is to become one yourself. Students will also admire your commitment to lifelong learning. This is a great way to get to know students and faculty from a different vantage point.
- Demonstrate sensitivity to learners’ life experiences and prior knowledge as well as social, cultural, and gender differences.
- Foster integrated learning through cross-disciplinary education.
- Expect a culture that asks, “What am I doing to improve and enhance student learning?” and “How do I know?”
- Construct an educational environment that requires active involvement in the learning process with others.
- Consider how we can work together to continually improve student learning.
- Accept the invitation to participate in our College’s most basic goal—student success.