Enhancing the Productivity of Learning: Curricular Implications   D. Bruce Johnstone and Patricia A. Maloney

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Learning Productivity

The learning productivity approach attempts to achieve productivity gains less through reducing or cheapening inputs (cutting faculty and staff, substituting cheaper part-time faculty for more costly full-time faculty, adding to faculty workloads, or deferring necessary maintenance), and more through enhancing higher education’s major real output, which is student learning. In the learning productivity perspective, the principal problem lies not in overpaid, underworked, or excessive numbers of faculty and staff, but rather in teaching and learning inefficiencies, such as excessive non-learning time, redundant learning, excessive course-taking, and ineffective learning (Johnstone, 1993).

• year-round academic calendars and other attempts to better use the full potential learning day, week, and year;
• better articulation and fewer "lost" credits between community colleges and baccalaureate institutions;
• more use of college-level learning in high school (whether through Advanced Placement, dual enrollment, or the validation of high school learning by colleges or universities);
• more attention to the critical "gateway" courses and to the need to advise students into their major field commitments in order to lessen unnecessary drift and outright attrition (particularly out of the sciences);
• effective use of self-paced learning, perhaps through electronic mail, videocassettes or interactive software;
• ways of increasing the time spent on, and/or the effectiveness of, student learning.

Learning Productivity and the Curriculum

This chapter examines the connections between learning productivity and the college curriculum, by which is meant the content or subject matter taught (and presumably learned), together with any particular instructional methodology, and within any particular timing and sequencing (or "structure") associated with that content.

A learning productivity perspective can be applied to any college curriculum, regardless of content or rigor. We can look to the content, structure, and instructional methodology of the curriculum for features that are either particularly conducive to unproductive learning or are particularly inhibiting to reforms in the direction of greater productivity. Four lines of inquiry can be pursued for possible enhancements to the productivity of learning--all without resorting to "speedups," or across-the-board increases in faculty and staff workloads or other strictly cost-side measures.

First, is there excessive course-taking? Are some students emerging with baccalaureates, but with course credits substantially beyond the number necessary to their learning goals (and thus having absorbed, at least arguably, excess teaching resources), even allowing for the legitimate goal of intellectual exploration in a variety of academic fields? Second, is there unnecessary redundancy in the curriculum, particularly between that learning taking place (or potentially taking place) in high school, and learning taking place in the first years of college? Third, are there excessively costly structural and/or methodological features to the curriculum that could be altered with no loss of learning nor any net added burden to the faculty? (This line of inquiry merges the learning productivity perspective with an older tradition of teaching productivity. However, it still rejects "speedups" and other exclusively "cost-side" measures, such as substituting cheaper for more expensive faculty.) Fourth, can theories of learner-centered curricula be employed "productively?" Or are these ideas, like much technologically mediated, self-paced learning, likely to increase learning--but only at considerably greater cost?

Excessive Course-taking

Although national attention (and much criticism, especially directed toward public higher education) has focused on the increasing, and allegedly excessive, time to degree, the critical behavior from the standpoint of productivity is the allegedly excessive total course credits to the degree, or the "inefficient" use of credits (Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board, 1996). In a review of the two major national longitudinal studies of college-going--the National Longitudinal Study of the high school class of 1972 (those who had received bachelor’s degrees by 1984) and the High School and Beyond survey of the high school class of 1982 (those who had received bachelor’s degrees by 1993), Adelman found that the mean number of total undergraduate credits earned by these two classes increased over the decade from 126 to more than 139. For the class of 1982, the mean total credits varied by student major field, ranging from a low of 134.5 in the social sciences and the humanities, to 141 in the physical and life sciences, to 153 in engineering and architecture (Adelman,1995).

It is difficult to stipulate the point at which intellectual and academic exploration, a precious and distinguishing feature of American higher education, becomes excessive. Students and faculty alike are proud of the American tradition of encouraging students to try out new fields, particularly in the first year or two, and to allow students to change the academic directions they may have formed at an early age, thus avoiding the kind of premature academic specialization characteristic of European university first degrees. At the same time, the ease (and generally minimal cost) of changing majors, adding new majors, or of simply "tacking on" electives is almost certainly behind the increasing numbers of courses taken by many students on the way to their baccalaureates.

The reasons for excess course taking, or "academic drift," remain largely conjecture. Studies in California (Geiser and others, 1994), Texas (Texas Board of Higher Education, 1996), Washington State (Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board, 1994), and Illinois (Witthuhn, and other, 1995) found the following "culprits" implicated in excessive credit-taking, but no one factor a consistent and dominant factor:

• uncertainty of, or slow entry into, a major;
• changes in the major;
• increased major program requirements;
• failure of community college courses to transfer (lack of proper articulation);
• "hidden" prerequisites;
• poor advisement;
• excessive electives;
• the ease of (and lack of penalties from) dropping courses.

Some excessive course taking would seem to be reducible by appropriate institutional policies and practices. For example, wasteful drift and excessive or unnecessary changes of majors could possibly be diminished by better advisement and early career planning, as well as an insistence that a major--some major--be chosen by the beginning of the third full-time semester at the latest. North Carolina and California have begun to charge a premium tuition (such as the non-resident rate) at public campuses for courses taken in excess of some presumably reasonable margin above the minimum number or required credits, and the practice seems certain to spread (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 1996). Other states have limited the number of credits that their public institutions require for baccalaureate degrees, leaving it to the institutions to repackage the general education and major requirements to fit within the imposed limit.

Another possibly remediable source of drift may be the prevalence at some institutions of especially difficult "gateway" courses into popular majors. Typically infamous gateway courses include: calculus for aspiring engineering, science, and economics majors; accounting or operations research for business majors; statistics for psychology and sociology majors; and physics and organic chemistry for non-science major pre-meds. This is not to deny the importance of these courses nor their appropriateness as prerequisites to these particular programs, nor is it to claim that all students admitted to a particular college should necessarily be able to handle all of its academic majors, nor is it a call for watering down the content or rigor of gateway courses. But the large number of students who flounder in such courses, many of whom ultimately abandon their desired majors and/or career aspirations and frequently drop out altogether, might be reduced with better teaching, more tutorials and special academic assistance, and better advising. In a recent trial, Florida public institutions developed technologically mediated forms of instruction that increased student success in gateway courses, serving the dual ends of enhancing quality student work and saving both public funds and the time that would have been lost by course failure or withdrawal (Postsecondary Education Planning Commission, 1996).

Students and professors frequently attribute the increase in course taking to increases in certain major requirements, although the Washington, Illinois, and Texas studies reported above found mixed evidence in support of major program course accretion as a serious contributor to the problem. Adelman's study (1995) documented the de facto increase in course taking by major field, although not the causes. Increased requirements may happen directly, by the addition of courses required by the department or faculty "owning" the major, or indirectly, through the imposition of prerequisites. The source of these additional requirements may be the increased knowledge deemed essential to the discipline or field, the increased learning imposed by professional accreditation or licensure, or simply the natural accretion in the academy to add but rarely to replace. In any event, it is clear that deans, chairs and other academic managers need to monitor major field requirements and be prepared to question claims by faculty for the need to add requirements to undergraduate majors.

Another remediable source of excess course taking is the curricular misfit that can arise from transfer, particularly between a community college and the baccalaureate senior college. About 45 percent of first-time undergraduates nationally attend public two-year colleges (NCES, 1996). More than 40 percent of these will transfer--22 percent to a four-year institution (NCES, 1997). Of students receiving a baccalaureate in 1993, the percentage who began at a community college and who subsequently transferred their community college credits ranges from 16 percent of students who earned their baccalaureate in four years, to nearly 24 percent of students who earned it in five years, to more than 44 percent of students who required more than six years to complete their baccalaureate. (NCES, 1996). But the curriculum established by the baccalaureate faculty--typically including 40 to 60 credits of general education, language, and "skills" courses (such as mathematics, writing, or computer proficiency), 40 to 50 credits in a major, and 15 to 20 credits of electives--frequently assumes, if only implicitly, that the student has been in the embrace of these requirements for the full four years, or the full 120 to 135 credits of the typical baccalaureate college experience. Students attempting to transfer community college credits risk having otherwise genuine learning experiences that were established by the faculty of their initial colleges either disallowed altogether, or effectively disallowed by being credited only as electives, thereby contributing to a credit accumulation well in excess of the 120 or so required by the baccalaureate college.

Senior college faculty can be expected to cling fiercely to the principle that they establish the requirements for their degrees. Where curricular misfits occur because students change their minds about majors or encounter academic problems with the first year or two at their initial college, some curricular "backtracking," even that which will lead to excessive courses for the eventual baccalaureate, is not inappropriate. However, where public policy has established a community college as a fully appropriate--and for some students, a preferable or virtually mandatory--entry point for the pursuit of baccalaureate studies, the senior college faculty cannot be allowed total hegemony over the full baccalaureate curriculum.

The usual response of the four-year college faculty and administration to the need for more efficient transfer (that is, with fewer courses and less time "lost") is the articulation agreement. Such agreements, either bilateral or brokered by multi-campus systems, spell out in advance specific community college courses that will transfer, the part of the baccalaureate program to which they will transfer (for example, whether to the general education, to the major, or only to elective requirements), and frequently with which grade. A workable articulation agreement, particularly when combined with early or dual admission (by which the student is assured of admission to the four-year college either prior to, or early in the community college experience as long as he or she performs satisfactorily), and with early orientation by the baccalaureate college advisors, is especially satisfactory to the senior college faculty. However, articulation agreements that include the transferability of community college courses to the baccalaureate major--as opposed merely to the general education or elective requirements--are very high-maintenance agreements, requiring continuous and often lengthy negotiations, not between administrators, but between faculty committees of each major department of the college or university with their counterparts in the community college faculty. These negotiations are not undertaken between necessarily equal parties, with the students' interests paramount, but between faculty from quite different academic cultures and with quite different stakes, including enrollments, revenues, and departmental reputations. To faculty enmeshed in such a cauldron of pressures, ranging from the preservation of jobs to conflicting notions of curricular integrity, questions of learning productivity, or the minimization of excessive course-taking, are likely to be singularly irrelevant.

A key to balancing such interests lies in leadership: from campus presidents, faculty senate and union heads, multi-campus system boards and chancellors, state higher education executive officers, governors, and legislatures. Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas Virginia, and Washington have adopted a range of solutions, going well beyond vague system-wide "guarantees" and exhortations, to policies such as common general education requirements for baccalaureate and associate degree institutions (Schmidt, 1997, p. A28). Florida law in 1995 mandated that baccalaureate requirements be reduced to 120 credit hours, that general education requirements be reduced to 36 hours, and that major program prerequisites be standardized, offered, and accepted by all of Florida’s nine public universities and 28 community colleges within one year of enactment (LeMon and Pitter, 1996). The Illinois Board of Higher Education similarly recommended adoption of a statewide General Education Core Curriculum (GECC) and the incorporation of these requirements into the state’s model associate degrees to facilitate transfer articulation and to lessen the wastage of community college credits through transfer (Illinois State Board of Higher Education, 1994). At the same time, legislatures and coordinating boards can overreach in their attempt to remove all impediments to transfer and timely degree completion, even to the point of forcing inappropriate courses into the baccalaureate curriculum. James Mingle, executive director of the State Higher Education Executive Officers, warned that the consequences of these political solutions "are likely to be further erosion of coherence, integrity, and breadth and depth of the curriculum. This will also demean the process of learning and discovery as a legitimate end unto itself" (Mingle, 1997, p. 34).

Curricular Redundancy

The principal suspected curricular redundancy is between the first and second years of college and the last two years of high school, for which increasing numbers of courses are considered "college-level." College-level learning in high school follows three basic models (Johnstone, 1996):

• Examination-Based: Learning certified as worthy of college credit mainly through the examination and assessments of the Advanced Placement (AP) program of the College Board. (The actual granting of credit remains up to the matriculating college or university.) The AP program has grown for more than 20 consecutive years, in 1997 giving some 921,600 AP examinations to 584,554 high school students (The College Board, 1997).
• College- or University-Based: Qualified high school students take courses at a local college or university for college credit, taught by regular college faculty, generally alongside regularly-matriculated college students, but without themselves being matriculated. Variations on this model are courses taught in the high school, either through direct instruction or via distance learning, but still from college faculty who teach mainly college students. By 1997, this model (sometimes called "dual enrollment") was permitted in all states and was being actively promoted and financially assisted in at least 19 states (Crooks, 1998).
• School-Based: In this model, a college or university certifies that certain courses in the high school (other than AP), taught by high school teachers (generally accorded adjunct faculty status by the sponsoring college), are equivalent in content and standards to the regular courses at that particular college or university, independent of the students’ professed intent to matriculate there, and independent of the student’s performance on any nationally normed examination. Other colleges may or may not accept the credit in transfer. Syracuse University’s Project Advance, begun in 1973, is the national model, and by 1996 was validating courses in more than 100 high schools for some 4500 students, with several hundred similar programs offered throughout the US (Chapman, 1977; Wilbur and Lambert, 1995).

The benefits generally ascribed to college-level learning in high school are three (Johnstone, 1996). In theory, successful performance can lessen the total number of baccalaureate courses that need to be earned after college matriculation, thus reducing, at least for some students, the time and number of additional credits courses required for the baccalaureate, and more importantly, the cost of the baccalaureate to the student, family, and taxpayer. Second, credits earned in high school can reduce the number of lower division, and possibly redundant, courses that need to be taken in college, allowing earlier entry into the advanced courses and a richer baccalaureate degree (whether or not it is accelerated). Third, such programs are thought by many to strengthen the high school curriculum and raise the stakes for good high school performance through the end of the senior year, regardless of the use to which the credits may be put in college.

There are possible downsides to college-level learning in high school. Dual enrollment programs can be disruptive, both to the high school and to the student, and may move some students prematurely from the high school to the much less structured collegiate culture. Most dual enrollment programs actually impose additional costs on taxpayers, with the participating students being "counted" for the same teaching/learning experience both for high school enrollment-driven state school aid and also for enrollment-driven state aid at the public college (Crooks, 1998). In theory, there should be counterbalancing savings from the presumed earlier college graduation. These have not been documented yet, except for a study of Minnesota's early Postsecondary Enrollment Options program, which still found a net cost to the state taxpayer (House Research Department, 1993, pp. 85-87). Also, the credit validation model at some colleges is viewed by some as validating little more than some good high school courses taught by good high school teachers, but lacking the full collegiate learning ambiance that sets college apart from high school. (In response to this criticism, the validating college may point out that such high school courses are probably as good or better than many college or university courses taught by adjunct or graduate student instructors.)

Another possible downside to college-level learning in high school, especially to the Advanced Placement Program, is its curricular hegemony over the learning of the most academically able high school students. In some schools, AP courses may so dominate the programs of the top students that little genuine curricular or pedagogical experimentation can take place, at least with these very top students.

Although college-level learning in high school, through all three models, appears to be increasing rapidly, there is little evidence, as yet, that the phenomenon is increasing learning productivity by accelerating time to degree or diminishing unnecessary college course-taking. The credit validation model is still relatively small, albeit growing. Dual enrollment is growing rapidly, but with undocumented savings. Conventional wisdom, buttressed by preliminary evidence suggests that many, or perhaps most, AP credits appear not to be accelerating progress toward the baccalaureate, but are being used for other reasons, for example:

• to get a "head start" on key courses that will be taken again in college (such as calculus, physics, chemistry, or languages);
• to allow a double major or earlier entry in advanced courses in the chosen major;
• to secure an easier freshman year, or a lighter senior year;
• or perhaps not to be applied at all, but merely used to meet the expectations of admissions committees at selective colleges and universities where AP courses on the high school transcript are expected as evidence of requisite academic ambition.

State legislation and public multi-campus system policies are encouraging more acceptance of college-level credits by public colleges and universities by such measures as: (1) paying AP examination costs for all, or at least for needy, students; (2) mandating acceptance for baccalaureate credit of all AP scores of 3 or higher; (3) allowing school districts to count their high school participants as fully enrolled for the purpose of state aid (thereby lessening the resistance to dual enrollment from the high schools) while also allowing the public colleges to count the full-time equivalent credits toward their enrollment targets. Since 1997, at least 19 states have been recovering institutional costs associated with dual enrollment by including these high school students in the postsecondary institution’s full-time-equivalent enrollment that drives the state contribution to the budget. Colleges and universities in 10 states were found to be absorbing these costs and utilizing funds to sustain dual enrollment programs apart from their FTE base aid. Students and their parents are charged tuition for dual enrollment courses in 29 states, while state enrollment-based aid to the public schools may "follow the student" to the postsecondary institution to supplement or cover tuition expenses in 10 states (Crooks, 1998).

Colleges and universities can also contribute toward greater productivity of learning by treating college-level credits brought in by entering freshmen similar to transfer credits brought in from community colleges, by encouraging their application toward baccalaureate credit where appropriate, and by discouraging a virtual duplication of a similar college course merely for an easier ride or a higher grade. However, even where there is little degree program acceleration, and even where there continues to be some redundancy of learning, college-level learning in high school can still enhance the productivity of education, both secondary and higher, by raising the overall amount of learning per dollar input of teacher and/or faculty resources.

Variations in Structure and Methodology of the Curriculum

A quite different approach to the enhancement of productivity, given a particular curricular content, is to look for variations in either the structure of the curriculum or the method of instruction that promise to provide more learning for less money. (Such variations generally do not assume speedups or increased faculty workloads per se, although they may assume considerable alteration in how the faculty workload--and the teaching component thereof--is to be carried out.) There has been an abundant literature on the economics of the curriculum since Beardsley Ruml’s 1959 classic, Memo to a College Trustee (Ruml, 1959).

In a 1971 report prepared for the Carnegie Commission in Higher Education, Howard Bowen and Gordon Douglas called attention to the inefficiencies of what they termed "the conventional plan of lecture-discussion," which dominated then as it does today. This plan, they wrote:

The many proposals for increasing the productivity of the curriculum, most of them developed with the small, private liberal arts college in mind, are of two general forms. First are proposals to alter the mix of large and small classes, generally increasing the number of large classes (shown to be less costly but no less effective than small or medium size classes), keeping the small classes that are critical to particular learning goals (for example, the kinds of learning that depend on a seminar setting), and reducing the number of medium-size classes that are costly, but demonstrably no more effective than the larger ones, or that serve only the interests of individual faculty rather than the needs of the student or the curriculum. This was the thrust of the Ruml Memo, and was given considerable analytical refinement in by Bowen and Douglas (1971).

A second approach, with many variations, is to make better use of the student’s own time and capacity for self-paced and/or peer-assisted learning, thus freeing more of the time of the faculty to plan and manage the learning process and to assist more students, but only when and where necessary.

The idea of greater individualization and self-pacing is pedagogically attractive. However, as any faculty who has ever mentored "independent study" or dissertation research knows, such "self-pacing" usually takes up far more time per student than teaching via conventional didactic lectures and discussion. Self-paced learning that is both more effective and cheaper per student (or at least not more costly) requires discipline on the part of both student and instructor to restrain the natural impulses of the instructor to intervene, and of the student to return too quickly for help. Self-paced learning requires substantial capital investment in technology. Without the declared purpose of enhancing productivity, both technology and self-pacing will almost certainly increase per-student costs, perhaps enriching learning, but doing little or nothing to respond to the challenge outlined at the start of this chapter, which was to restrain the cost of higher education to parent, student, and taxpayer alike.

Advancing the Learner-Centered Curriculum

A final link between the curriculum and productivity lies in the many studies showing learning to be more effective–that is, more learned by more students--when the students are involved: that is, more than passive recipients (or, in too many cases, non-recipients) of the wisdom of the teacher, transmitted by lectures and teacher-dominated discussions. Love and Love (1995) summarize many of the theories, prescriptions, and underlying research associated with figures such as Astin, Tinto, Chickering, Kuh, and many others. These theories and prescriptions deal with the structure and method, but generally not with the content, of the curriculum except insofar as the content should deal with things real and able to engage the student. While there are important (and many more subtle) differences among these theories and models, for example, of alternative pedagogies, collaborative learning, or learning communities, most stress academically and intellectually-oriented peer activities, often in association with the world of student affairs and the extracurriculum. Most emphasize working in groups, self (or group)-paced learning, a more integrated, or "linked," curriculum, and extensive faculty-student interaction both in and out of the classroom.

Such theories or models of the undergraduate experience, while promising more learning, do so for the most part without regard to cost or to the practicality or likelihood of getting the very great changes in both institutional and faculty behavior needed to teach with such alternative curricular structures and pedagogies. If learning productivity means enhancing learning without adding cost or adding to faculty workload, these theories probably do not come under the learning productivity rubric. However, to the extent that some faculty are willing and able to teach in radically different ways, given only the appropriate alterations in rewards, academic calendars, and curricular structures, but with no more resources, it would be appropriate to include collaborative learning and learning communities among the enhancements to the productivity of learning. Unfortunately, there is no indication that there are such significant numbers of such receptive faculty in the right institutions. Although this conclusion could be viewed as defeatist, or at least as insufficiently ambitious and certainly as conservative, the profound alterations to content, method, and curricular structure necessary to enhance learning significantly through these new models will almost certainly require more resources, and possibly even new institutions--neither of which are likely in our foreseeable future.

Conclusion

As overall resources available to higher education decline, legislatures and oversight bodies will pay increasing attention to its costs and benefits. Evidence at the federal and state level shows that unfocused academic exploration and credits lost through transfer, at times exacerbated by unarticulated curricular requirements and poor advisement, contribute to excessive time and credits required for the baccalaureate.

Instructional technology is discussed frequently as a mediator and partial solution for the degree completion problem. As more faculty comfortable with various forms of IT enter the academy, a variety of methods of teaching and learning methods will become more common, but will still not eliminate the dominance of the more familiar forms of knowledge delivery. Technologically mediated education is not intended to cut costs, but it can clearly enhance higher educational productivity as it adds value to student learning.

Educators, including faculty as well as administrators and members of governing and coordinating boards, need to appreciate their contributions to the problems of excess course-taking, lost credits, and other forms of curricular inefficiency, as well as the ways they can enhance learning productivity, in part through modifications to the curriculum. They need to be mindful of the potential curricular misfit and lost learning arising from a plurality of first-time students entering community colleges, many planning to transfer to a four-year college. They need to be mindful of the potential productivity gains from college-level learning in high school. They need to balance the precious tradition of faculty and departmental authority over curriculum and standards, as well as the unqualified virtue ascribed to students' unlimited curricular exploration, with a recognition of the costs of such traditions and of the increasing likelihood that governors, legislatures, and boards are going to impose their own changes if they perceive colleges and universities to be unresponsive to the imperative for some kind of productivity gain in higher education.

Governors, legislators, and members of governing and coordinating boards, meanwhile, need to temper their quest for restructuring and cost-cutting with an appreciation of the difference between "enhancing learning" and "cutting costs." They need to be aware of the unlikelihood of instructional technology yielding actual cost savings. And they need to be aware of the appropriate differences between the high school and the college learning environments, and between the missions of two- and four-year colleges. Seamless webs, the erasure of boundaries, and faster time to degree all make good copy for educational policy-makers. But neither high schools nor community colleges nor four-year colleges (nor especially their students nor the public) will be well served by obliterating altogether these different missions and learning environments to the mere end of foreshortening the students' formal education and saving public money.   References

About the Authors:
D. Bruce Johnstone is University Professor of Higher and Comparative Education at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is former chancellor of the State University of New York, and founder of the Learning Productivity Network.

Patricia A. Maloney is a doctoral candidate at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a research associate at the Learning Productivity Network.