Learning Abstract
(continued)
At the same time that the college began envisioning a potential focus
for quality enhancement, we agreed to be one of the 48 colleges
participating in the first open CCSSE administration.
The survey was administered, but before the college received its
results, faculty were asked to indicate how they would like for our
students to respond to each survey item “as if Surry Community College
were exactly as you would like it to be.” After receiving survey
results, faculty opinions were compared to actual values provided by
students.
In particular, the comparison depicted a discrepancy between student
reports and faculty perceptions regarding our students’ engagement in
higher order/critical thinking skills. Overall results indicated that
faculty believe students should be engaged in critical thinking skills
to a much greater extent than levels reported by students.
During special CCSSE focus-group sessions, faculty identified areas
they considered critical for enhancing student learning and recommended
strategies for improvement. Faculty wanted students to be more active
in the classroom and more involved in projects requiring integration of
ideas and information. Critical thinking activities were consistently
mentioned, as well as cross-discipline projects, capstone course
projects, and writing across the curriculum. These issues would soon be
transformed into major project objectives for improving student
learning at Surry.
THE LEAGUE'S INFLUENCE
The League for Innovation also played a critical role in the formation
of our quality enhancement plan. Surry representatives first attended a
League conference in 2001, the year before reaffirmation began and a
year before CCSSE was administered on campus. This timely introduction
to the learning college and the League’s commitment to innovation and
collaboration set the stage for the development of our quality
enhancement plan. Conference attendees, who also served as leaders in
the quality enhancement initiative, became increasingly excited about
the possibilities of such innovations at Surry. Because of this
exposure, the learning college model was at the forefront of early
discussions about Surry’s quality enhancement plan. Could we become a
learning college? We would certainly try, using reaffirmation as an
external imperative for change and the survey data as a starting point
for quality enhancement.
The college’s quality enhancement plan has three main project goals:
(1) improving student engagement, an objective triggered by CCSSE’s and
Surry’s determination to use the results to improve student learning;
(2) assessing learning outcomes; (3) and reforming college culture. The
plan was initially titled The SCC Learning Initiative: Creating a
Learning-Centered College by Improving Student Engagement, Assessing
Learning Outcomes, and Reforming College Culture.
THE ROLE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN THE LEARNING COLLEGE TRANSFORMATION
Critical thinking encompasses the more complex executive functions,
such as reasoning, motivation, and judgment, the essential skills for
success in a high-performance work environment. These high-tech global
skills have become the new currency in the information age. Activities
and assessments that foster critical thinking focus on higher-order
tasks resulting in meaningful, real-world applications. We believe we
must focus on education that moves people away from the past and
facilitates new ways of learning and interacting within the workplace.
We realized critical thinking can play a vital role in facilitating
that kind of authentic, active learning.
In fact, critical thinking addresses many of the concepts faculty had
been discussing for improving student engagement: active learning,
authentic activities and assignments, synthesizing ideas and
information from multiple sources and disciplines – in short, guiding
students toward higher-level thinking and reducing the amount of time
spent on activities and assessments that ask students to do very little
intellectual work. Critical thinking quickly became the central
component of the plan’s first objective, and the title was revised to
indicate we were Improving Student Engagement Through Critical
Thinking.
Critical thinking is also easily applied across disciplines, not as an
add-on but as a fundamental way of learning subject matter.
Additionally, each of the other collegewide learning outcomes –
communication, information literacy, technology skills, quantitative
literacy, and culture and ethics – is a way in which critical thinking
can be fostered, practiced, and evaluated. Critical thinking was soon
identified as the major learning outcome required across the
curriculum.
As part of the process of becoming a learning college, our goal is to
effectively link general education and critical thinking across all
programs and disciplines to accommodate the dynamic of an ever-changing
workplace. In the learning-centered classroom, faculty place an
emphasis on engaging students to think critically and more deeply about
course content. Thus, at Surry we are learning to apply the concepts of
critical thinking to what we teach, how we teach, and what we assess.
Recently, we were fortunate to host Linda Elder, President of the
Foundation for Critical Thinking, for four days of critical thinking
workshops. As we worked, we began to realize the significance of
critical thinking, not only for improving student engagement and
assessing learning outcomes, but also for our third project objective:
reforming college culture.
THE LEARNING COLLEGE: A CRITICAL THINKING INSTITUTION
We asked ourselves an important question: If the learning college model
and the learning paradigm involve rethinking our approach to education,
and we believe they do, then why limit critical thinking to the
classroom?
A predominant theme of the learning college concept is that learning is
first in every policy, program, and practice. Administration, staff,
and faculty alike are challenged to think critically with open minds
regarding their roles and engage collaboratively to remove barriers in
learning.
Critical thinking, then, plays a vital role in moving the entire
institution forward on the journey. We should strive to become a
critical thinking institution, applying intellectual standards such as
clarity, accuracy, depth, logic, relevance, and fairness to every
action and every conversation on campus. Applying these standards
should result in the development of intellectual traits such as
intellectual courage, confidence in reason, fairmindedness, and
intellectual integrity.
Initial resistance at Surry to the quality enhancement plan highlighted
the vital role critical thinking must play in any institutional
transformation and on both sides of the aisle: Critical thinking
requires thinkers to suspend judgment, to recognize and study biases
and assumptions, to closely examine conclusions and concepts. Critical
thinkers must identify what is relevant, accurate, and logical; must
recognize differing points of view; and must cultivate fairmindedness,
intellectual humility, and intellectual perseverance. A culture of
openness, humility, fairmindedness, integrity, and reason will allow
for the exchange of ideas and cooperation essential to this journey. In
fact, we feel that we will not see significant, long-term progress as a
learning college until critical thinking is effectively integrated into
the fabric of the institution, until it becomes as second nature to us
as breathing.
Only a year into our journey, we have learned that the elements and
tools of critical thinking are essential to our growth as a learning
college. We must commit ourselves to these values as we communicate and
collaborate along the way.
CONCLUSION
Reaffirmation and a timely student survey, viewed in light of Surry’s
initial exposure to the League and the learning college, provided
serendipitous trigger events to launch us on our journey. As we work
toward becoming a learning college, we recognize the central role that
critical thinking must play in our classrooms and in our college
culture. We have taken full advantage of these opportunities as we
continue to make progress toward the remarkable version of the learning
college we believe we can become.
Steve Atkins mailto:atkinss@surry.cc.nc.us is Vice President and Chief
Academic Officer at Surry Community College. Connie Wolfe
mailto:wolfec@surry.cc.nc.us is Director of the Academic Support Center
at Surry.
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