In response to an invitation to join the working retreat that is designed to “Apply the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond,” a spontaneous diatribe erupted as Donald Norman, (President of Unext.com and former professor of psychology at University of California, San Diego), Buz Hunt (professor of psychology at University of Washington), Diane F. Halpern (professor of psychology at California State University, San Bernardino), and Bob Bjork (professor of psychology at University of California, Los Angeles) exchange views (and barbs) as they ponder the question, “Can the university be fixed?” Everyone agreed that it is, at least, somewhat broken, but the participants differ widely in what to do about it.

If you want to join the rant, please send us your comments. Just click on “contact us,” and let us know what you think.  

The Invitation:

To: Donald Norman

I am writing to invite you to join a group of approximately 30 outstanding psychologists and other scientists as we work on one of the most intellectually challenging issues of our time–the redesign of higher education. We are planning a 2 ½-day working retreat that will address the issue of “Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond.” The working retreat is organized under the auspices of the American Psychological Society and funded by the Spencer Foundation and the Marshall-Reynolds Trust Fund.

The working retreat will bring together researchers from a variety of backgrounds that are relevant to applying and extending what we know in the learning sciences to post-secondary teaching and learning. We are especially concerned with issues of: 1) long-term retention and transfer, 2) problem solving and critical thinking, 3) motivation, and 4) social factors. A major portion of the conference will be spent in small working groups where participants will discuss what we already know about cognitive, motivational, and social principles that could be used to enhance learning and how these principles could be applied to higher education. To help us identify potential research initiatives, we also want to know what you think the most important questions are concerning the application of psychological theories and research to the messy real world where people teach and learn.  Participants will help to develop action plans for the redesign of higher education—colleges, universities, the work place, and other places where adults engage in formal learning.  

Diane

Don Norman’s Reply—A Rant About the University 

Thanks, Diane (with an assist by Bob)

Sorry for the delay, but that is also the story of my recent life. Diane's invitation arrived and I kept it in my "in" box to get to later.  In theory, I keep an empty in box, just a few items.  Well, major and minor crises later, two trips to Brazil, one on just a few day's notice, lots of travel, and guess what -- my in box was swamped and Diane's request was way off the bottom of the screen.

So, here goes --A rant on the politics of the university and why the conference you propose is both important and hopeless. It will accomplish little good except yet another report, yet another white paper. So, if you are still interested, here is my rant.

Let me point out that you are not the only ones interested in this topic.

Here is one invitation (I turned down)

We cordially invite you to attend a two-day symposium on Improving Learning through Information Technology that will be held on January 24-25, 2001, at the National Academies Building in Washington, DC

Here is one invitation I accepted

Workshop on Impact of Information Technology on the Future of the Research University: Launching the Dialogue

Sponsored by: The National Academies
Co-Sponsors
The W. K. Kellogg Foundation
The Woodrow Wilson Foundation
The National Science Foundation

Dates:  January 22-23, 2001
Location:  The National Academies of Sciences Building

Here is another invitation I accepted (and have already attended):

We are helping to develop plans for a non-profit "Learning Federation", an industry-led partnership jointly sponsored by industry and government.   Its purpose will be to fund research that can dramatically advance the state-of-the-art in learning science and technology (LST).   We believe that  the task requires an annual research budget that would ramp up to an order of magnitude of $200M per year.

We hope that you will be willing to share your views on research priorities for such as a consortium in a workshop that will be held in Washington at NSF on November 28th and 29th under NSF sponsorship.

 W. Richards (Rick) Adrion, National Science Foundation
Randy Hinrichs, Microsoft Research
Henry Kelly, Federation of American Scientists
Ed Lazowska, University of Washington
Richard Newton, University of California, Berkeley
Raj Reddy, Carnegie Mellon University
Andy van Dam, Brown University

I am writing to see if there is any possibility that you would consider delivering a 50-minute invited address at the Convention.  The convention will be on August 23-26 in San Francisco, CA.

On top of all this, I do have a day-job -- several in fact.
But here is the real rub: what makes you think that Learning Science is relevant?

Here is my take on the University -- it is a political shambles, and any attempt to change will fall into the deadly tarpit.

Here is how my normal talk on the topic goes.

1) The University is not about teaching and learning.  It is a place for faculty. Students are a necessary burden.

2) The research University is a place for the advancement of knowledge, where scholars assemble and push forward our understanding of academic topics.   The actual advancement is done through petty quarrels, political infighting, and continual bickering. Indeed, young academics are taught to be fierce critics of one another's work, not supporters. Words of praise are rare.  But the scientific method thrives on such adversity, hence the steady increase in knowledge.

3) In the research university, faculty are rewarded for their individual contributions, their grantsmanship, and their world-wide fame. Working to help the university is not rewarded. Teaching is not rewarded. Working cooperatively is not rewarded. Mind you, these are all desired attributes, at least so everyone says, and they are not punished, but the reward goes to the famous, and anything that gets in the way of fame is counterproductive to the young faculty member hoping to get promoted, hoping to get tenure.

4) The non-research university suffers from envy. The faculty there all wish they could be in a research university, so they struggle to publish, struggle to join the elite. They are in even worse shape because they do not have the light teaching loads nor the resources of the research university.  And even in those universities that pride themselves on teaching, the scholar who has attracted world fame is still treated better than the others.  In addition, there is factor 5, below.

5) Faculty do not know how to teach.  They were never taught how to teach. They never assess the quality of their instruction, except through exams (which they themselves make up and grade) and through student popularity polls.

6) A lot is known about teaching and learning, but to make a difference in the university, the reward structure has to change. Faculty have to be helped to teach better. They have to have independent measures of the quality of their instruction. and they need a lot of time, resources, and assistance to do this.  The reward structure must reflect the effort.

7) Students?  They survive, mostly by helping one another.

8) Contrast the University teaching with what we do at UNext.  We use senior faculty from elite research universities to give us the content and to evaluate the academic integrity of the course. We hire PhDs in instructional technology to create whole new courses, using constructivist approaches, that are very unlike the course taught in the university classroom.  We hire excellent media experts to prepare special learning aides. We hire our own instructors who coach and mentor students, facilitating instruction.  And we test and test and test -- each course is tested at least three times before it is released for use, tested moreover, by people independent of those who develop the course..  Cost? The total cost of a course equivalent to a university semester is about $120,000 for the testing and about $1 million total.  No university can afford this. (To be fair, improvements in teaching need not cost this much. We are a special case because of our commitment to distance learning.)

Can the learning sciences aid the university?  Of course, but only if the university structures itself to let it happen.

So that is why I don't want to take part in yet another conference on redoing the university by applying learning principles.

The university is simply not about teaching and until it is, it is a waste of time to act otherwise.    

Am I being cynical?  Probably.  But I also think I am being realistic.  I have spoken with multiple University presidents and administrators who agree with me.  Faculty rule the university, not administrators, and faculty are among the most conservative, the most resistant to change of any group I have ever encountered. I know -- I was once one of them.

SO all this, and I haven't even thought deeply about my schedule, and whether I can fit in a 4 day meeting.  But that is a long meeting for a cause I consider both important and hopeless.

Donald A. Norman
President, UNext Learning Systems
UNext.com 
Professor Emeritu, University of California at San Diego

Buz Hunt Comments on Don Norman’s Rant

This is what I hope is a serious, albeit long, response to Don Norman's rant. Don, if you are listening I would like to know what you have to say.

Don's rant touches on several topics. His conclusion amounts to saying "give up, the only hope is a new way (lead by companies like mine)."

This conclusion underestimates the awesome power of social inertia. On the fifty year horizon, who knows? However 10-15 years from now residential universities will still be with us, most students will be what we call traditional students. (The percentage may decrease, but they will still be the vast majority.) If we are still having to import scientific and technical talent it will be a national disgrace...so we have to try to do something. Seriously, unless we have a major war (including attacks on the continental US), society will stick with the university as the major vehicle for post-secondary education just because it's there. Does technology change things? Yes. Instantly. No. Look how long FORTRAN hung around.

Now, let's take a look at the details of the rant. They are informative.

Conferences and busy schedules: Every conference Don cited (and he could have cited more) emphasizes technology as the solution. However a recent UK report (Pendergast, Abacus Learning Systems, UK) estimates that 75 % of students enrolled in e-learning courses do not finish. The same report claims much greater success when non-technological solutions, such as provision of a human tutor (via email) and group learning, are combined with technology.

IMPLICATION FOR US. Do NOT get carried away with technology. IT is a vehicle for delivering well-designed instruction. Student motivation and attitude may be a much bigger problem. I'm for putting instruction on the WWW, that's what I do. Psychology's major contribution may be to complement the technology. Motivational and organizational issues may be central.

And politically, as Don points out, other people are flogging the technology bit. We want to make our own contribution.

SYSTEM CONSTRAINTS. The majority of Don's rant is directed at what an industrial organizer might call system constraints. I would not be quite so biting as Don, but in general he is dead right. The major bars to adopting new techniques for teaching and learning are not scientific. They have to do with administrative structures and individual reward structures. (One might think Don had hit everything with his rant. He forgot overcentralization of command, with the result that chairs,.the only supervisors who can have sensible opinions about the quality of a professor's work, are reduced to filling out forms, so that Deans and Provosts can administer numbers with computers instead of administering people with leadership.)

IMPLICATIONS FOR US:  It is imperative that we include in our discussions a number of administrators..deans, provosts, etc...who can speak to these issues. If the conference becomes a conference of cognitive and social psychologists talking to each other, then Don's prediction of the outcome will be dead right. I am seriously concerned that we are too balanced toward people like us, and do not have enough administrative types.

Administrators at the national level are NOT relevant. The NSF, NIE and APS-APA officers have opinions, often much like Don's, but they do not have the crucial day-to-day experience. National people should be represented, because they have influence over the allocation of funds for the "next step,' and therefore should listen to the problem, AS THE ADMINISTRATORS see it, the preferred solution, AS THE PSYCHOLOGISTS see it, and the rebuttal conferences. The national level administrators may be useful as summarizers and commentators on the next step, but if they try to guide the first step the conference is a goner.

Don's prediction--the conference will issue a white paper and be gone.

This is, in fact, the most likely result of any conference. The most likely result of a grant proposal is that it will be rejected. The probability that something good will happen to you if you do not try is zero. I prefer low probabilities to zeroes.

This conference will be a modest success if one co-operative program, involving more than one university, is begun. The program should not be a research program, except perhaps at the project demonstration level. While outside funding would be nice, some substantial university funding should be involved, largely as a gesture of commitment. (Administrators have psyches too. Did someone ever hear something about cognitive dissonance?)

The conference will be an unqualified success if two such programs are started. It will be fantastic if three such projects start.

The conference will be a failure if it results in a collection of chapters containing contributed papers. This eats trees.

I hope somebody comments on this. Don, are you listening?

                                                                                    Buz Hunt

Diane Halpern Responds to Don Norman’s Rant

Dear Don:

I don't share your pessimism about change--in fact, I believe that it is inevitable. Education is such a valuable commodity that "doing it well" will be rewarded, even if it means that the university must change. It won't be quick. We will also have military, NSF, accreditation, business, funding agencies, College Board, and DoE people at the retreat.

Finally, I realize that I made a mistake in "selling" the retreat. It is really 2+ days--we start around dinner on a Thursday and participants will leave for early flight before or after breakfast on Sunday.

Thanks again. I'll be cheering for the success of UNext. (I loved your job ads--work near the metro, no need to dress, good benefits, and good vacation. Now that's how to sell a job.)

Cordially,

Diane  

Don Norman Replies to Buz Hunt and Diane Halpern

Hi Diane:

Sure, you may use my notes, and please do feel free to cite me as the author

Don Norman

President, UNext learning systems

Prof. emeritus, UCSD (Chair of Psych and of Cog sci, and all that)

(I always cite the professor emeritus and the chairs to show that I do understand the university)

I do believe that the onslaught of the for-profits will have dramatic impact in the university--for the good. It will make it essential for universities to take teaching seriously, for the first time.

Note that UNext is very careful to position itself as a friend of universities. We do not compete.  We aim at students who can't attend because of where they live, or because they are full-time employed.  In fact, we aim at people who have already passed through the university and need life-long learning.

But the impact will be there.  Many universities have come to ask if they can use our courses in their classes--and we think this a fine idea.

Remember what happened to AT&T after the long distance companies took away their lucrative long distance monopoly?  Today, AT&T is basically dead, but the consumer is better served.  Well, for-profits will take away the lucrative large introductory courses, which is how the university subsidizes the low attendance advanced seminars and the grad students.  This will have serious negative impact on the university unless it wakes up.

Good luck -- I think change will come, but it will be bloody

Don

Dear Buz:

Let me add to, and slightly modify Buz's comments on my rant.

Buz: Don's rant touches on several topics. His conclusion amounts to saying "give up, the only hope is a new way (lead by companies like mine)."

No, that's not quite it.  First of all, I do not believe that distance education will--or should--substitute for residence universities. I believe the traditional education cycle with roughly the first 1/3 of one's life in school is apt to be with us for a very long time.  My company aims at the other 2/3rds, when you are employed or retired, but for various reasons, unable to attend a residential university.

I also don't want to give up.  Education is too important for that.  But the bottlenecks are not pedagogical, they are organizational and political.  The K-12 problems are mostly political, and very hard to tackle because of the fragmented nature of local control of schools.  The university level is very hard to tackle because the university is not about teaching, it is about the advancement of knowledge.  So if you want to improve teaching, you are trying to change the secondary part of the institution.

I have long thought that state universities were hypocritical.  They aimed at high quality research and rewarded professors for high quality research, yet they told the public and the legislature that they were about teaching and education.  That's why the legislature always gets annoyed with 6-hour teaching loads.  Professors think that high, legislatures think that disgustingly low.  The hypocritical part is that universities refuse to tell the truth - to make a strong argument that the real activities of the professors are research and public service.  Of course, if they did that, they would see their funding drop.  There is a reason for the hypocrisy.

Buz: However a recent UK report (Pendergast, Abacus Learning Systems, UK) estimates that 75 % of students enrolled in e-learning courses do not finish.

One can do better than that, but yes, there are real issues. Distance education (DE) does not trap students into courses the way a residential university does (I don't mean this in a negative way. I often force myself to be tapped in order to do things I wouldn't otherwise finish.)

One bad session at the computer, and the DE person might never come back.  One bad lecture or even a bad course, and the residential student keeps at it. The social factors in the two situations are very different -- and critical to success.

Buz: Implications for us.  Do not get carried away with technology. IT is a vehicle for delivering well-designed instruction. Student motivation and attitude may be a much bigger problem. I'm for putting instruction on the WWW, that's what I do. Psychology's major contribution may be to complement the technology. Motivational and organizational issues may be central.

Exactly.  UNext, by the way, insists it is not a technology company -- it is an educational company.  Technology is an enabler, but the pedagogy we use is that championed by Dewey -- the most powerful technologies of Dewey's time were books and blackboard.  And that will do for many courses.  (That being said, the power of the computers is the ability to provide visualizations of otherwise complex, non-visible things and the power to simulate, to let the students try "what-if" situations.  And the power to assist, as in calculators or writing tools   The power of the internet is rapid access to information, the ability to do experiments across distance, etc.   But technology is an enabler, not a necessity.

Buz: Implications for us:  It is imperative that we include in our discussions a number of administrators..deans, provosts, etc...who can speak to these issues. If the conference becomes a conference of cognitive and social psychologists talking to each other, then Don's prediction of the outcome will be dead right. I am seriously concerned that we are too balanced toward people like us, and do not have enough administrative types.

Yup. The problem, though, is with the faculty.  Most administrators understand these issues.  But the traditions of the faculty are pretty solid.  Unless the reward structure of the faculty is changed, I see no hope.  And changing the reward structure will be hard, for those faculty most in a position to do something are those who have benefited the most from the current structure.

Buz:  I hope somebody comments on this. Don, are you listening?

I listened and spoke  

Don

Buz Hunt Responds

First, thanks for listening Don. I'm going to reply because I hope it will improve the chances of the conference being productive. Also, who knows, I might talk you into coming. I know I'd like to hear more of what you are doing, and my discussion might actually be relevant to your current interests. 

Second, I hope somebody else chimes in. Don has raised some very good points. We want to be aware of them. This is the last from me unless we get a third contributor.

Points of agreement.  Don and I are in complete agreement that the major problem with university instruction is systematic. We also agree that the faculty reward structure has shaped faculty interests and attitudes (as a support structure is supposed to do!) in a way that makes research much more profitable and prestigious than teaching. University administrators have been unwilling to take the political heat to do change this.

Don and I also agree that one of the reasons this has happened is that research is where the money is, and that hypocrisy has its uses. How else could the athletic program survive?

We agree that the K-12 system has difficulty with innovation because it is decentralized beyond belief. That is not relevant to this problem.

We also agree that technology can help deliver good instruction, but that technology without good content knowledge and educational principles is not worth much.

I would add, though, that technological education can be sold as if the new technology was going to solve everything. Then when it does not people say "Oh, nothing will help the schools" and withdraw  funds. We want to be very careful that our conference does not add to the oversell.

Don spent less time addressing student motivation. It is conventional to say that the students get through, anyway. I disagree. SOME students, the ones we are all proud of, are indeed sufficiently self motivated to get excellent educations. Most of our current students get far less out of the university than they could. Granted that this has probably been true since 11th century Oxford, my (unverified) perception is that it is getting worse. Research on ways to improve student motivation and, especially, attitudes toward learning, might have a big payoff.

Summarizing my views, I would say that the three biggest problems inhibiting university teaching are, in order,

1) The systemic problems described above, which are closely mixed up with faculty attitudes and realistic career expectations.

2) student motivation. (This is a close second).

3) Failure to utilize the contributions of the cognitive and learning sciences. This is a distant third, but it is the one we know most about.

I hope that we can address 2) at the conference. I repeat that if we actually produce research-demonstration projects on topics 2) and 3) the conference will be a success. Enough of a success to justify the effort? Depends on what else you have to do with your time! I'm going to come and try! Fortunately, my day job as a tenured prof. lets me do that. (But I won't get my merit pay contributing to education.)

Buz

Bob Bjork Responds

Hi Don:

Sorry you won't be there, but I think Diane's plan to distribute your comments--vis-a-vis the University and the role UNext and the internet--is a good one.

The "beyond," incidentally, in the workshop title (Applying the Science of the Learning to the University and Beyond:...) was intended to include ventures such as UNext.  You contend that university professors do not know how to teach, and I find it hard to quarrel with that generalization, but the several remote-learning/internet ventures I have looked at closely are even less informed by the science of learning than is the typical professor.   Potentially, the net is a wonderful tool for learning, but like other tools it can be used poorly or well.  As in the case of speakers and teachers (mis)using Powerpoint, a glitzy surface structure will not compensate for educational/instructional practices that are fundamentally flawed.  Teaching that violates what we know about humans as learners and remembers is bad teaching, whether it is "high tech" or not.

Best regards,

Bob

And the Ball is Back in Don Norman’s Court

Gee Bob, you are awfully defensive.

I don't defend bad teaching, whether in universities or distance ed.  Much of the stuff out there by distance ed companies (and professors in universities doing distance ed) is crap.   Just as you said.

Once again, the issue is not technology. It is applying good pedagogy.  And testing and getting feedback so you know whether or not it is effective.  Teaching is an experimental science.  Most people get no independent feedback on the quality of their courses.

So why knock bad distance ed?  of course it is bad.  So?

Here is another concern I have about this meeting.

There are dozens of these meetings, lots of good solid research, and lots known about the issues of university education. You people sound as if you are unaware of the history and prior work.

Reminds me of an editorial I read recently in APS by a well-meaning but very naive psychologist who complained that so many products are badly designed. This person acted as if he (it was a he) was completely unaware that there is a discipline already dealing with this, that huge progress has been made, and that indeed, this is a major source of employment for psychologists.

So the editorial writer, had he done some homework, could have had better impact by urging more psychology departments to pay attention to this applied area, to teach more courses jointly with engineering and Computer Science, and to help make even more products better. Moreover, he could even have said the real culprit was psychology departments that considered that these courses re not appropriate, that did not give credit to faculty who taught them, and made it hard for people doing this sort of applied work to get tenure.

The blame is with the psychology departments, not in the technology companies. The companies don't know better -- psychologists do -- so psychologists should play a more active role.  But this is applied, and psychology likes to think it is a science. bah.

This is actually a version of the same problem I am talking about with respect to teaching. Teaching is applied. Not part of academia.

So don't make the same mistake of ignoring all the good work that has already been done and just embarrassing yourself.

Don

Bob Bjork replies:

Don:

Could be that I am defensive, but about what is a mystery to me, given that I have spent much of my career within the university trying (with little success) to convince people of the very same arguments in your rant.  What you may have been away from the university context too long to realize is that the latest approach to upgrading teaching--by administrators and others--is not to do what you say below ("applying good pedagogy, testing and getting feedback, ..."), which is what needs to be done, but is high tech, per se.  The idea seems to be that something with enough high-tech bells and whistles is automatically good teaching and that investing in such technology is evidence that the university is serious about upgrading instruction.

So I thought that the people attending this workshop might have something to tell you and others about how to improve it.  Maybe that is what I was (or you are?) defensive about.

About a third of my own PhD's have gone on to positions in human factors and intelligent product design, I was the one who clued you into the work of Paul Fitts and others at the point that you first started getting interested in human-factors issues, and I have done a fair amount of human-factors consulting.  I must admit, though, that my column was susceptible, if inadvertently, to being read as you read it, so it was less effective as an argument for human factors research than I intended it to be (but see the last couple paragraphs).  That message was clearer in the initial version of the column, which had to be shortened, and the editor shortened the title I submitted ("Human Factors 101: In the Absence of Controlled Experimentation, How about just Trying Things Out?) to "Human Factors 101: How about just Trying Things Out?", which changed its tone.  I think, though, that most people, if not you, read it as I intended and the semi-deluge of emails I received after the butterfly-ballot business in Florida reassures me that most people did (see, incidentally, the followup  article by Baron, Roediger, and Anderson, "Human Factors and the Palm Beach Ballot," in the December Observer).

You make some good points about my column in the APS Observer, but there is a limit to what can be done in 750 words.  I did ask Klaus Fiedler, after I read the draft of the guest column I asked him to write, to elaborate on the his argument that psychology needs to overcome "the artificial distinction between theory and application" (See the December issue).

In your response to me, you left off the "humbug."

A major goal of the Applying the Science of Learning (ASL) workshop is to have the participants share the good work that has already been done, not to ignore it.  Such work has occurred in so many academic and non-academic contexts that I certainly do not feel that I already know about all of it.  I'm surprised that you do.

Again, I am sorry that you won't be at the workshop, in part because one of your noteworthy contributions to our field has been to stir things up in various ways at various times.

Regards,

Bob

Don Norman:

me?  Stir things up?  Ah, gee.

Frank Dempster Comments on the Rant:

Diane, 

After reading the feisty exchange between Don Norman, Buz Hunt, and Bob Bjork on higher education (A Rant About the University), I cannot resist joining the fray.  Diane asks “Can we fix the University or is it hopeless?”  My answer is that it will be difficult but that it is not hopeless (how’s that for fence-sitting?).  It will be difficult because in my opinion one of the great barriers to the realization of ASL goals are University Teaching and Learning Centers.  Every university that I am familiar with has one, and so far as I can tell, nearly all are seriously flawed primarily because they have little or nothing to do with the scientific study of learning.  Worse, they tend to promote misinformation about how people learn by disseminating theories of learning and lists of best practices that are not grounded in empirical research.  Why is this?  To me, the answer is simple: Teaching and Learning Centers are typically staffed with folks that lack serious credentials in the science of learning.  Is this because people with learning credentials simply do not seek Teaching and Learning Center appointments?  Not necessarily.  Consider my recent experience as chair of UNLV’s Teaching and Learning Center Steering Committee, a year-long position I volunteered for in view of my own background in learning research.  Our charge was to establish the Center, to make recommendations about Center services and activities, and to conduct a national search for its first Director.  Despite much resistance from many members of the committee, I was able to submit a report that stressed such services and activities as workshops and seminars on research-validated principles of learning, assessment of pedagogies on learning outcomes and processes, as well as the dissemination of proven principles of learning to the university community.  My report also stressed the need to hire a Director who was qualified to oversee all of the above.  Well, to make a long story short, although we received many applications, some from people who possessed such qualifications (out of frustration, I eventually applied for the position) the only qualification our search committee and our Central Administration was truly interested in was administrative experience.  So that’s what we got—an administrator who also thinks he knows a lot about learning (but doesn’t everyone and isn’t that part of our problem?).  He doesn’t, of course, and as a consequence not one of my report’s recommendations on the subject of learning has been implemented.  Instead, he conducts feel-good exercises on topics such as learning styles, self-esteem, and multiple intelligences.  So much for my efforts to reform higher education here at UNLV by creating a means of making all faculty aware of well-established learning theories and concepts and how they can be used to improve the teaching-learning process.  (Since then a trusted colleague with strong learning credentials, and even some administrative experience, has applied for several Teaching and Learning Director position.  So far as we know, she has never made the short list.  Are we surprised after my teaching and learning experiences at UNLV? Not really.)

My point here is that almost all of the Teaching and Learning Centers that I am familiar with are based on what my pal Chuck Brainerd refers to as a “failed support staff model” rather than a more science-oriented model.  Nevertheless, in the eyes of central administration, these centers reflect their commitment to improving teaching and learning.  With respect to student learning, these centers are meant to do the same sorts of things the ASL project will attempt to do.  But because they often stand in marked contrast to the approach that ASL is taking, they will make it difficult for our reform agenda to be enacted.... Frank Dempster

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