Learning Productivity Network Established in Buffalo

With support from the Ford Foundation, Dr. Johnstone and the faculty associated with the network have embarked on several research and policy initiatives. In addition, the Learning Productivity Network will engage in several forms of print and high-tech communications, including this quarterly newsletter, an electronic discussion group, and a World Wide Web page. Network documents will be available on the Internet by early summer.

Higher education faculty and advanced graduate students are presently conducting research into several learning productivity issues, including:

• a review of state initiatives to promote and expand college-level learning in high school;
• a review of current "marketed" three year baccalaureate programs;
• a study of institutional policies toward the acceptance and use of college-level credits earned in high school;
• an exploration of transcript databases to ascertain the actual use that graduates made of the college-level credits they had earned in high school;
• a study of factors associated with the acceptance or rejection of technology-aided instruction; and
• an historical study of what was learned from the plethora of time-shortened degree projects spawned during the 1970s.

Learning Productivity: Some Culprits and Solutions

From this perspective, there are a number of impediments to more productive learning. These include:

• redundant learning;
• excessive drift and aimless academic exploration, including academic schedules geared more to student or faculty convenience than learning;
• excessive non-learning time in the academic day, week, and year;
• insufficient use of different learning methods, including self-paced and asynchronous learning;
• insufficient realization of the potential of college-level learning in the high school years.

Focusing on increased learning productivity would provide several solutions to these conditions. Among these are:

• minimizing the extensive "down time" in student learning (such as lengthy vacation time and ineffective academic week scheduling);
• reducing aimless curricular exploration and excessive drift that currently characterizes American higher education;
• lessening the learning "lost" in the transition between high school and college, as well as enhancing learning during the last years of high school, and maximizing the potential of collegiate-level learning during the high school years;
• individualizing the pace of student learning, permitting learners to proceed more rapidly when appropriate by utilizing new technology and pedagogies.

1. Attainment of a baccalaureate or associate degree at less cost either (or both) to the taxpayer and to the student and/or parent;

2. enrichment of the high school experience (particularly during twelfth grade, much of which is thought to be wasted even for good students in good schools), quite apart from any impact on the ultimate cost of higher education either to the student or the taxpayer;

3. earlier entry into the advanced courses in a student's academic major and hence a richer undergraduate degree, regardless of how many credits are actually counted toward the baccalaureate.

A preliminary analysis of college-level learning in high school reveals the following most common forms:

1. Advanced Placement. The essential elements of the Advanced Placement Program (a program of the College Board) are: (a) identification and approval of both course and high school teacher as "advanced placement"; (b) selective admission into the courses so designated; and (c) validation of the learning as "college-level" by means of an externally graded and monitored AP examination. In 1995, more than 500,000 students took nearly 900,000 AP examinations; the numbers have been growing at about 10 percent annually.

2. Credit Validation. Some colleges and universities will validate certain courses taught in the high school by certain high school teachers as equivalent in content, standards, and instructional quality to a regular college course taught by their college faculty.

"Validation" usually involves approval of the syllabus and assignments by the college, as well as some amount of instruction to the participating high school teachers. Participating students receive credit from the validating college or university whether or not they matriculate there. Acceptance of the credits by colleges other than the validating institution will depend on the confidence that the institution of matriculation has in the college or university that has validated the high school course as worthy of college credit.

The most established of these programs is Syracuse University's Project Advance, operating since 1973, with some 100 high schools and 4500 students participating by the early 1990s. Syracuse has conducted research validating the equivalence of Project Advance courses in the high school with regular Syracuse University courses.

3. Contemporaneous Attendance. A growing number of colleges (many of them community colleges) are encouraging local high school students to take college classes for credit, often in regular college classes alongside other college students, sometimes at special times and places, but always taking regular college courses taught by college instructors.

4. Early Entry. This is not strictly college credit in high school, but actual college matriculation during ages that most young people are in high school. Several colleges have attempted to recruit and accept students after their sophomore or junior years of high school--most notably Chicago in the Hutchins years, and more recently Simon's Rock in Massachusetts.

5. The International Baccalaureate. The International Baccalaureate is a two-year curriculum for secondary schools throughout the world, modeled on the more rigorous European academic secondary schools and designed to assure entry to the Continental European universities. Headquartered in Geneva Switzerland, the IB is provided by some 180 secondary schools in North America. Credit is given upon successful completion of externally-graded examinations. Many American colleges and universities grant up to one year of credit for holders of the International Baccalaureate.

D. Bruce Johnstone and several advanced graduate students at SUNY Buffalo are investigating:

• state policies to encourage college level learning in high school: such as in Minnesota, Oregon, Georgia, Utah, Florida, and Virginia;
• institutional policies toward college credit earned prior to matriculation: e.g., whether credits so earned substitute for general education requirements, or are counted only as "free electives," and so forth;
• the actual use to which college credits earned in high school are put by graduating college students: e.g., to graduate early, to graduate with additional credits, or to accelerate entry into graduate or advanced professional studies.

• California Higher Education Policy Center: http://www.policycenter.org/ Educational Policy Analysis Archives: http//seamonkey.ed.asu/epaa/
• Global Internet's WWW Resources for Higher Education: http://www.mid.net/HIGHER/
• Higher Education Resources (HEPROC): http//rrpubs.coms/heproc
• Internet Resources for Institutional Research: http://apollo.gmu.edu/~jmilam/air95.html
• National Learning Infrastructure Initiative: http://www.educom.edu/program/nlii/index.html Society for College and University Planning (SCUP): http://www-personal.umich.edu/~scup/index.html
• Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: http://www.umanitoba.ca/UTS/STLHE
• US Department of Education: http://www.ed.gov/

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