Maricopa Learning Project: What's it all about?
Naomi Story, MCLI

Discourse about Learning at Maricopa appears to have taken hold across the district. One of the compelling questions that some have asked is why is Learning such a hot topic. As Maricopa continuously updates, enhances, reforms, and transforms itself to meet not only the demands of a global and local economy, but most importantly, of our students who will frame our future, we must clearly stand for something. What we can stand for is quite simple...Learning. That all students can learn, be independently and individually motivated, and be life long learners can be our daily mental mantra. Do our current educational environments, processes, and systems encourage student investment in Learning as a lifelong enterprise? How do we build the capacity and encourage a self-renewing context that perpetuates Learning as a value? The Maricopa Learning Paradigm attempts to move us to a discourse that coalesces Maricopans around a higher level of commitment of Learning as our core value and raision d'etre for leadership and institutional transformation.

As a brief chronology, the Maricopa Learning Paradigm paper was drafted in 1994 by a Maricopa Leadership group as part of a PEW-Kellogg-American Council on Education (ACE) project to look at change and institutional transformation. This group of governing board members, presidents, managers and faculty had been appointed by the Chancellor and started work in 1991. Mini-roundtables as well as a Strategic Conversation were held across Maricopa from 1994-1996 to introduce and discuss the four key concepts of the paper.

In the Spring of 1996 the project moved from its conceptual stage to an implementation phase. The first strategy was to create a broad-based awareness of the document and its concepts and to become a more faculty-driven dialogue. Operationally, the project moved from the Chancellor's Office to the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI). As the project focus shifted, a smaller primarily faculty Project Team was appointed. David Weaver, CGCC, Donna Tannehill formerly at SCC and now at RSC, Bob Bendotti, PVCC, and Alvin Shipley, GCC provide faculty leadership and voice. Andy Bernal, GWCC, represents the Deans of Instruction and Alfredo G. de los Santos Jr. sits as the chief academic officer for the MCCCD and I coordinate the project. Chancellor Elsner, as an ex-officio member, is kept apprised of the Project Team's progress so that he can update the people at Pew, Kellogg, and ACE on our efforts.

In October 1996 as Instructional Council representatives were introduced to the Maricopa Learning Paradigm (MLP), copies of the same materials were sent to all full-time faculty. Each Instructional Council was asked to respond to questions that focused on knowledge, practices, and capacity building in terms of the four key concepts by early December.

In addition to compiling and analyzing the responses to the MLP draft, the project team has continued to encourage and foster a more rigorous and meaningful set of dialogues such as the forum Bob Bendotti and Donna Tannehill facilitated at the January, 1997 All Faculty Convocation. Their session, Enhancing Learning as an Organizational Value, reaped numerous and significant responses to the questions "What does it mean to be learning centered?" and "What needs to occur at the institutional and on a personal level to become more learning centered?" Responses include:

What does it mean to be learning centered?

• Ask yourself "What are my students going to learn today?" not "What am I going to teach today?"
• I teach community college students; not I teach math; we teach a who, not a what.
• Active curiosity; leadership which gives voice to that value (President, Deans, & Chairs); institutional budgets which support the enterprise.
• Each campus has a different mission and focus; are we aligned in our disciples? Is the student prepared to learn? i.e., in the olden days one attended college to learn, nowadays the goal appears to be to get passed on to the next step. The responsibility must be shared by both teachers and students to be "learner-centered."
• The student is the "leading" partner in the learning process and activities; the learning process is structure to allow flexibility in learning scope, and includes all system components including: goal setting, assessment, feedback, and adjustment.
• Individual instructors are sincerely focused on helping students; institutions are focused on helping instructors and students; always try to improve as an instructor.

• Give teachers time to investigate things like learning styles and new methods, etc.
• Support time, education, research results, technology.
• Form communities of faculty learners; days of reflection; meaningful faculty development.
• Shared responsibility of both students, teacher, and institution. Need for institutional support, i.e. secretary, administration, department chairs.
• Assessment throughout and often (and follow up); feedback immediate and often; development of varied methods for continual improvement (techniques); support for standards by administration; support for the environment where learning will take place; keeping current in order to facilitate; competition can take focus away from students; support faculty efforts.

• We tend to assess learning at the recall level rather than at the synthesis or application levels because the competencies are easier to assess at that [lower] level.
• We need to change our infrastructures including our funding formula, i.e., State aid is based on the number of full-time equivalent student enrollment on the 45th day NOT whether students learned.
• Elements of the learning paradigm exists. However, they are episodic and not systemic and occur in pockets across our district. For example, faculty who have been trying to implement "learning communities" need to buck the system which makes it [the system] not self-sustaining, but self-destroying.
• In order for colleges to put the learner in the center, they must change almost everything they do.
• The challenge of change is to change, not to challenge change.

Recently, ACE asked the project team to report the progress and results of the project to date. It is very clear that a large portion of Maricopa is truly engaged and fired up about learning. The fact that Maricopans are engaging in conversations about learning, looking at the implications of organizational infrastructures on learning, pedagogical approaches, assessment, and re-examining faculty, student, and institutional roles and responsibilities as we look to the 21st Century makes Maricopa practice self-renewal and become a learning organization.