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The Learning-Focused Organization
Assesses Student Learning
With Criterion Three, Student Learning and Effective Teaching, the Commission continues its efforts to engage the membership in effective and useful assessment of student learning. A learning-focused organization must know what it intends its students to learn and whether that learning has actually been achieved. The first Core Component embeds assessment in the Commission’s accreditation standards. The Criterion also clearly signals the Commission’s understanding that learners succeed in no small measure because of the quality of those who create their curricula and who teach and mentor them.
Supports Learning
All learning-focused organizations strive to create learning environments supportive of the multiple learning styles of their students, frequently turning to new technologies to assist in these efforts. Criterion Three, Student Learning and Effective Teaching, draws particular attention not only to the need to attend to learning environments, but also the need to attend to services and facilities that support student learning. The learning-focused organization also supports the learning of other key constituents. As the Core Components of Criterion Four, Acquisition, Discovery, and Application of Knowledge, make clear, the capacity of faculty, staff, and administrators to continue learning is of great concern to a learning-focused organization.
Supports Scholarship
Criteria Three, Student Learning and Effective Teaching, and Four, Acquisition, Discovery, and Application of Knowledge, draw attention to the fact that scholarship, in the multiple forms defined by Ernest L. Boyer (Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, 1990), is the lifeblood of higher learning. Students need to understand the role and purpose of scholarship as a means of organizing and transmitting knowledge. Scholarship may involve pure or applied research engaged in by all types of students and faculties at all types of organizations. Faculties concerned about effective teaching ought to be supported in their understanding of the scholarship of teaching. Organizations that value discovery and creation of knowledge by faculty and students create environments to support research. They also integrate recognition of the accomplishments of students and faculties into the organizational culture.
Creates the Capacity for Lifelong Learning
A learning-focused organization is concerned with connections between the curricula it provides and the lives its students will pursue after they complete their courses, certificates, or degrees. For example, Criterion Four, Acquisition, Discovery, and Application of Knowledge, addresses the currency and relevance of the curriculum. The fit between learning and living is of central interest to any learning-focused organization. The organization may provide a rich variety of learning options, including internships, mentored research, honors programs, and service-learning, to enhance students’ learning and to demonstrate the connection between the life of the mind and the life of work.
Strengthens Organizational learning
A learning-focused organization strengthens its own capacity to learn. An organization that lacks or fails to use multiple evaluation programs to get information essential to maintaining and strengthening quality is at risk. Criterion Two, Preparing for the Future, signals this vital need, particularly in its call for ongoing evaluation and assessment processes that provide reliable evidence of institutional effectiveness and inform strategies for continuous improvement. Organizational learning also requires carefully listening to multiple constituencies. Criteria One, Mission and Integrity, and Five, Engagement and Service, draw attention to this critically important aspect of effective organizational learning. In this regard, being learning-focused is foundational to being effectively future-oriented.
Source: Handbook on Accreditation http://www.ncahlc.org/download/Handbook03.pdf - The Higher Learning Commission, a commission of the North Central Association
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