Educating for the 21st Century.

Four of the most important issues currently facing higher education are the need to make students the central focus, to restore public trust and demonstrate accountability, to manage limited resources more efficiently and effectively, and to utilize the power of technology. The driving forces behind these directions are public disaffection, financial constraints, the power and promise of new technology, and a growing enthusiasm for change, especially among faculty of community colleges. One example of this enthusiasm for improving the profession of teaching is a 1990 Carnegie Foundation report calling for the recognition of the distinct scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching. In addition, the concept and practices of Classroom Assessment and Classroom Research developed at the University of California, Berkeley attempt to involve college teachers in these multiple scholarships. The project has put together 50 Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) to give teachers immediate feedback on how well students are learning. One simple assessment technique is the “Minute Paper,” where before the end of the class period students write about the most important thing they learned and their main unanswered question. Faculty involvement in Classroom Assessment helps complement and strengthen the renewed emphasis on excellence in teaching, helps faculty understand the relevance of institutional assessment to their own work, and can help prepare faculty for a leadership role in the restructuring of teaching and learning. (Contains 12 references.) (KP) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. V S. DEPARTMENT OF EDIJCATION Othce of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) tethis document has been reproduced u —vecerved from the polson or orgemtation orapnating a 0 Minor changes have been mad* to improv reproduction quality Ponts of vilInVOr COmons statichn this documem do not neceuanty represent elitist OE RI position or policy Educating for the 21st Century Dr. K. Patricia Cross University of California, Berkeley PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE [His MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Cross TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERICI Paper presented at “Leadership 2000,” the Annual International Conference of the League for Innovation in the Community College and the Community College Leadership Program (7th, San Francisco, CA, July 23-26, 1995) 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE League, 1995 1995 -1EDUCATING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY* K. Patricia Cross David Pierpont Gardner Professor of Higher Education University of California, Berkeley Six months ago in the darkness of mid-winter, when Terry asked for a title for my remarks today, I didn’t have a due about what I might want to talk about by midsummer or what you might want to hear about. So I gave him a serviceable 1995 title that combines two of the hot topics in higher education today improving instruction and assessment. I do plan to address those topics, but I would like to do so in the broader context of community college leadership. Thus I have retitled these remarks, “Educating for the 21st Century.” There is certainly no shortage of advice from legislators, the public, the media, and a wide variety of experts within our own ranks on what we should be doing to get higher education on the right track for entrance into the 21st Century. Amazingly, for an enterprise as diverse and often contrary as higher education, there is unusually high agreement on the directions in which higher education should move. Although there are variations on the theme and considerable discussion about what actions to take and how fast to take them, every conference I attend and every campus I visit is working on or at least talking about these four issues: 1. The need to make students the central focus of our work. 2. The need to restore the public trust and to demonstrate through assessment our acceptance of accountability for student learning. 3. The need to manage limited resources more efficiently and effectively. Prepared for the Leadership 2000 Conference, San Francisco, July 25, 1995