Current and Future Instruction in the Community Colleges

The American Community College attached below introduces you to many instructional methods found in community colleges. In a post of fewer than 400 words, discuss the instructional method that you believe to have the greatest impact on Millennial and Generation Z students, and why you feel that way. Which of the methods discussed do you think will exist in 20 years? Which of the methods discussed may disappear in the next 20 years? Provide a rationale for your predictions.

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177

Instruction
Methods, Media, and Effects

Instruction is the foundation of all schools, colleges, and univer-sities, and several perennial issues surround this basic activity:
Who does it? How? With what effect? Undergraduate teaching
in the universities particularly has commanded attention recently.
Books and articles exhort professors to spend more time with their
students even if that means they do less research. Anyone with a
historical perspective finds it mildly amusing to see the number of
comments deploring the status of undergraduate instruction in the
universities; the same contentions have been raised for the past
one hundred years.

Because community college instructors have never devoted
much time to research or academic discipline–based scholarship,
they have been free to address nearly their full attention to instruc-
tional processes. The colleges have emphasized the importance of
good teaching since their earliest days, and their observers have
reported unanimously that teaching was their raison d’être. Eells
called the junior college “a teaching institution par excellence”
(1931, p. 389). Thornton proclaimed instruction the primary func-
tion, saying that it had to be better in the two-year college than
in the university because the students covered a broader range of
abilities and their prior academic records tended to be undistin-
guished: “It is fair to say that most community college students are
able to learn but are relatively unpracticed. Under good instruction
they can succeed admirably, whereas pedestrian teaching is more
likely to discourage and defeat them than it would the more highly

177

Cohen, Arthur M., et al. The American Community College, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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178 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

motivated freshmen and sophomores in the universities” (1972,
p. 42). He concluded that either the college “teaches excellently,
or it fails completely” (p. 42).

Other writers followed these exhortations regarding good teach-
ing with the observation that it was indeed to be found in the
two-year colleges. Although rarely heard since the colleges grew
large, the pronouncement that instruction was better because of
the small classes was often voiced in an earlier time. In addition,
junior college instructors were considered to be better than those
in the universities because their pedagogical preparation was more
evident and they were bona-fide instructors, not teaching assis-
tants. Koos reported that “classroom procedure in junior colleges is
assuredly on at least as high a plane as is instruction of freshmen
and sophomores in colleges and universities” (1924, p. 219). He
pointed to the “superiority of teaching skill” found among instruc-
tors at two-year colleges because, unlike their counterparts at the
universities, most of them came from the ranks of high school
teachers and had training in pedagogy (p. 201).

Even the way the colleges are organized suggests a commitment
to teaching. An administrator, formerly a dean of instruction, now
more typically a vice president for academic affairs, oversees the
formal educational program and usually chairs a curriculum and
instruction committee responsible for all major changes in those
areas. The committee comprises program heads, department chair-
persons, and representatives of the library and counseling services.
This allocation of instructional leadership to the administrators has
enabled them to coordinate the work of the faculty members and
offer incentives through instructional development grants, sabbat-
icals, and release time to develop new techniques. The evolution
of the library into a learning resource center and the widespread
use of tutors and reproducible media also attest to an orientation
to teaching.

This chapter discusses instructional technology and considers
varied techniques such as online and hybrid instruction, writing

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across the curriculum, and supplemental instruction. Also included
are comments on mastery learning, learning resource centers, and
competency-based instruction. A discussion of the assessment of
instructional effects completes the chapter.

Before recounting the use and effects of some of the many
instructional forms in place, it should be noted that traditional
classroom instruction, that is, one teacher interacting with a num-
ber of students, still dominates. Most students still learn by sitting
in classrooms, listening to lectures, watching demonstrations, par-
ticipating in discussions, reading books, and writing examinations.
A 1998 survey conducted by the Center for the Study of Com-
munity Colleges and sponsored by the National Endowment for
the Humanities found that class size averages had barely changed
in the previous twenty years. Fine and performing arts had the
smallest classes, averaging between twelve and sixteen students
per class; applied and advanced mathematics, foreign languages,
social and ethnic studies, English, engineering, physics, chemistry,
and interdisciplinary sciences also tended to be smaller than the
norm. Arts and music history and appreciation classes, earth and
space sciences, and introductory classes in psychology, sociology,
and history were typically larger, averaging twenty-seven or more
(Schuyler, 1999a). However, class sizes have increased notably
since then, as the budget cuts of the past several years have forced
reductions in the number of class sections offered, even as students
clamor to enroll in required courses.

The Technology and Discipline of Instruction

One of the most persistent ideas in education is that individual-
ization must be the goal in every instructional program. Numerous
articles have begun with the statement, “Let’s assume that the best
ratio of teachers to learners is one to one,” and then have gone
on to explain how one or another instructional strategy might be

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180 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

tailored to fit each student. The most extreme version of indi-
vidualization was realized when colleges began granting credit for
learning gained anywhere. Core courses taught in singular fashion
and required of everyone were at an opposite extreme. Each had its
proponents, and both were evident, often in the same institutions.

A technology of instruction in which goals are specified and
a variety of learning paths designed so that most students may
reach those goals has made some inroads, but progress has been
slow. The definitions of instruction that are in use offer a clue.
Instruction may be defined simply as an activity that implements
the curriculum. This definition assumes a set of courses that must be
brought to the students. Another definition is a sequence of events
organized deliberately so that learning occurs. This definition does
not depend on a curriculum, but it does include the word learning
and implies a process leading to an outcome. But most instructors
seem still to define instruction not as a process but as a set of
activities (lecturing, conducting discussions, cajoling, and so on)
in which teachers typically engage. Such a definition ignores both
the courses and the learners.

Regardless of the medium employed, the basic model of instruc-
tional technology includes clearly specified learning outcomes or
objectives, content deployed in relatively small portions, learning
tasks arrayed in sequence, a variety of modes of presenting informa-
tion, frequent feedback on student performance, and criterion tests
at the ends of instructional units. The instructors are part of the
technology of instruction when they define the objectives, write
the tests, select and present the media, and in general connect
students to the learning tasks.

The technology of instruction has been important for two-year
colleges, typically commuter institutions in which the environment
of a learning community is not available to exercise its subtle
yet powerful influence on the students. The tools basic to an
instructional technology have been available ever since words
were first put on paper. The expansion in variety and use of other

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Instruction 181

forms of reproducible media have made additional sets of tools
available. However, although all colleges have introduced some
of the forms, the concepts of instructional technology have rarely
been adopted on institution-wide bases. It is as though new types of
hammers, saws, and trowels had been taken up by artisans unaware
of the shape of the houses they were attempting to construct.

Instructors of developmental courses have been among the
leaders in adopting concepts of instructional technology. During
the 1970s and 1980s, this group moved steadily from the periphery
of the educational establishment toward the mainstream. They
became not only teachers of remedial classes but also managers
of student flow, and their learning centers became more integral
parts of the instructional programs. They expanded their provi-
sion of academic support services to instructors in the academic
and occupational areas, and they became more deeply involved
in measuring instructional outcomes. As a group, developmental
instructors became more professionally aware, and this awareness
was reflected in their participation in vigorously functioning profes-
sional associations—the National Association for Developmental
Education and the College Reading and Learning Association.
Conceptually, they coalesced around instruction as a discipline.
Many of them had begun as teachers of reading, English, mathe-
matics, or psychology, but as they became deeply involved in the
learning resource centers and the remedial programs their con-
nections with their academic disciplines weakened. They became
much more concerned with the technology of instruction.

As would be expected in this era of technological upswing,
developmental instructors rely heavily on computers and computer-
assisted instruction for math, reading, and writing courses. This use
can take on numerous forms: incorporation of established software
programs; student use of personal computers to revise writing; elec-
tronic bulletin boards and chat rooms; review of classroom learning;
self-paced courses; online courses; and use of study skill websites. In
addition to computers, other instructional methods and academic

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182 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

support strategies such as learning assistance centers, supplemental
instruction and adjunct course offerings, collaborative learning,
linked courses, tutoring labs, structured study sessions, and mastery
learning are also embraced by developmental instructors.

Eventually, developmental instructors began teaching large
numbers of freshmen not only at their own colleges but also
at neighboring universities. In 1993, 35 percent of the entering
freshmen at the University of California at Davis were taught
remedial English by instructors from Sacramento City College.
In fall 2001, the university offered seventy-nine developmental
education courses in English, math, and chemistry, serving over
twenty-one hundred students in the process; by 2006, this involve-
ment had grown to eighty-one sections of math, English, and
chemistry plus courses in less commonly taught foreign languages.
All of these courses were taught by instructors from Sacramento
City College. Similar arrangements have continued between the
University of California at San Diego and the San Diego Com-
munity College District. Symbiotically, the university faculty who
have never wanted to teach developmental studies contracted with
a group who have become experts in the task.

Television

Television, the most common distance education method in com-
munity colleges until the late 1990s when it was overtaken by
online instruction, set the stage for later adoption of other instruc-
tional technologies, and some institutions have generated a sizable
proportion of their course enrollments through the use of that
medium. The City Colleges of Chicago organized TV College in
the 1950s, and several other community colleges also received
licenses for the cultural enrichment and entertainment of the pub-
lic as well as for credit-course instruction. Enrollments in the Dallas
County Community College District’s TeleCollege rose from their
beginnings in 1972 to over ten thousand per academic year in 1978
and nineteen thousand in 2011.

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Beginning in the 1970s, interest in television led many colleges
to develop their own materials. Video production facilities were
constructed in most of the larger institutions; by 1980, two-thirds
of the instructors nationwide had access to them. A few college
districts—most notably, Miami Dade (Florida), Coast (California),
Chicago, and Dallas—became widely recognized for the sophisti-
cation of their programming. (Interestingly, whereas a university’s
prestige often rests on its faculty’s scholarship and research discov-
eries, the export of high-quality instructional programs provides
one of the few ways that a community college can gain a reputation
beyond its own district’s boundaries.) Interdistrict cooperation in
production and distribution of televised courses became common,
and several consortia were developed to share programs and pro-
duction costs. Through television, the use of remote instruction
had become well established.

Computers

The introduction of the computer gave the colleges another oppor-
tunity for instructional innovation. While computers have long
been used by community college personnel for instructional and
administrative purposes, the emergence of the personal computer in
the 1980s gave considerable impetus to computer-assisted instruc-
tion in the classroom, and the community colleges were not remiss
in taking advantage of it. In 2001, they led in the percentage of
courses reporting classroom computer technology usage. Yet with
respect to the number of institution-owned desktop or notebook
computers and workstations, in 2010 public universities boasted
one computer and workstation for every 2.6 students, whereas
public two-year schools had 6.1 students per workstation (Green,
2010). Community colleges also had fewer user support personnel
per student, less wireless access in the classroom, and less inte-
gration of mobile applications than universities. In 2010 the total
central computing budget averaged $3.3 million in community

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colleges and $8 million in all institutions. Yet information tech-
nology (IT) budgets totaled 8.4 percent of overall campus expenses
in community colleges relative to 6.4 percent of expenses in all
institutions collectively (Green, 2010).

Financial issues affect the community colleges’ capacity to
provide instructional resources for students and faculty, and in
recent years community colleges have suffered more IT budget
cuts than other institutional types. Nonetheless, technology gaps
between community colleges and universities are narrowing. As
of fall 2010, roughly two-thirds of the courses in community
colleges had a website (up from 25 percent in 2002) but well
below the more than 80 percent in public universities and four-
year colleges. Similarly, the faculty in just over one-half of
community college courses were using learning management soft-
ware compared with 61 percent in public universities. Despite a
long history of underinvestment in information technology to sup-
port instruction and administrative operations, community colleges
clearly have done much with considerably less.

Since the 1970s, computer technology has had a role in manag-
ing student records, supplementing course material, administering
tests, and assessing student progress. In addition to computer-
managed applications, which have become the norm in most
colleges, computer-assisted and computer-based instruction in the
classroom has undergone innovative developments over the past
few years. Often these developments enhance teaching practices,
allowing visual material to be presented electronically, improving
active participation among students, exposing students to statisti-
cal and other discipline-specific software, and fostering computer
literacy by offering Internet access to the library catalog dur-
ing class, using online versions of course syllabi, supplementing
in-class activities with online course supplements, and referring
students to newsgroups and e-mail chats outside of class.

Numerous studies have analyzed the effectiveness of computer-
basedandcomputer-assistedinstruction.Foradults,computer-based

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instruction was found to produce greater gains than did tradi-
tional instruction in algebra (Oxford, Proctor, and Slate, 1998).
Reed (1996) described computer-based writing classes as inclusion-
ary and more democratic because such environments encourage
student collaboration in evaluating their writing, and Hansman
and Wilson (1998) contended that computer use is a necessary
component of teaching adult students to write well. According to
Klemm (1998), computer conferencing enables creativity, student
engagement, and collaboration in the classroom to a greater extent
thandoeslecturing;incorporatingthistechniqueincreasedteaching
efficiency and improved the quality of students’ work. Despite these
positive claims, Pankuch (1998) reported that students welcomed
computerized illustrations, simulations, and graphics in chemistry
courses but that the effects of computer-based instruction lessen
once the novelty wears off. And very few significant differences in
retention rates and success emerge between students in traditional
classes and those in computer-based math classes. Most community
colleges are maintaining their publicly accessible computer labs.

Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is an instructional method-
ology in which students develop writing assignments in classes in
addition to English composition. In some applications, the papers
are submitted to a writing instructor, who assists in evaluating
them; in others, the students in composition classes work on papers
that are related to the content of subject-specific classes. During
the mid-1970s, WAC programs gained popularity. Responding to
a perceived deficiency in students’ writing and thinking abilities,
advocates of this approach urged the incorporation of writing into
all classes and all disciplines.

WAC programs continue to be implemented. Tidewater Com-
munity College (Virginia) had a WAC program that existed
informally for twenty years. Faculty from diverse fields met regu-
larly to discuss student writing and the implementation of writing

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activities into curricula (Reiss, 1996). At Bronx Community
College (New York), two writing-intensive courses are required
for graduation. Students in these courses have extra writing assign-
ments, involving multiple drafts, to develop writing proficiency.
A 1991 issue of New Directions for Community Colleges (Stanley
and Ambron, 1991) described rather fully the history of WAC and
presented various approaches to its implementation. In general,
WAC programs have been popular for decades but require dedi-
cation and enthusiasm to maintain them. The Tidewater program
ceased functioning when a key faculty member retired.

Supplemental Instruction

Supplemental instruction (SI) uses course content as the basis
for skills instruction after identifying high-risk courses (basic or
introductory classes with unconscionably high dropout or failure
rates). Pioneered at the University of Missouri at Kansas City,
it is designed to teach students to read and interpret the texts
used in the academic classes they are taking. In these programs,
students work outside class with tutors, who attend all lectures
for the targeted course. A reader coordinates the work of the
tutors with that of the instructors who have agreed to participate
by encouraging their students to take advantage of the tutoring.
Supplemental instruction is associated with extracurricular peer
studying, and it has been used in comprehensive programs designed
for English as a Second Language (ESL) students as well as in
developmental courses. Where SI has been institutionalized, the
key people are a supervisor who identifies the target courses and
trains the SI leaders, the instructors of those courses who agree
to participate, and the students or learning center staff members
who attend course lectures and conduct three to five out-of-class
sessions per week (Arendale, 2005). At Santa Monica College
(California), supplemental instruction is arranged by linking two
or more classes and having students who have previously taken
them assist the new groups (Santa Monica College, 2007). It has

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been shown to have a positive effect on first-year persistence and
grades because it provides students with what they most need:
additional time spent on learning skills they must have if they are
to succeed in required, basic classes.

Mastery Learning

Mastery learning, a technology of instruction, has been described
and advocated by several educators, especially by Bloom (1973) of
the University of Chicago. The intent of mastery learning is to lead
all students to specified competencies (as opposed to programs that
have the effect of sorting students along a continuum of individual
ability). In a mastery learning plan, competencies are specified in
the form of learning objectives. Practice tests, corrective feedback,
additional learning time for those who need it, and a variety of
instructional techniques are provided to ensure that all, or at least
most, of the students attain mastery of the concepts or skills at the
prescribed standard.

Proponents of mastery learning have pointed to sizable student
gains on test scores and in personal development when this strategy
is used. The gains have been attributed to more focused teaching,
cooperation instead of competition among students, the definition
of specific learning objectives, the amount of class time actually
spent in learning, practice and feedback before the graded exami-
nations, and teachers’ expectations that most students will attain
mastery.

Mastery learning procedures have been adopted in some com-
munity college courses and programs, even becoming prominent
for a while at City Colleges of Chicago, but for many reasons the
concept has not swept the field. Faculty members and administra-
tors who have shied away from mastery learning say it costs too
much to develop and operate programs with a sufficient variety
of instructional forms; it takes too much of teachers’ and tutors’
time; outcomes for most courses cannot be defined or specified
in advance; allowing students time to complete course objectives

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188 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

interferes with school calendars; students may not be motivated if
they are not in competition with their fellows for grades; employers
and the public expect the college to sort students, not pass them
all through at prescribed levels of competency; and accrediting
agencies and other overseers demand differential grades.

For years, scholars have attempted to assess the effects of
mastery learning. A synthesis of findings from forty-six studies
of group-based applications of mastery learning strategies was
reported by Guskey and Pigott (1988), who reported that mastery
learning techniques are rarely installed in pure form but that,
when they are, the effects on student learning are salutary. More
recently, Zumeta and others (2012) found that mastery learning
techniques are most effective when they are employed in modifying
entire programs. For example, Cleveland State Community College
(Tennessee) redesigned its fifty-five sections of developmental math
with modules, computer lab work, individual assistance, and online
testing. Students move on as they complete these elements of the
coursework. In this model, seventy-seven sections of eighteen
students each were taught by full-time faculty at less cost and with
greater student achievement.

Competency-Based Instruction

Also making inroads in community colleges, competency-based
education is an approach that depends on the specification of
desired competencies to be exhibited by the students but does not
include all the specific instructional strategies of mastery learn-
ing. The Competency-Based Undergraduate Education Project,
sponsored in the 1970s by the Fund for the Improvement of
Postsecondary Education, wrestled with defining the outcomes
of liberal education. Ewens found a paradox in attempting to
convert liberal education to competencies. It was the seemingly
insoluble dilemma of converting higher education from an ideal-
referenced standard to criterion-referenced or norm-referenced
standards. “Ideal-referenced judgments presuppose some notion of

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the good, the excellent, the higher, the best” (Ewens, 1977, p. 19),
but most education now deals with minimal competencies, func-
tioning in an environment, and meeting acceptable standards of
behavior. There is no room for the ideal when we ask, “What
is a competent person?” The dilemma appears with force in the
tendency of all education to teach job-related skills. If education
teaches for jobs, ignoring what the person is, it runs the risk of
creating a corps of dissatisfied graduates when they find that a job
is not enough for a satisfactory life—not to mention the issue of
whether they find jobs at a level for which they were trained.

For many years, state oversight and regional accrediting agencies
have requested that the colleges specify and assess the competen-
cies to be learned in all programs, but especially those leading to
employment. However, specifying tangible, desired outcomes has
never been easy, even in the occupational areas. The span from
broadly stated college goals to tasks to be performed by students
at the end of a portion of a course is long, and the connections
may be difficult to make. The links among making people bet-
ter, helping them cope with society, training them for jobs, and
teaching students to type seventy words per minute on a word
processor may be too tenuous. Still, the most successful adoptions
of competency-based education have been in occupational studies
and in adult basic education. Numerous colleges have established
a Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS),
which incorporates competency-based approaches to instruction.
Supported by a combination of state, federal, and local funds,
CASAS provides programs with the resources to establish indica-
tors of performance in adult basic education that integrate literacy
and occupational skills instruction, primarily for the unemployed.
The system emphasizes documenting outcomes (Council for the
Advancement of Adult Literacy, 2003).

Competency-based instruction has also been used as a basis
for articulating secondary school occupational programs with their
community college counterparts, and it has been employed in high

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190 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

school completion programs. But it has not been widely adopted in
liberal arts programs. When it has been applied for this purpose, it
has been most successful where working face to face is feasible for a
critical number of the entire staff, that is, at small colleges such as
Kirkwood Community College (Iowa), where competency-based
education has become the foundation of the liberal arts program.

Recent experiments with competency-based education include
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), which has started
an online, competency-based associate degree program. Unlike
previous competency-based programs, SNHU’s is not tied to stu-
dent credit hours, instead allowing students to work at their own
pace, with faculty guidance and tutors upon request. When stu-
dents are ready, they are tested for 120 broad competencies broken
into distinct task families. SNHU’s program has secured regional
accreditation, and the Department of Education is encouraging
similar programs at other colleges to seek approval for financial aid
as well as offering guidance on doing so (accreditation and federal
aid being the major deterrents to previous programs not linked to
student credit hours). However, in 2012, while several community
colleges were offering competency-based degree programs, SHNU’s
program was the only one based on competency rather than time
in class.

Learning Communities

The term learning community is often used for instructional innova-
tions that build on concepts of mutual support. Defined as “clusters
of courses that are taught as an integrated instructional unit or
through linking one course with one another” (Van Middlesworth,
2004, p. 36), they promote social integration by affording students
multiple courses within a specified time, the same cluster of students
enrolled in all courses, faculty collaboration, and students engaging
in collaborative learning through classroom projects. Some colleges
pair basic skills courses, such as writing, with courses in academic
content areas. The concept of supplemental instruction, noted

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earlier, is often augmented with linked courses taken by the same
groups of students acting cooperatively instead of competitively.
These classes may be supplemented with field trips and related
support activities.

Learning Colleges

A number of institutions have begun designating themselves as
learning colleges in an attempt to shift college functioning away from
the instruction paradigm toward the learning paradigm. As Barr
and Tagg (1995) argued, the instruction paradigm—historically
the dominant of the two alternatives—“mistakes a means for
an end” (p. 13), looking to teaching instead of to the outcomes
produced by teaching. They emphasized that, although learning is
presumptively the central feature of all colleges, the paradigmatic
underpinnings of an institution determine the extent to which
learning outcomes are emphasized. This acknowledges that within
higher education the definition of instruction as an activity in which
teachers engage, rather than as a process that causes learning, has
been dominant.

In numerous publications, O’Banion (1996, 1997, 1999) docu-
mented the characteristics common to learning colleges. Generally,
traditional institutions are constrained by time, location, bureau-
cracy, and the customary roles of faculty and students (the teacher
as the bearer of knowledge and the student as a passive receptacle).
These limitations have the potential to hinder learning, according
to O’Banion, making it essential for learning colleges to work to
overcome such obstacles. He expects that learning colleges will
allow students to engage in the learning process as full partners
who share in the responsibility for their own learning; offer a wide
variety of options for learning, including numerous alternatives in
terms of time, place, structure, and delivery methods; incorporate
opportunities for students to collaborate with others in learning
communities; and document the learning that takes place.

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192 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

The literature on learning colleges has consistently evoked
O’Banion’s principles, if not verbatim then in theme. Overall,
learning colleges are realms (not tied by place and time) where
diverse students find opportunities to grow academically and per-
sonally. The faculty become facilitators of the learning process,
open to new methods and technologies now available. These learn-
ing colleges are responsive to workforce needs, lifelong learners,
and nearly everything else that learners demand. They document
assessment, maintain accountability, and attempt to please every-
one. In 2011 The Aspen Institute awarded $600,000 to Valencia
College (Florida) as an acknowledgment of its progress in these
directions; the 2013 prize was shared by Santa Barbara City College
and Walla Walla Community College.

Learning Resource Centers

Community college libraries are curriculum driven, containing
materials that directly support coursework, with only an occa-
sional nod to faculty research. Many share facilities and collections
with university or public libraries to maximize resources. Relative
to the number of students they serve, the libraries at associate
degree–granting institutions have modest budgets and collections,
averaging $499,939 in annual expenditures and 80,315 books,
e-books, serial subscriptions, and electronic reference sources,
compared with $990,219 in expenditures and 392,372 holdings
in the average academic library at baccalaureate-granting colleges
(NCES, 2011a).

Most community college libraries underwent a major trans-
formation in the 1970s and 1980s when they became learning
resource centers (LRCs). In some colleges, the library remained
intact, with facilities added for individual study through the use of
self-instructional programs. But in many, totally new LRCs were
built to encompass a library; a learning assistance center; audio
and video learning laboratories; a center for the distribution of

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audiovisual materials; and centers for tutorial services, graphic and
photographic reproduction, and video production. About one-third
of the LRCs also had career information centers and terminals for
computer-assisted instruction.

The evolution has continued, with some LRCs now operating
learning enrichment, tutorial, or survival skills centers or labs.
Some learning centers have taken on a status apart from library
functions, operating chiefly as coordinating agencies for tutoring,
developmental instruction, student orientation, and independent
study. In other applications, LRC staff have provided material for
grant writing, faculty development, and curriculum design. The
LRCs often house production libraries for faculty to develop media.
They have expanded to include such electronic formats as online
services, CD-ROM, and multimedia products. Automation within
LRCs includes the conversion of traditional card catalogs to digital
databases that are often accessible to faculty and students online,
making the LRCs gateways to the Internet, other library catalogs,
online indexes, databases, and texts.

Distance Learning and Online Instruction

Distance learning expanded notably when online instruction
became available. In 1994–95, 58 percent of community col-
leges offered online, hybrid, or other distance education courses;
by 2006–07 that number had ballooned to 97 percent. Over 6.1
million postsecondary students were taking at least one online
course in fall 2010, an increase of over 560,000 since the pre-
vious year (Sloan Consortium, 2011); 40 percent of all online
course enrollments were in community colleges. Distance educa-
tion enrollments have increased rapidly at community colleges,
growing from 9 to 22 percent each year between fall 2006 and
fall 2010 and far outpacing overall enrollment growth. In 2011,
close to two-thirds of community colleges could not offer enough

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distance education courses to meet student demand (Instructional
Technology Council, 2012).

Across the nation, 22 percent of community college students
were enrolled in a distance education course in fall 2010, with most
taking online courses in addition to classes taught in the traditional
mode on campus (NCES, 2011b). In 2008–09, 34 percent of the
students in Washington community colleges were enrolled in
online learning; an additional 9 percent were enrolled in hybrid
courses—those taught partly online and partly in the classroom
(Xu and Jaggers, 2011a). In North Carolina’s Community Colleges,
students taking online, hybrid, and other distance education courses
through the state’s Virtual Learning Community accounted for half
of all full-time student equivalent enrollments in 2011–12 (North
Carolina Community College System, 2012). And in California
community colleges, the number of course sections offered at a
distance doubled between 2006 and 2010, reaching 9 percent of
the total in 2010 (California Community Colleges, 2011).

The larger the institution, the more likely it is to provide
opportunity for students to get all of their coursework online.
Nationally, more than one-third of the colleges offer full degree
and certificate programs through that medium. Some colleges have
made online instruction a centerpiece of all their offerings. Rio
Salado College (Arizona) has combined the savings presented by
employing adjunct professors with a corps of instructional design-
ers. Nearly two-thirds of its students access courses online and
can sign up for any of the institution’s six hundred courses in fifty
degree and certificate programs every two weeks. The college serves
nearly 58,000 credit and 10,000 noncredit students and employs
twenty-four full-time faculty chairs who develop the courses and
oversee teaching and learning. These faculty members earn an
average of $75,000 annually, and the 1,300 part-timers employed
to teach most online classes are paid $2,500 per course ($4,500
for science courses that require additional classroom hours). The
per credit hour tuition charged for the online course is the same as

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for the students who take classes at one of the Maricopa District’s
on-site colleges, allowing Rio Salado to operate at a cost that is
considerably lower than the average of its nine sister institutions.

In addition to the cost savings generated, advocates of online
education cite greater access for nontraditional students as a major
benefit. Indeed, students who find it difficult to attend on-campus
courses because of family or work commitments are more likely
to take courses online than traditional students; 62 percent of
online community college students are women, and half are over
age twenty-six. Course completion rates in online instruction
have increased since their inception, reaching 69 percent in 2010
compared with 75 percent in traditional classes (Instructional
Technology Council, 2012). Yet while the online achievement
gap has shrunk in recent years, it remains notable, especially as
more colleges use online courses to reduce expenditures. Several
studies, most notably in Washington and Virginia, have shown
that online community college students are less likely to complete
courses than students in face-to-face classes, even after controlling
for student characteristics such as level of underpreparedness. As
well, students taking courses online are more likely to withdraw,
less likely to return to college in a subsequent semester, and less
likely to earn a community college degree or certificate or transfer
to a four-year university (Xu and Jaggers, 2011a, 2011b).

Retention and completion rates are not the only challenges
to online education. Distance learning has been handicapped
by policies that treat it different from traditional on-site classes.
Students who need state or federal aid may find different policies
controlling the amount they can receive if they want to take all
of their classes online. Furthermore, many states and individual
colleges treat funding for distance learning as a special budget
item rather than incorporating it into the regular annual budgetary
process. And distance learners residing out of state may be charged
out-of-state tuition.

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Successful installations of distance education depend on the
advocates’ ability to overcome obstacles such as lack of support
from most people within the institution, necessary changes in
student support services, and changes in institutional culture.
Oliver (2004) offered several maxims crucial to creating success-
ful online instruction: institutional commitment; investment in
instructional development and staff training; development of a
technical infrastructure and support network; and recognition that
electronic learning changes rapidly and leads to further costs. As
Cox concluded,“the enthusiastic rhetoric of possibility continuesto
outpace the empirical evidence” (2006, p. 111). Bailey and Morest
(2006) found a disjuncture between administrators and faculty,
with the former saying they had to introduce online instruction to
remain competitive with other sectors and the latter being more
concerned that online courses lacked quality and increased their
workload. Constructing high-quality distance education programs
often demands more resources and a greater commitment than
most college administrators are willing to expend.

Distance education received a big boost in 2011–12 when sev-
eral well-known universities including Stanford, Harvard, MIT,
Michigan, and Pennsylvania financed the production of Massive
Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The term MOOC dates from
2008, but the concept is rooted in the decades-old idea of decen-
tralized learning webs. These noncredit-bearing courses include an
immense amount of remixed content—often video lectures—that
maintains connections between fields of study and ideas. They are
all free of charge; all the viewer needs is basic digital literacy and
self-discipline.

The importance of credentials has spawned various ways of
offering credit for the MOOC learning experience. Several profit-
making agencies have been formed to provide certificates of
completion. (One, called Academic Room, certifies more than
a thousand courses.) By 2012, over 1.5 million users had partic-
ipated in MOOCs, and between 10 and 20 percent of them had

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purchased certificates of completion for modest sums. These awards
carry no formal academic credit, and the vendors remit little money
to the education providers.

Following similar efforts to award college credit for previous
learning and experience, many accredited public institutions have
begun offering credit to fee-paying students who submit portfolios
describing what they have learned by viewing a MOOC, ideally
integrating it with other experiences and displaying that knowl-
edge through essays, tests, or submission of other evidence. The
American Council on Education and the Council for Adult and
Experiential Learning have prepared guidelines for what consti-
tutes acceptable prior learning, in effect acting as accreditors.
Accordingly, any college may shift responsibility for portions of
its curriculum from its faculty and award credit for courses built
and maintained elsewhere. All is pushed by the so-called Comple-
tion Agenda; to increase degree awards, higher education needs
to expand beyond the historic high school–to-college model and
bring older adults and other nontraditional students into the pat-
tern. Credit for experience has been available for decades; the
MOOCs open it up to many more participants.

Actually, awarding credit for experience and the more widely
seen credit for passing exams has been a feature of higher education
for well over half a century, since the College Board began offering
the College Level Examination Program (CLEP). Now students
prepare for those exams by accessing study materials through sites
such as Saylor Foundation and Education Portal and pay less than
$100 for the exam and accompanying credit. The major difference
that MOOCs have brought is that unlike CLEP, which offers
credit for thirty or more introductory (100-level) courses in English,
math, history, and so forth, MOOCs elevate the level to specialized
courses equivalent all the way to graduate and professional schools.

With the growth of online education and interactive media,
the school becomes more important than ever before because
education, critical thinking, and functional literacy are essential

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for sorting out the messages. Just as reading a book has always
required the intelligence to decode print as well as to differentiate
arguments, interactive media require the ability to vet the infor-
mation, determining which signals are important, which are true,
and which are relevant.

The more sanguine proponents of interactive media such as
Lanham (1993) project the form’s effect on freedom, responsibil-
ity, and individuality. Heretofore, teachers, editors, critics, and
publishers have screened the various products, thereby controlling
access to ideas. But by placing the individual in a position of
searching all databases, interacting with everyone on the Internet,
interpreting and idiosyncratically reforming all types of emanations
past and present, the experts will be circumvented. All to the good,
proponents say, because no one should have to suffer the biases of
someone else’s selection.

Many years ago, arguments in favor of universal literacy centered
on the notion that all people should be able to read the Bible
for themselves without the interpretation of religious leaders.
Applied to education, similar thinking suggests that people should
be empowered to learn independent of school. The ultimate in
interactive media allows the learners to form their own questions,
find their own answers, construct their own texts, and develop
their own knowledge.

Within the schools, interactive media must contend with sev-
eral traditions that militate against their immediately displacing
extant instructional forms. At the heart is the core of instruction
itself. Devotees of interactive media and all sorts of reproducible
instructional situations have been constantly stymied by the diffi-
culty of duplicating a live learning situation. Whether one-on-one
tutorial or small class or large lecture hall, the live learning situ-
ation involves more than information transmission on the part of
the instructor or responses to student questions. The live instruc-
tional situation has nuances of body movement, voice intonation,
expression, and cues from the instructors and other students that

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come through the communally breathed air. What tone is being
employed? How important is the message that is being transmitted,
as indicated by the speech pattern or body language of the person
transmitting it? What needs to be repeated because the respondents
indicate by their faces a failure to understand sufficiently?

If these verbal and nonverbal cues were not as critical as they are,
the various reproducible instructional programs available for half a
century would have made more inroads than they have. True, some
people learn through using programmed instructional materials,
and these materials have become an important part of education in
America, just as the mass media have become important. But the
predominant form of school-based instruction is still centered on
live people talking with live people and picking up all the nuances
of behavior that human beings have learned to associate with
messages since the beginnings of speech. Reproducible media hold
a continuing allure, a promise of low-cost information transmission,
but they do not contain the subtle cues to meaning that emanate
from the face-to-face contact of a classroom. A nod, a frown,
a smile, the shifting of bodies in chairs, the winks and blinks
and twitches all have meaning that cannot be duplicated readily
through a medium outside the individual.

It is reasonable to assume that, in an institution dedicated to
good teaching since its inception, new instructional forms will be
tried. However, despite the spread of reproducible media, tradi-
tional methods of instruction still flourish. Visitors to a campus
might be shown the mathematics laboratories, the media produc-
tion facilities, and the computer-assisted instructional programs.
But on the way to those installations, they will pass dozens of
classrooms with instructors lecturing and conducting discussions
just as they and their predecessors have been doing for decades.
Media are being used widely, but usually in association with or
adjunctive to live instruction. Many faculty members continue
to believe that close personal contact with students is the most
valuable and flexible instructional form that can be developed.

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The Power of Inertia

Media-based techniques are not the only instructional forms that
meet resistance. Why don’t the faculty require more writing? Many
reasons can be advanced, but the one that the faculty often give is
that they have too many students in their classes, that if they require
their students to write more, then they (the teachers) are required
to read more. In most classes, too few papers are assigned because
the instructors cannot accept alternatives to their reading them.
Either outside readers are not available to them, or they do not trust
anyone but themselves to read their students’ written work—and
probably some combination of both. Nor have the faculty ever
accepted the notion that student writing can be sampled, with only
every second or third paper read or each paper read only for certain
restricted characteristics. They still act as though every practice
session must be critiqued, whether the student is practicing the
piano, hitting baseballs, or writing compositions.

Anything that lessens direct contact with students or demands
more of the instructors’ time stands a good chance of meeting resis-
tance. The ad hoc lecture requires the least preparation time. And
innovators must prove the positive effects of their techniques, while
traditionalists can usually go their way without question. Teaching
as a profession has not developed to the point at which proper
conduct in the instructional process can be defined and enforced
in the face of individual deviation. Whereas lower teaching loads
would allow more time for instructional reform, they would not be
sufficient to revise instruction; merely giving people more time to
do what they are bent to do does not change the perception of
their role, which is a major reason that PowerPoint presentations
have become popular; the instructor is still in charge of the pacing
and the presentations and never out of sight of the students. Still,
nearly all public two-year colleges provide support for instructors
who develop reproducible instructional software and courseware.

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The rapidity with which new media appear and the stability
of the academic culture are at odds. Five hundred years after the
introduction of moveable type, the book and the lecture still share
the territory of instruction. The inexpensive, readily available book
did not displace the lecture in transmitting information; it became
an additional form. Each has valuable features that the other
cannot duplicate. In this respect, the academic culture resembles
its societal context. Cinema did not replace live theater, nor did
television replace radio. For that matter, the ascendancy of science
over the past three hundred years has not fully displaced belief in the
supernatural, and the vision of authority based on superior training
must continually contend with a stubborn reliance on folk wisdom.

Assessing Instructional Effects

No type of instructional technology has been sufficiently powerful
to overcome the traditional educational forms against which it has
been pitted. With rare exceptions, an institution-wide commitment
to demonstrable learning outcomes has foundered on the rocks of
inertia and on an inability to demonstrate that it is worth the effort
entailed. Assessing student learning is, however, as important a
component of instruction as any other aspect of the process.

Is the community college the home of good teaching? Informa-
tion on the effects of instruction is always hard to obtain because of
the number of variables that must be controlled in any study: the
entering abilities of the students; the criterion tests and instruc-
tional procedures used; and the level of the course or learning
unit, to name only a few. Comparative studies are especially dif-
ficult because of the infeasibility of matching student groups and
instructional presentations (are any two lecture sessions really the
same?). Rather than try to compare learning attained, many studies
have used student and instructor preferences as the dependent vari-
able. Researchers have measured the value of online instruction
by asking students whether they preferred it to live lectures. The

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reports usually indicate that many students prefer the interpersonal
contact with instructors, but many others do quite well with the
instructional programs presented through the computer. But pre-
and postinstructional assessments of student learning rarely yield
significant differences between treatments.

An intractable problem with research on instruction is that
no method can be shown to be consistently superior to another.
Dubin and Taveggia reanalyzed the data from ninety-one studies
conducted between 1924 and 1965 and concluded “that there
is no measurable difference among truly distinctive methods of
college instruction when evaluated by student performance on
final examinations” (1968, p. 35). The conditions of instruction
are so fluid, the instructors so variant, the students so different
that true experimental conditions cannot be applied. McKeachie
(1963) reached similar conclusions.

In the 1980s, new efforts were made to assess effects broadly, by
measuring student learning through statewide, interinstitutional,
and institution-wide studies, for example. Although such studies
are common in most other countries, they are alien to American
higher education, where responsibility for measuring cognitive
change in students has been relegated to classroom instructors.
Therefore, efforts to institute such studies have been greeted with
little enthusiasm. Leaders in many institutions have given lip
service to the importance of student outcomes measurement, but
beyond a flurry of study groups and the usual skittishness displayed
by educators who are faced with a potential change in their routine
little was accomplished.

Many states such as New Jersey, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas
have emphasized testing in basic skills for all entering freshmen.
The colleges are then encouraged to link these data with graduation
and retention rates. Most such programs have progressed slowly,
stung by questions of enforcement, rewards for compliance, and
penalties for noncompliance. But where they really run into diffi-
culty is when they include recommendations for content testing,

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learning measures to be administered as students progress through
their undergraduate years.

Still, the press for assessment has continued. Alarmed at the
rapid increase in cost per student, especially since the public pays
most of it, and prodded by constituents who deplore the low success
rates for minority students, the legislatures and appointed officials
in many states have insisted on more direct measures of college
outcomes. What proportion of the matriculants obtain degrees?
How many pass licensure examinations? How many are employed
in areas for which they were trained? And—most disturbing of all
for a professional group that has taken pride in its vaguely defined
goals and processes—how much did the students learn? For the
faculty especially, this last query cannot be set aside as beyond their
purview. Influential outsiders are demanding to know just what is
happening as a result of their ministrations.

Collecting student retention and follow-up data is one thing, but
a test of student knowledge administered at the conclusion of the
sophomore year is quite another. Complaints about outside control
of the curriculum and the demise of academic freedom and simi-
lar lamentations have become common. Examinations that reveal
student learning to people outside the confines of the single class-
room are anathema in academe. Few within the colleges have any
notion of how to construct them. Except in rare instances, the staff
makes no effort to collect and use such information until the state
legislatures tie the process to college funding or student access.

Assessment changed form again in the 1990s as legislatures
in some states mandated that the colleges validate their student
placement procedures. Because placement testing in community
colleges has provoked heated debate in many states, legal actions
have led to regulations requiring institutions to provide evidence
of predictive validity for their placement tests and course prerequi-
sites. Also, other measures of student aptitude must be considered
for placement purposes. After evaluating placement test validity,
Armstrong (2000a) reported that, although correlation coefficients

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show a statistically significant relationship between placement test
scores and resulting grades, these coefficients are not practically
significant. Similarly, weaker correlation coefficients are found at
the lower curriculum levels (developmental coursework), suggest-
ing little connection between placement test scores and course
grades in remedial instruction. Conversely, student demographics
and situational, and especially dispositional, variables are strongly
related to course grades and retention. In fact, student disposition
is a much more powerful predictor of success than test scores. Arm-
strong (2000b) demonstrated his point further when he found that
for an English placement test there was virtually no relationship
between the test and student performance in class.

The way colleges are organized leads most staff members to resist
measurement of learning outcomes. Students are supposed to learn
history, music, and mathematics in separate courses and depart-
ments. Some students learn more efficiently than others, and
classroom tests have always been used to determine which students
are better than their fellows. The national testing organizations
that offer subject tests from biology to sociology, used to determine
which students deserve entry to advanced school programs, play
into this form of normative measurement. They work well when
the purpose is to spread individuals along a continuum because they
emphasize variation in student ability. This variation is so strong
that the difference in scores made by students in a single course
will often be as great as the difference between the class average
and the scores made by another group of students who have never
taken the course.

This normative model, useful for assigning places in a
program or grades to students within it, is different from the
criterion-referenced measures usually employed when a program or
an institution is being assessed. Criterion-referenced measurement
refers to the learning obtained by individuals as measured against
a standard. If all students answer all questions correctly, then the
entire group has learned everything that the test asked, and if

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the test was designed as a sample of all knowledge to be gained
in a course, program, or institution, then the instructional unit
has been a total success. However, applying criterion-referenced
analysis in an institution with a history of normative-referenced
testing requires a complete shift in the way the staff view their
work. Easy to conceptualize, that form of outcomes assessment bogs
down in practice. Rare is the institutional leader with sufficient
patience or skill to turn the group away from its traditional way
of looking at student-learning measures. Rare is the leader who
can explain the value and purposes of population sampling and
test development that demands items that are not course specific.
Regardless of the impetus for assessment or the model that is
pursued, certain principles should apply.

The results of an examination should not be tied to a single
course or instructor; causal inferences should not be sought, nor
should the findings be used to judge an instructor, a department,
or a discipline. The items used must not be course specific but
should cover concepts that might have been learned anywhere.
Scores on the examination should not be made a condition of
graduation for the students. The student population should be
sampled; universal assessment systems are too cumbersome for
most colleges to manage. Alternate forms of the numerous entrance
examinations should be used as measures of student knowledge at
the completion of certain numbers of units. The faculty must
be involved as much as possible in test selection, design, item
construction, and test scoring. Installation of the process should
not be delayed until all are in accord. Specialists in testing who are
sensitive to the staff should be employed, with the understanding
that although assessment is a group effort, staff members will
not be forced to participate. No one set of measures should be
used to provide data for different purposes. Different measures
should be used to evaluate student progress, college processes,
and the college’s contribution to its community, for example.
A belief in the value of individualization need not extend to

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variant curricular objectives for everyone; if shared understandings
and values contribute to social cohesion, then some consistency
in college goals and measures of college outcomes should be
maintained.

Issues

The major issues in instruction center on the extent to which
a technology of instruction will progress. Will more instructors
adopt instruction as a process instead of an activity? What types of
instructional leadership can best effect this change?

Assessing instructional outcomes is an integral part of instruc-
tional technology. Will persistent calls for mandatory assessment
spread from such measures as graduation and licensure pass rates to
systematic measurement of learning attained? Sampling as a basis
for estimating student progress is hardly even used. From multiple
matrix testing in the classroom to National Assessment of Educa-
tional Progress–style assessments administered on a program-wide
basis, the technique is rarely seen in any sector of higher education.
Will the learning college ideal and the contemporary external
pressure for funding on the basis of outcomes act synergistically to
make assessment of student learning (on a course or program level)
a routine activity?

The consequences of turning away from print and in-class
lectures as the primary modes of information transmission have not
yet been fully realized. What impact on instruction will be made
by students who have gained much of their prior knowledge online
or through nonprint sources? Can student learning and outcomes
generated by distance education ever approach those produced by
instructional programs focused on teachers in classrooms?

Mastery- and competency-based programs have made inroads
in developmental and occupational education. Can they spread
to the transfer and liberal arts function? Will the willingness of
regional accreditors and federal aid programs to accept competency-
based programs not linked to student credit hours, as well as
the awarding of credits for MOOC completion, generate cost

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savings for institutions and ensure greater access for students?
Will these developments substantially shift responsibility for the
teaching–learning dynamic away from the faculty?

Although each new instructional medium, from radio to the
computer, has forced educators to examine their teaching practices,
none alone has revolutionized teaching. A general acceptance of
instruction as a process that must, by definition, lead to learning
might do more in actualizing the prime function of the community
colleges.

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