This document discusses seven foundations for sustaining learning-centered education practices. It summarizes research on course redesign at the University of Southern Maine that led to improved student outcomes. The foundations are: 1) leadership prioritizing learning goals and resources, 2) a history of collaborative problem-solving, 3) supportive faculty beliefs, 4) faculty experience with practices, 5) appropriate infrastructure, 6) institutional data and evaluation support, and 7) personnel policies incentivizing improvement. The document provides examples of how institutions can strengthen each foundation to spread innovative teaching approaches.

1. Sustaining Learning-Centered Education:
Seven Foundations
Stephen C. Ehrmann, Ph.D.
Assoc. Dir. for Research and Evaluation
Center for Academic Innovation
Bethesda- Lilly Conference on College Teaching & Learning
May 30, 2015

2. Outline
I. Learning-Centered Education
A. Learning-centered education, student success
B. The example of course redesign in USM
C. Other examples
II. Barriers and friction slowing the spread of
learning-centered practices
III. Seven foundations for learning-centered
practices, and how to strengthen them

3. Challenge
• How can our program/institution/system:
1. Help students learn deeply and successfully so
that, by graduation, they are more prepared for
the world (as people, workers, citizens)
2. Improve the success chances of all students,
including those whose backgrounds might make
them seem the least promising
3. Make education more affordable for students
4. Accomplish those goals by making creative use
of available resources.

4. Topic Today
• Developing and sustaining major changes in
outcomes requires developing and sustaining
changes in many of the students’ courses and
experiences in college.
• Research suggests that the way to achieve these
goals is through greater use of learning-centered
practices and greater attention to creative use of
resources
• This session deals with how to sustain and spread
learning-centered practices in teaching

5. USM Course Redesign Research
• 57 courses redesigned
• Almost 35,000 students/year take them
• About 2,300 more pass with A, B, or C than
before
• Over $1.7 million/year of faculty resources
freed for other activities

6. Learning-Centered Practices
In your redesigned course, how much of
this was there? More
About the
same Less
Interactive software or web sites?
93% 7% 0%
Require collaborative learning by students in
classrooms or online?
88% 9% 3%
Video instructional material? 84% 14% 3%
Polling and peer instruction 80% 20% 0%
Work outside the classroom (e.g., field work) 78% 19% 3%
Engage students with differing needs,
preparation, abilities
73% 28% 0%
Rely on faculty lecturing? 0% 21% 79%

7. Learning-Centered Improvements
• Definition of learning-centered: organized
around the value of the resulting student
learning
– Not by the effort or money put into teaching
– Not by the attributes of the entering student
• Definition of “teaching”: doing something that
helps others learn

8. More Examples of L-C activities
• Credit for Prior (or Extracurricular) Learning
• Backward design of programs and courses
• Competence based education
• ePortfolios
• Intelligent tutors
• Learning analytics to guide advising
• Learning communities
• Outcome-based education (focused on programmatic
goals)
• Problem-Based Learning
• Service learning
• Studio and SCALE-UP courses in STEM fields

9. Discussion: What is Stopping Us?
• Why do these activities seem to spark and
subside, spark and subside, rather than
spreading and becoming the new normal?
– Jot down five barriers/frictions; then share

10. Barriers, Frictions?
• Lack of knowledge of how to use them
• Learning spaces inappropriate
• Lack of faculty time (in class, out)
• Faculty not thinking of students as colleagues
• Students believing they don’t have the time to do more work
• Institutional definitions of rigor; units; hours
• Faculty trying to stay in their comfort zone (their history)
• Lack of appropriate incentives (not necessarily monetary)
• Faculty not knowing how to use the technology
• Quality control – are the student outcomes improved
• Students don’t like the work
• At a bilingual institution, how should language be used (ASL, written Eng)
• Lack of support or training

11. Seven Foundations That Sustain
Learning-Centered Practices
1. Leadership by ideas, goals, attention, resources
2. History of coalitions and conflict resolution
3. Supportive faculty and staff beliefs
4. Faculty experience with learning-centered
practices
5. Appropriate infrastructure and support services
6. Inst’n provides data, evaluation support
7. Supportive personnel policies and practices

12. 1. Leadership for Learning-Centered
Education
• Through consistent messaging, attention, and
budget priorities, faculty, staff and students
know that leadership expects and will invest
in:
– Development of learning goals, used for backward
design;
– Means of making learning more visible to
students, faculty, and staff;
– Continual improvement of student learning, year
after year.

13. 2. History of Working Through Coalitions
Example: Meeting Students Where They Are
Agenda Who Does It (together?)
Embrace the goal that every
admitted student can truly succeed,
if taught and treated well
President, Alumni Association,
Provost, Deans, web site, etc.
Online materials that give diverse
students options that are
appropriate, motivating for them
Teaching Ctr, Online Learning,
Disability Support, Multicultural
Center, International/Foreign
Students Office, etc.
Spread muddy points, minute
papers, etc. (easy to try, rewarding,
low risk)
Teaching Center working with Online
education, assessment, departments
Learning analytics supporting better
guidance, early warning, etc.
Institutional Research working with
Deans, Online Learning, etc.
sehrmann@usmd.edu 13

14. Faculty Collaboration to Alter Student
Expectations
• Use L-C approaches several courses that a
student takes in order to challenge their
conceptions about learning more effectively.
• It’s tough to be the only faculty member to
whom students respond, “No one else is
asking me to learn this way!”

15. Examples from Your Institution?
• Three or more units or committees working
together to support a learning-centered
practice or program?
• Anything to learn from that?

16. 3. Beliefs and Perceptions
…That Interfere with Learning-Centered
Practices?
…That Support Learning-Centered
Practices?
Need to cover content – takes all the time
Lecturing is of high value, personal,
protected
Teaching is my responsibility, learning is
their responsibility
Good teaching evaluations – if it aint
broke…
Assumption that preparedness =
intelligence
Fear of silence when they ask questions

17. 3. Faculty & Staff Beliefs
• Supportive beliefs to discuss, debate:
1. Teach each admitted student as though there is hidden
excellence to nurture
2. Meet students where they each are, rather than where
you are;
3. Academic programs, courses should be organized around
student capabilities rather than chunks of content;
4. Faculty should often work with others, on their programs
as well as on individual courses;
5. If I work to improve learning, my colleagues will be
supportive, and my chances for promotion may increase.

18. 3. A Tool for Reporting Faculty Beliefs &
Perspectives
• http://bit.ly/facultyviews
• Goals:
– Faculty benefit from articulating what they see
and believe
– Fuel for departmental discussions, faculty
development
– Monitor whether foundations are getting stronger
• Looking for pilot test departments:
– Steve Ehrmann, University System of MD (sehrmann@usmd.edu)
– Gary Brown, AAC&U Fellow
– Jean Henscheid, University of Idaho

19. 4. Faculty Prior Experience, Networks
• Institution can encourage faculty to
– Dabble in elements of teaching improvement
(e.g., Muddy points as a step toward additional
ways of using evidence to improve teaching)
• Easily grasped, low risk, and reliable reward
– Network with other faculty trying the same
approaches, facing similar challenges; develop
trusted relationships

20. 4. Faculty Prior Experience, Networks
• Faculty are more reluctant to undertake
learning-centered initiatives (e.g., course
redesign) if
– They have little or no experience in component
activities (e.g., active learning classroom;
backward design)
– They do not have a trusted network of colleagues
also interested in these practices – people they
know they can listen to, talk to, about this.

21. Need a Critical Mass of Prepared Faculty
• It will be difficult to recruit faculty to upgrade
selected academic programs unless
many of the relevant faculty already have
relevant prior experience with some elements
of learning centered teaching and also have
colleagues to call on (support networks).
– Faculty who lack both experience and peers may
respond, “I don’t have the time (to risk) on this.”

22. Start with Elements
Elements: Safe, rewarding first steps Elements build comfort with trying more
ambitious steps such as:
Muddy points, minute papers ePortfolios
Brief workshop on syllabus design Backward design of a major
Use a validated concept inventory Develop concept test where every answer
option is revealing
Assign a Short Video Presentation;
Evaluate its Strengths, Weaknesses
Major reduction in lecturing in order to
create more class time for active learning
Write-pair-share Other strategies for developing critical
thinking about the content
Suggest students use video of class for
review; evaluate the results
Try other strategies for helping students
with varied ways of learning

23. Elements and Networking
• Try building informal lists of faculty in various
disciplines who are already using various
elements.
– Goal: every faculty member should be able to find
a colleague in a similar discipline who already has
some experience with the element

24. Building Toward Critical Mass
• Over 3-10 years, what combination of
strategies might encourage 80% of potentially
interested faculty at your institution to
routinely use an elemental activity AND talk
with other faculty who are using it, too?

25. Spreading Elements of L-C Teaching
• Your Ideas:
–

26. 5. Shortfalls in Infrastructure, Services?
• At institutions like yours, what kinds of infrastructure
or services create difficulties for faculty who trying to
use a learning-centered activity?
– Classrooms?
– Technology infrastructure or support?
– Training for teaching assistants?

27. 5. Supportive Infrastructure
• Well-funded teaching center can play a role in several different
coalitions.
• For trained student learning assistants, the institution provides:
– Courses to train students
– Credit
– Pay
• Growing inventory of flexible learning spaces
• Technology support geared to widespread use, including
inexperienced, risk averse faculty who
– Don’t yet know how to use it to improve what and how students learn
– Don’t yet have the experience to prepare for technical and teaching
challenges.

28. 6. Analytics, Evaluation Support
• Help faculty monitor student learning outside
their own courses, e.g., capstone courses,
ePortfolios
• Use analytics to identify problems with
pathways to a degree, see students’ grades
later on.
• Help program leaders test and assess ideas
that make more productive use of limited
faculty time, space and money.

29. 6. Personnel Policies, Practices
• Goal: Sustain and spread learning-centered
practices
• What personnel policies and practices
discourage long-term faculty or staff
engagement?

30. 7. Personnel Policies, Practices
• Many kinds of feedback are needed in faculty
evaluations; student feedback should be
rethought.
• Faculty teaching load credit should include many
kinds of effort, e.g.,
– Teaching more students
– Redesigning or coordinating a course or degree
program.
• Reward adjuncts for improving teaching; pay
them for upgrading and updating their teaching
knowledge.

31. Seven Foundations That Sustain
Learning-Centered Practices
1. Leadership by ideas, goals, attention, resources
2. History of coalitions and conflict resolution
3. Supportive faculty and staff beliefs
4. Faculty experience with learning-centered
practices
5. Appropriate infrastructure and support services
6. Inst’n provides data, evaluation support
7. Supportive personnel policies and practices

32. Conclusion
• Any institution wanting to foster learning-
centered innovations to increase student
success actually should work on two fronts:
A. Planning and carrying out successful initiatives
(design, staff, budget, evaluation, etc.)
B. Assuring strong foundations for such learning-
centered practices.