High-Tech Tactics Urged for Colleges

Calling for “bold yet practical steps,” a special commission appointed by the state’s Community College Board of Governors has urged the 107-school system to wean itself from traditional classroom lectures and embrace high technology as a more efficient way to teach a rising tide of students during the next decade.

The commission also advocated that the far-flung college system begin to specialize in economic development by offering more courses related directly to businesses, aggressively seeking job training contracts and establishing “work force transition centers” for displaced workers.

Headed by former Southern California Edison President Michael R. Peevey and funded primarily by the Ford Foundation, the Commission on Innovation was formed in 1991 to help the 1.3-million student community college network face the bleak financial future. Its mandate to the largest higher education system in the world was: Do more with less.

The report, released last week, says that community colleges can expect enrollment to jump by a third over the next decade, but California’s economic growth will hardly support the anticipated $5 billion extra in state funds and bond money needed to keep up. Rather than suggesting retrenchment, the report lays out an ambitious three-pronged program that relies heavily on the emerging wave of televised courses, interactive computer programs and information highways.

Such a high-tech transformation would cost $23 million more in the short run, the report said, but could save $900 million a year in reduced instructional and construction costs by 2005.

The commission suggested some decidedly low-tech ways to improve efficiency as well, including more afternoon classes and year-round use of college campuses.

“What we have is a document that is very, very ambitious and many of the recommendations are very controversial,” Chancellor David Mertes said of the report last week. “We wanted to have our thinking shaken up, and that’s exactly what this report has done.”

Mertes said the Board of Governors will consider the report in November and hold hearings with various college groups in January.

Overall, the commission recommended that community colleges:

* Restructure the way courses are taught because of the growing numbers of students with special needs and learning styles. The colleges should move away from classroom lectures, from which students retain little, and toward “active learning,” where students can view video presentations at their convenience, use telecommunications or pace themselves on computer programs.

In addition, the commission also called for replacing the traditional two-year degree--based on letter grades that “make it impossible to know what students have really achieved”--with a battery of standardized assessment tests by subject.

* Expand their role to include community economic development. The commission asked the Legislature to amend the Education Code to include economic development as part of the system’s mission.

* Modernize. With bond proceeds, the system should invest heavily in interactive, multimedia and other “cutting-edge” computer technologies. It should also establish an Institute for Technology and Distance Education to nurture statewide use of high-tech materials, as well as train faculty members on the equipment.

The system should dramatically expand its use of televised courses, videotaped lectures and computer work stations to educate 20% of its students by 2005, the report said. Such “distance learning” would be cheaper--about $2,000 per pupil, compared to the current $3,065--and negate the anticipated need for $2.7 billion worth of new buildings, it said.