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By Michael Theall
The Gale Group

Student learning in higher education is a function of both formal and informal experiences. Formal learning takes place as a result of a classroom or related activity structured by a teacher and/or others for the purpose of helping students to achieve specified cognitive, or other, objectives. Informal learning encompasses all the other outcomes of students' participation in a higher education experience. In both cases, the more extended or comprehensive the experience, the greater the potential effect. In a comprehensive 1991 review, Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini described the ways in which college affects students with respect to many kinds of learning. While they found that formal learning related to academic and cognitive skills, and to subject-matter competence, informal learning was shown to impact on many other areas.

Complications arise, however, because of the number and variety of variables affecting college learning. For example, while the differences between being a residential student and a commuter student do not seem to greatly affect cognitive or subject-matter learning, they are relatively influential with respect to psychosocial change, intellectual and cultural values, independence, and similar factors. Is this purely an on-campus versus off-campus difference? Age may be an intervening variable in such cases, because one would expect older, working adults (a constantly growing student population in all of higher education) to represent a substantial percentage of students living off-campus. Given that less psychosocial change might be expected with such learners–because their attitudes and values are already well established–the observed differences between on-and off-campus learning could be a function of student demographic differences such as age, as well as the environment itself. For example, while the influence of college on the intellectual and cultural values of resident students is significant, this effect derives much of its impact from immersion in the college environment and the maturation of younger learners who may not have had a broad range of experience. Adult, non-resident learners may have more firmly-held beliefs and a broader range of experience and by simple maturation, may already have developed more refined sets of values. Thus it is not simply location that makes the difference, but the combination of location and characteristics of the learners.

The Theory behind the Practice

When the first edition of this encyclopedia was published in 1971, the prevailing approach to teaching and learning was the behaviorist model. Developed by B. F. Skinner and others in the 1950s, this model considered stimuli such as instructional events or activities, the responses of learners to these stimuli, and contingencies or consequences based on those responses. The basic proposition was that learning occurred when the desired responses were elicited by the stimuli. Robert Mager's work with instructional objectives (precise statements of intended behaviors along with measurement criteria) and Benjamin Bloom and colleague's 1956 taxonomies (classification schemes) of objectives were also major influences on the ways in which instruction was designed and delivered. The taxonomic levels are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. A practical problem for teachers is that there can be objectives for literally every instructional activity and every kind of behavior–from acquiring basic knowledge to classroom attentiveness and the development of value systems. While behaviorism has been largely replaced as an instructional theory, the underlying value of clear objectives, appropriate measurement criteria, and the specification of various types of desired learning have remained as important basics for designing effective instruction.

Cognitive theory, essentially the position that learning involves the learner's associations of new stimuli with existing concepts and categorization schemes, regained some support in the 1970s and has continued to develop in its applications since that time. Marilla Svinicki (1999) outlined five general strategies for teaching that derive from the early theory: (1) directing students' attention through verbal or visual cues; (2) emphasizing how material is organized, again with various cues; (3) making information more meaningful by providing associations with other material or applications; (4) encouraging active checking of understanding through questioning and feedback; and (5) compensating for limits of information processing and memory systems with smaller amounts of information, review, breaks, and focusing attention.

Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, went beyond simple associations and brought learners more into the process of actively manipulating new information and incorporating it into both their own conceptual schemes and those of the subject involved. Svinicki suggests that instructors should model and describe their own thinking as they work through problems, stress problem solving and other activities that provide opportunities for practicing thought processes, and even teach specific strategies when necessary. The teacher, as the expert in a specific field, becomes a cognitive mentor and uses such techniques to help students move from positions as novices in the discipline to more seasoned practitioners. Teachers thus provide students with tools for understanding and dealing with future, more complex material. Since efficient problem-solving strategies enhance performance, the additional benefit is motivational: it increases students' expectations for successful completion of the work and strengthens their beliefs about their ability to do the work.

Learner-centered instruction is a term that refers to attending to a learner's individual needs, differences, and abilities, as well as to sharing responsibility for learning. Research by Paul Pintrich (1995) has established that students who are able to control their own behavior, motivation, and cognition are generally successful in college. Such students self-regulate their learning in three ways. First, they exercise active control by monitoring what they do, why they do it, and what happens–and then making adjustments. Second, they have goals that mark desired performance levels and they use these when deciding what adjustments to make. Third, they accept that the control must be theirs rather than someone else's. These procedures revolve around the important underlying concept that learners can exercise control and influence educational outcomes, and that doing so has many benefits.

Collaborative learning is the practice of actively engaging learners in joint discovery, analysis, and use of information. It has its roots in the power of peer and other groups to influence the development of understandings, values, and beliefs. From a pragmatic perspective, collaborative learning is also a more representative model of contemporary practice in the working world. In an interesting irony, however, students who have been generally successful in teacher-centered models tend, at first, to reject collaborative learning as an abdication of the teacher's responsibility, assuming that the job of delivering content has been transferred to other students. This is a misinterpretation of the purpose of collaboration, and it poses an additional problem for teachers: planning and structuring collaborative work so that learners' roles and responsibilities are clear, and also making it apparent that the teacher is serving different, but equally important roles as a resource, a guide, a mentor, an assessor, and any of several other roles. Students are not expected to teach each other, they are expected to work together to reach appropriate goals. The value of self-regulated learning is apparent in this context. Well-constructed collaborative work identifies learner responsibilities, sets goals, provides learners with opportunities to consider the goals and to structure their own efforts accordingly, and supports cooperative effort. Svinicki proposes the following methods for promoting learner-centered instruction: (1) encourage self-regulation; (2) use collaborative methods; (3) employ problem-solving activities that connect content to real-world situations; and (4) provide models of the processes, strategies, and habits of thought of the discipline being taught.

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