5 . Emphasizes Time on Task

Time plus energy equals learning. There is no substitute for time on task. Learning to use one’s time well is critical for students and professionals alike. Students need help in learning effective time management. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. How an institution defines time expectations for students, faculty, administrators, and other professional staff can establish the basis for high performance for all.

Some examples: Mastery learning, contract learning, and computer-assisted instruction require that students spend adequate amounts of time on learning. Extended periods of preparation for college also give students more time on task. Matteo Ricci College is known for its efforts to guide high school students from the ninth grade to a B.A. through a curriculum taught jointly by faculty at Seattle Preparatory school and Seattle University. Providing students with opportunities to integrate their studies into the rest of their lives helps them use time well.

Workshops, intensive residential programs, combinations of televised instruction, correspondence study, and learning centers are all being used in a variety of institutions, especially those with many part-time students. Weekend colleges and summer residential programs, courses offered at work sites and community centers, clusters of courses on related topics taught in the same time block, and double-credit courses make more time for learning. At Empire State College, for example, students design degree programs organized in manageable time blocks; students may take courses at nearby institutions, pursue independent study, or work with faculty and other students at Empire State learning centers.

4. Gives Prompt Feedback

Knowing what you know and don’t know focuses learning. Students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. When getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence. In classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. At various points during college, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.

Some examples: No feedback can occur without assessment. But assessment without timely feedback contributes little to learning. Colleges assess entering students as they enter to guide them in planning their studies. In addition to the feedback they receive from course instructors, students in many colleges and universities receive counseling periodically on their progress and future plans. At Bronx Community College, students with poor academic preparation have been carefully tested and given special tutorials to prepare them to take introductory courses. They are then advised about the introductory courses to take, given the level of their academic skills.

Adults can receive assessment of their work and other life experiences at many colleges and universities through portfolios of their work or through standardized tests; these provide the basis for sessions with advisors. Alverno College requires that students develop high levels of performance in eight general abilities such as analytic and communication skills. Performance is assessed and then discussed with students at each level for each ability in a variety of ways and by a variety of assessors. In writing courses across the country, students are learning, through detailed feedback from instructors and fellow students, to revise and rewrite drafts. They learn, in the process, that feedback is central to learning and improving performance.

3. Encourages Active Learning

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.

Some examples: Active learning is encouraged in classes that use structured exercises, challenging discussions, team projects, and peer critiques. Active learning can also occur outside the classroom. There are thousands of internships, independent study, and cooperative job programs across the country in all kinds of colleges and universities, in all kinds of fields, for all kinds of students. Students also can help design and teach courses or parts of courses. At Brown University, faculty members and students have designed new courses on contemporary issues and universal themes; the students then help the professors as teaching assistants. At the State University of New York at Cortland, beginning students in a general chemistry lab have worked in small groups to design lab procedures rather than repeat prestructured exercises. At the University of Michigan’s Residential College, teams of students periodically work with faculty members on a long-term original research project in the social sciences.

2.Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students

Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one’s own ideas and responding to others’ reactions sharpens thinking and deepens understanding. Some examples: Even in large lecture classes, students can learn from one another.

Learning groups are a common practice, in which five to seven students meet regularly during class throughout the term to solve problems set by the instructor. Many colleges use peer tutors for students who need special help. Learning communities are another popular way of getting students to work together. Students involved in SUNY at Stony Brook’s Federated Learning Communities can take several courses together. The courses, on topics related to a common theme like science, technology, and human values, are from different disciplines. Faculty teaching the courses coordinate their activities while another faculty member, called a "master learner:’ takes the courses with the students. Under the direction of the master learner, students run a seminar which helps them integrate ideas from the separate courses.

1 . Encourages Contact Between Students and Faculty

Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of classes is the most important factor in student motivation and involvement. Faculty concern helps students get through rough times and keep on working. Knowing a few faculty members well enhances students’ intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and future plans. Some examples: Freshman seminars on important topics, taught by senior faculty members, establish an early connection between students and faculty in many colleges and universities.

In the Saint Joseph’s College core curriculum, faculty members who lead discussion groups in courses outside their fields of specialization model for students what it means to be a learner. In the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three out of four undergraduates have joined three-quarters of the faculty as junior research colleagues in recent years. At Sinclair Community College, students in the “College Without Walls” program have pursued studies through learning contracts. Each student has created a “resource group,’ which includes a faculty member, a student peer, and two “community resource” faculty members. This group then provides support and assures quality.

Health Care and Education 4

2Health-Care Location Factors

In looking at the health-care systems among potential locations, survey respondents gave highest priority to data delineating the availability of health care in an area: numbers of publicly and privately run hospitals, the number of doctors per 1,000 people, etc. (see accompanying chart of toprated health-care location factors).

But in addition to the matter of healthcare quantity, there’s also the issue of health-care quality, says Wayne Mills: "We ask about the quality of the healthcare facilities [among potential locations].

We do have a lot of doctors who work for The Travelers, but almost every corporation has a chief medical director they can ask." In something of a surprise, the incidence of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in an area under consideration for a facility location has not emerged as a top-level health-care concern. (See News Highlights elsewhere in this issue for study results predicting future AIDS-related healthcare costs.) Responding corporate real estate executives only rated the incidence of AIDS as the 10th most important health-care location factor.

Health Care More a Concern with ‘Brainpower’ Locations Paralleling previous Site Selection quality-of-life surveys, nterviewed corporate real estate professionals say the health-care QOL factor is a higher consideration in those facilities fueled by a key core of"brainpower" -- highly skilled, highly mobile professionals. At the same time, the age of the work force in a particular facility is also a factor to be reckoned with in looking at health care, since older workers tend to record a higher percentage of health-care claims.

"How important health care is in the location decision depends on the type of operation," says Wayne Mills. "For example, if you’re looking at a shortterm location using a young work force, it’s not as important. But if

you’ve got a facility that’s going to be staffed by older professionals, it’s more of a big deal." Shervin Freed, vice president for siteselection consultant A.T. Kearney, Inc., handled a corporate relocation which graphically points out the different weight given to QOL issues like health care in siting different types of facilities.

"The company was relocating from Michigan to North Carolina," says Freed, "and it had a dual purpose. We

ended up locating the technical and professional people in Raleigh-Durham, where they had more ready access to amenities like health care. We ended up putting the company’s manufacturing operation in Goldsboro, about an hour’s drive from Raleigh-Durham." As for health care’s role in future location decisions, there’s another development unfolding in Pennsylvania which may make health care both a bigger and much more measurable QOL location factor.

Many states have health-care cost-containment boards, which regularly publish reports on hospital death rates or costs. But the Pennsylvania Health- Care Cost-Containment Council has gone much further. In an unprecedented move, it has compiled statewide comprehensive data on costs, death rates and complication rates by region and by hospital. Moreover, it specifically identifies hospitals by name.

The resulting data is both revelatory and controversial. For example, one hospital in Pittsburgh is reportedly charging almost twice as much to repair or replace a heart valve ($95,185) as another hospital across town. If such specific data become available on a widespread basis around the U.S. and the globe, corporate real estate executives would have access to a very valuable tool to use in fashioning health-care costs comparisons. "People are really waiting to see what happens in Pennsylvania," says Lisa Iezzoni, a Harvard Medical School physician and health-care researcher.

Health Care and Education 3

Avoiding High-Cost Health-Care

Locations Despite the fact that few companies say they are utilizing accurate measurements of health-care costs in comparing locations, 13 percent of responding corporate real estate executives do say their firms are avoiding certain areas in the U.S. because of what they perceive as "excessive health-care costs."

New York City and Chicago were two cities mentioned by respondents as areas their companies tend to avoid because of high health-care costs. States similarly singled out included California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

"If you’re looking at a high-cost area," says Wayne Mills, "generally you’re going to find high-cost medical health care." The areas corporate real estate professionals say their companies are "favoring as corporate locations because of...reasonable health-care costs" are heavily weighted toward the Southeast, Southwest and Midwest U.S. States frequently named by respondents as low-cost areas included Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, South Dakota and Utah. Companies with international operations are also avoiding some countries in their non-U.S. locations. "We generally avoid underdeveloped countries without sufficient health-care facilities to provide a good level of care for our employees," says Wayne Mills. "[Those places] "end up being high-cost healthcare areas because the care is just not available."

On the other hand, some countries outside the U.S. do offer a health-care system that takes less of a bite out of the corporate coffer. "America’s healthcare system is the world’s most expensive to administer," says former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano. "We spend $100 per person in administrative costs, compared to $21 in Canada." Figures reveal that the $2,600 spent in the U.S. this year for every person in the U.S. is 50 percent more than that spent in Canada. Likewise, U.S. spending on health care is twice that spent per person in Japan and almost triple that in Great Britain.

And those lower health-care costs apparently don’t translate into lower health-care quality: Canada, Japan and Great Britain all have lower infant mortality rates than in the U.S. and enjoy similar longevity.