Chapter 4: SMSU as a Learning-Focused Organization

Strengthening Organizational Learning

A learning-focused institution strengthens its own capacity to learn, not only through services supporting scholarship and creating learning environments, but also through organizational learning, or processes that educate constituents about how an organization works. Thus, organizational learning at Missouri State involves individuals and groups in developing their knowledge, skills, and values with regard to understanding how the University functions and ways in which the University can be improved. Organizational learning processes at Missouri State also encourage the implementation of new practices for continuing improvement and provide evidence of the results of improvement when changes are implemented.

This focus on organizational learning applies not only to Missouri State students but also to faculty, staff, administrators, board members, and constituencies beyond the university. Human resources, the most important asset of any institution, require renewal just as facilities and equipment do. The University must continue to develop personal, interpersonal, and organizational capacities to maintain the vitality of the institution. The institution must continue to develop and change in order to meet current and future challenges.

With reductions in state funding over the last several years, the creation of new relationships within the University and with its external constituencies has become imperative. Learning with and from one another at Missouri State is a significant means for making good use of limited resources. In this context, learning involves understanding and endorsement of shared values and goals from across diverse academic and non-academic units. It also includes learning how to accomplish those shared goals. Missouri State has enacted several processes that illustrate ways that it is strengthening organizational learning. The following examples are connected to HLC Criteria One, Two and Five.

Organizational Learning and Institutional Mission

Organizational learning across the University is anchored in the qualities of educated persons as defined in the University’s public affairs mission and its five themes. These qualities, embedded in general education course goals, in turn provide assessment information that helps fuel the learning of faculty and administrators who are part of the Committee on General Education and Interdisciplinary Programs (CGEIP).

Learning about the organization’s purpose and mission is a continuing emphasis for students, staff, faculty, and administrators. To help students, the Student Success (IDS110 and UHC 110) and capstone courses (GEP 397) in General Education focus on the ideas of developing educated persons and contemporary issues in public affairs, respectively. Catalog and admissions material also include information about the mission.

During 2004-05, a series of Public Affairs Dialogues with faculty, administrators, and staff broadened and deepened understanding and commitment to the University’s purpose and mission. Faculty and administrator learning associated with translating the University’s purpose and mission into practice also occurs throughout the year in challenges and issues addressed by university-wide governance groups such as the Faculty Senate, Graduate Council, CGEIP, and the Professional Education Unit. The revision of the Faculty Handbook in process includes a section on the University purpose and mission, which is aligned with discussion of faculty roles, responsibilities, and evaluation of performance.

Organizational Learning and Evidence of Institutional Effectiveness

Learning throughout the University about the University also is facilitated by the performance measures in the long range plans. These measures reflect accomplishments linked to goals associated with the University’s purpose and mission. From an institutional perspective, annual updates of the performance measures provide directional information for targeting learning activities as well as evidence of the impact of learning on organizational goals. Integrity, the wholeness of the University, is illustrated by the annual updates on performance measures and the public availability of the results. In addition to the performance measures, many ongoing evaluation and assessment processes provide evidence of institutional effectiveness and informed choice and implementation of strategies for continuous improvement. Some of these processes, described earlier in this chapter, include

• Program review and department assessments that use “rubrics” and related evidence for focusing inquiry
• Regular administration, reporting and discussion (such as with the monthly meeting of the Academic Administrators Assembly and the periodic meeting of the Council of Department Heads) of evidence from standardized instruments such as the first-year-student, graduating-senior, and faculty surveys from the Higher Education Research Institute; the Academic Profile from ETS; alumni surveys; and employer surveys
• Use of student feedback for course and instructor improvement
• Research-based designs for assessing the impact of student learning from projects supported through the Teaching Fellowship Program in the Academic Development Center.

Organizational Learning and the Future of Missouri State as a Learning Community

While Missouri State recognizes the value of “organizational learning” as a concept, the institution also recognizes that not all of the University’s challenges and opportunities can be approached solely through such organizational means as planning, management, and assessment. Therefore, to complement learning activities undertaken from the perspective of the institution as an “organization,” the University also is initiating activities that emphasize the institution as a community. The general umbrella for these new initiatives is “learning communities.”

On April 28, 2005, a group of participants representing the entire University and its three campuses met for the event “Collaboration, Learning Communities, and Campus Transformation.” The 65 students (undergraduate and graduate), staff, faculty, administrators, and Board members spent a morning together in dialogue to explore the current and potential value of learning communities throughout the University. As a result of this event, the working paper, “A Rationale, Vision, and Strategy for Learning Communities at MSU,” has been drafted and is being reviewed and critiqued for implementation. Some of the ideas incorporated in this paper are included here.

First, a learning community is “a relatively small group that may include students, teachers, administrators, and others who have a clear sense of membership, common goals, and the opportunity for extensive face-to-face interaction. The definition includes groups such as classrooms, laboratories, committees, advisory groups, interdisciplinary teaching teams, participatory action research teams, schools, residential colleges, and academic departments. These groups are not necessarily learning communities, but all have the potential (with varying degrees of development) to become learning communities.”[1] Additionally, within a learning community, the focus is on learning; membership is voluntary; every person counts and is respected as both learner and teacher; diversity of membership and perspectives is valued; and leadership is shared. There is no single best way for learning communities to function; even online learning communities may be feasible.

Based on these descriptions, the University’s declaration of community principles (including its existence as a “community of scholars”), and its other community principles, the Steering Committee recognizes some formative “learning communities” already exist at Missouri State. The Public Affairs Conference, the Graduate Interdisciplinary Forum, the Showcase on Teaching, the Showcase on Research, the Teaching Fellowship Program, and the Faculty Interest Groups on case studies and the use of technology for teaching and learning, for example, represent these types of communities.

Building on the declaration of Missouri State as a “community of scholars,” organizational learning at Missouri State may be strengthened more in the future through the development of learning communities on campus and by conceiving of the University as a learning community. The University’s visions include creating a campus climate and environment that nurtures intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and careful analysis and articulation of various worldviews. Units such as Residence Life and Services, Student Activities, and Food Services work cooperatively with faculty to create opportunities for this broadly defined learning community to develop.