Learning Your Way Through College is a small handbook for new college students published by Wadsworth Publishing Co. review@wadsworth.com. It addresses almost exclusively the academic difficulties that new students face during their transition to college learning. It has been found to be a useful companion text in freshman seminars.

 

                                                                 PREFACE

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Learning Your Way Through College

This book was developing during a period when the need for better learning had once again captured public attention. There was, however, something new in the air this time: a stirring that continues to this day and offers hope for the long range future. That new element is the growing interest at the college level in the art and science of teaching. As we are just now in the midst of it, no one can tell what the many current programs to improve college teaching will produce. What is clear is that college students are going to soon notice the effects, whatever they are. Should it come to pass that a significant number of college teachers adopt a conversational, discursive, or recitative style, and begin using writing for its learning as well as evaluative aspects, and present their disciplines in a problem-solving or case-study manner, then students may well find the transition from high school to college more shocking than it is now.

That the high school/college transition might get worse gives cause for worry. For well over a decade, John Gardner and others have spent themselves in heroic efforts to ferry students over this cultural gap. What has actually happened on the college campuses in consequence of their efforts is something of a mixed bag. To offer some rationale for yet another book on learning it will be necessary to look at two types of transition programs that represent, admittedly, the extremes of the spectrum.

A number of colleges have initiated skills programs for first years students, sometimes optional and sometimes required of students estimated to be at risk. Typically the skills emphasized are study, reading, writing, time management, critical thinking, note taking, test taking, goal setting and dealing with stress. A characteristic element in these courses, one that puts them at one end of the spectrum, is that they do not have traditional academic content of the kind that would ordinarily reside in a department of a college. The syllabus for this type of course will make no mention of historical events, works of poetry, or the principles of economics, biology, philosophy or music. There is a logic in the development of these courses that is based on the analysis of an educated person: one well versed in the ways of learning. An analysis of educated people would show them to have just those skills listed in the syllabus of a skills course. Skills courses appear to be based on the premise that the skillful learner can be synthesized by the independent and content-free development of those skills discovered during the analysis. The student is being prepared to be a learner. Skills courses are being conducted in many colleges and might be thought of as experiments-in-progress.

At the other end of the spectrum are the first year seminars or colloquia. These take a very different approach and seem to be, consciously or otherwise, following the lead of Mortimer Adler who suggested that anyone can learn serious content material if it comes at a reasonable pace and if the learner gets a lot of coaching and practice. The first year seminar that I have in mind always has some academic content but it is not a survey course. In fact the typical content is highly delineated, resembling at first glance a senior level course. The content might be the writings of a single author, the various ways different authors treated one brief period of history, or any other well-defined topic. The range of what can be taught in first year seminars is enormous and that makes them attractive to regular academic faculty who happen to have something they would dearly like to talk about in detail. To serve their purpose as transition courses, however, first year seminars require pedagogy that will indeed develop the required skills as the content matter is pursued. How to ensure this pedagogy is far from certain, but faculty development will no doubt figure largely if this approach is to succeed. Freshman seminars are, therefore, experiments-in-progress as well, but the current interest that college presidents and provosts are showing in improving undergraduate teaching by all faculty is reassuring.

What I have tried to produce is a book that would prove useful to students no matter what kind of orientation course or seminar they encounter and equally useful should they not have the benefits of any such orientation course. It is, in other words, not a text book. My intent was to produce something like a handbook that can be used in conjunction with any content or skills course a student might take. It is, therefore, neither a treatise on learning, nor an exercise book to practice skills. The "audience in my head" was the average student taking normal college courses in traditional disciplines and wondering why things aren't going well. The chapter titles were kept simple and topical in order to direct students immediately to the most common sources of academic problems: what they are actually doing during class, what they do between classes, how they do assignments, how they interact with their teachers, how they prepare for and take exams, and their attitude toward learning in general. This makes demands on the student because the advice must be quite general if it is to be applicable to all disciplines. It is left to the student, for example, to apply any useful ideas on keeping notes to whatever courses he is taking and to the idiosyncrasies of his various teachers. This approach is consistent with a general theme of the book, which is that serious learning is not particularly easy and will require a certain ingenuity in responding to the demands of the moment.

I set out to write a book of ideas and advice. Because it is for students, I felt no need to justify the recommended approaches by referring specifically to authoritative sources. It should not be inferred from that fact that all the notions and ideas expressed derive entirely from the opinions of the author. In fact, it is unlikely that there is an original idea anywhere in the book. There is, on the other hand, such an enormous array of authorities on learning, not always in agreement with one another, that one must still, in the end, make choices. I have not referenced my sources in this book because I did not believe doing so would help students, who are the primary audience. Some readers will nonetheless see the influence of Jacques Barzun, Mortimer Adler, Neil Postman, and Arnold Arons throughout the general learning portions. The ideas on language have their origin in the writing of Walter J. Ong and Lev Vygostsky, refreshed and revitalized by the redoubtable Neil Postman. The recent literature on writing is immense, but I owe much to the work of Stephen Tchudi, James Britton, and Sondra Perl. Many ideas in the chapter called "Strategies" came from Richard Light's research, and permeating the whole is a general theory of cognitive science derived from the work of John Searle, Christopher Wills, Jean-Pierre Changeux, E. O. Wilson, Owen Flannagan, and Gerald Edelman. The work of these scholars is generally read by their colleagues, or by college faculty and graduate students. Undergraduates benefit normally in an only indirect way: when their own teachers happen to incorporate these ideas into their teaching. I find the latter fact unfortunate.

My intent, therefore, was to put the scholarly work directly in the hands of students, not in the form of research as such, but reformulated as advice. A lot of things can go wrong here. Students accustomed to modern text books seems unsure as to what to do with a book of just words. It has even made a few teachers uneasy. Such a book also presumes a reader with a certain level of comprehension to begin with. Learning to learn is a classic chicken-egg problem, and in the case of a book on learning to learn, much hangs on the language level at which it is cast. Having in mind a first or second year college student of any age but of average preparation, I tried to prepare a text that would be comprehensible to the intended readers, but only with some effort on their part. If those kind student reviewers who found the level appropriate are indicative of the target audience, perhaps the book will find a niche.

I am grateful to Brian and Ann Wilkie, Raymond Dumont, and Catherine Houser for their encouragement and their expert advice on early drafts, to my editors at Wadsworth, and the many reviewers who made valuable suggestions. Sincere thanks, finally to Lisa Gebo who first prodded me into preparing the material for publication.

Robert N. Leamnson
April, 1994
N. Dartmouth, MA

 Last Updated On: 11/1/05