INSIDE DOUGLAS COLLEGE / MARCH 6, 1990

A NEWSLETTER
FOR THE

 

  

LIAISO,

HUMAN
RESOURCE
DEVELOPMENT
NETWORK

February 1990
Volume 2; Number 4

 

THINKING, LEARNING,
COMMUNICATING

By John Carstairs, Associate Vice President, Southern Alberta
Institute of Technology, Calgary, Alberta (403/284-8110).

At the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology,
students in all two-year programs are now required
to complete a core of T.L.C. courses. In this
instance, T.L.C. stands for Thinking, Learning and
Communicating.

The T.L.C. initiative took place in the context cf the
SAIT mission: SAIT shall be an innovative organi-
zation preparing people to compete successfuily in
the changing world of work by providing relevant,
skill-oriented education. Given the incredible
growth of the knowledge base, we determined that
if SAIT graduates are to be successful in the
changing world of work, they will need more than
the relevant skill-oriented education we have tradi-
tionally provided. They will need coping skills to
enable them to adapt to the continuous onslaught of
change. As futurist John Naisbitt said in his Trend
Letter, “Ina rapidly changing work environment, no
single job skill will be more important than the
ability to think and communicate. No one school
subject will serve future workers better than learn-
ing how to learn.”

Suddenly it seemed the same message was every-
where. In her ACCC report, General Education

in_ Canada's Community Colleges and Institutes:
Report of a National Survey, Nathalie Sorensen listed
the top aims of community college education as
ranked by administrators and instructors at 48
Canadian colleges and technical institutes:

Le Desire and ability to learn (L)
2: Effective reading and writing (C)
Bs Ability to problem solve (T).

Rated fourth, after the T.L.C. skills, were ‘Career
Skills’.

In its 1986 report, Technological Change to 1991:

 

The Impli s for Engineering Technologists and
Post-Secondary Institutions, the Alberta Society of

Engineering Technologists (ASET) heartily en-
dorsed T.L.C. skills. The report urges ASET
members to “improve [your] communication skills
(written and oral) and [your] interpersonal skills’. [t
also recommends that post-secondary institutions
“critically examine the preparedness of graduates
for the workplace, particularly in terms of life and
work skills, business/industry orientation and a
knowledge of the learning process - ‘learning how to
learn’ "’.

In our DACUM (designing a curriculum) work we
found that all of the cooperating professionals, ir-
respective of occupation, rated T.L.C. skills as being
very important. In some cases they ranked T.L.C.
higher than specific job skills.

We believe that SAIT does a good job of teaching the
basic skills necessary for our graduates to compete
in the world of work, but we think w can do more
to help them compete in the changing world of
work. For that reason we have incorporated more
T.L.C. into the curricula. A basic core of commu-
Nication courses (writing, speech, interpersonal
skills, and job search), Edward de Bono’s CoRT 1,
and an Effective Study Methods course have been
made compulsory for all two-year programs.

Implementation has not been easy, and is not yet
complete. While program supervisors and faculty
generally agree that T.L.C. skills are nice to have, a
common comment is that programs are already
“full”. The selling job has been one of convincing
people that T.L.C. should not be thought of as
something ‘extra’, or unrelated to the “relevant
skill-oriented education” referred to in our mission
statement, but rather that T.L.C. is an integral part
of a relevant, skill-oriented education.

 

Association of Canadian Community Colleges 110 Eglinton Avenue West,

Toronto, Ontario M4R 1A3

Telephone: (416) 489-5925