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