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An International Meeting of American Accounting
Association
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Who's Responsible for the Learning Process in Higher Education? |
Douglas K. Barney
Indiana University Southeast
Paul Pittman
Indiana University Southeast
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to identify and connect the factors affecting one portion of higher education – responsibility for student learning. The paper uses a systems approach to make these connections. While researchers have used systems approaches to understand the dynamics of other organizational environments, this approach has not been used in higher education. Senge states “systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively.” (1990, page 7). This paper uses a systems analysis methodology called a Current Reality Tree (CRT). (Dettmer 1997, Goldratt 1994.) The work identifies several core problems in our system of higher education related to the acceptance of responsibility for learning. The paper then makes some recommendations on how to remedy these problems.