"I have enjoyed the recent thread re: customers of education. In teaching
Customer Focus workshops to internal service groups within industry, I
typically ask them "Who are the customers of a university?" Relative to
the customer-supplier chain concept I've taught, students might be
considered:
- customers,
- workers or
- outputs, i.e., the products of education."
My view is that students MUST be considered all of the above. ONe
can not consider students as 'just' customers, because "active
aprticipants" (or should be) on their "own transformation process." Is
there is learning, then there is active involvement of the learner. In an
earlier message I indicated that students are customers, transformers or
processors, and also suppliers because they contribute to the process by
adding their own views (openly or otherwise). Of course they are also a
product of education, or they are "transformed" by the educational
process, among other sources of transformation in life.
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Joe also said:
"I generally point out to my participants that one concept emerging from
the debate regarding public education (which I haven't heard referenced in
this forum) is the concept of co-production. This refers to the situation
where the customer for a product or service is intimately involved in
production of it. In other words, the customer and supplier co-produce the
product/service."
This is the notion I used in my classroom interactions. The
learning system I use considers students as "learning partners", and I
give them this title to invoke in them a change in their relationship we
have in the learning process. I don't use the terms students, because it
carries preconceived notions of their role and mine that I would like to
erase. My learning partners also help me and their peers learn. We
coproduce and lead the class in ways that may not be prescribed in the
syllabus. It is somewhat normal in my classes for the students to
establish deviations in the material because another topic is more
interesting, or current, or... Partners also grade participation and some
assignments under some degree of guidance from me. I learn from them a
lot too, and a lot of what and how I conduct the sessions has been
developed from their feedback and input (David Fearon, Central Connecticut
State, has also contributed a lot, but he has gotten also a great number
of ideas from his own students).
-- Ivan BLANCO@BU4090.BARRY.EDU 305 899-3515 Fax 305 892-6412