The Learning Process

In considering the learning process, we hold in tension the positives of the modern quest for true knowledge and the postmodern acknowledgement that the understanding of any subject is limited by human finiteness. In the crux of that tension stands our firm foundation and authority, the Bible, the revealed word of God, which states absolute truth, but is accommodated to our human limitations. Consequently, our approach to the learning process denies both the arrogance of modernism and the relativity and absolute uncertainty of postmodernism.

The transmission of information from the instructor to the student encapsulates the most basic and fundamental component of the learning process. The measure of genuine learning, though, is not realized simply through the students' collection of transmitted information. Rather, genuine learning is revealed through transformation in the spiritual, cognitive, affective, and psycho-motor domains of the student's life. In order to determine the effectiveness of this transformation, appropriate and varied assessment of both teaching and learning is used and correlated with course, program, departmental, and college-wide objectives.

Because we live in an age where information is abundant and readily available, students are instructed throughout the curriculum to develop the information literacy skills necessary to collect, critically analyze, and communicate that information accurately and effectively. Having data does not imply its proper use, as knowledge alone is not equivalent to wisdom.

Students receive a holistic and integrated picture of a discipline in order to have the framework for understanding the depth of that discipline and the methodology necessary to work in it. This approach across the departments utilizes broad survey-based courses complemented with narrower in-depth courses. As students progress academically, they are expected to advance into higher levels of learning and application while understanding that by nature no subject can be examined exhaustively. This expectation does not cease upon the formal completion of the student's education at LBC; rather, it emerges beyond LBC through the discipline of life-long learning.