TRAINING MANUAL FOR AN ECOSYSTEM MODEL:
Assessing and Designing Campus Environments
by
LuAnne Aulepp and Ursula Delworth
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education
An Equal Opportunity Employer
P.O. Drawer P
Boulder, Colorado 80302
April 1976
We are most grateful to Murray M. DeArmond, M.D., and to Kent Hodgson for their reviews of the manuscript Each was a member of a planning team that used this ecosystem model in test applications on campus. Their experience afforded them special insights on which to base their comments. Drs. Lois Huebner and Weston H. Morrill, who provided consultative assistance during the model's application, furnished another valuable viewpoint to the manuscript's review, as did Grant Sherwood, who read it from the general standpoint of student service personnel. They all made helpful suggestions that were incorporated into the manual's final text. We also wish to express our gratitude to the WICHE editor, Renee Munoz, and to the program secretary, Carol Francis, for their fine preparation of the manuscript for publication.
The Training Manual for An Ecosystem Model is published by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) program Improving Mental Health Services on Western Campuses as a result of work done on Grant No. 12419 from the Experimental and Special Training Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. The manual presents processes developed and used during on-site campus applications of an ecosystem model.
Model Origins
The ecosystem model is a design process utilizing an ecological approach. The essence of an ecological approach is the interaction that occurs between persons and their environment or how an environment affects people, their work, their leisure, and their personal growth. The theory that underlies this model was developed by Dr. Leland Kaiser and was refined by members of the WICHE program task force on which he served. This and other program task forces were convened during the first three years of the grant (1970-1973). Membership of each task force represented all segments of the campus community--students, faculty, student services, administration, and governing boards. Their charge was to develop ideas for the delivery of student services that would foster well-being on campus. In using the ecosystem approach to campus, the model becomes a tool for the creation of campus environments that can foster both educational and personal growth among students.
The current grant has concentrated on the development and testing of processes implementing the ecosystem model and two other models, one for student service programs development and the other for training paraprofessionals and allied professionals, recommended by the task forces. Implementation of the ecosystem model is far behind its conceptualization. The technology for its use is still in a developmental stage. This training manual offers only the beginning rudiments of a technology that is certain to grow and be refined as succeeding campuses use the model. Each campus that hosted an ecosystem model application has provided new dimensions to the processes that have been incorporated into this manual. Therefore, each campus that uses this manual is advised to regard it as a guide, not as strict rules, and is urged to expand upon the suggested processes.
Model Overview
Traditionally, colleges and universities have responded to students who were not adjusting to their campus environments by easing them out or referring them to a service that would aid them in making an adjustment. Relatively little attention has been given to institutional adjustments in terms of programs, policies, services, or physical spaces. Even when new services have been offered or existing ones expanded, this is rarely done on the basis of systematic data concerning student/environment fit. In short, students were adjusted, but rarely were their environments. There is now growing interest within postsecondary education in the ecosystem approach that identifies adjustments institutions can make to facilitate student retention and growth. Ecosystem theory does not deny that some students should leave college or that some students will need individual academic or personal assistance while in college; what it does assert is an alternate option--the design of environments that ameliorate unnecessary problems and enhance student retention and growth.
The ecosystem model's design philosophy is rooted in eight basic assumptions that:
1. A campus environment consists of all the stimuli that impinge upon the students' sensory modalities, including physical, chemical, biological, and social stimuli.
2. A transactional relationship exists between college students and their campus environment, i.e., the students shape the environment and are shaped to it.
3. For purposes of environmental design, the shaping properties of the campus environment are focused on; however, the students are still viewed as active, choice-making agents who may resist, transform, or nullify environmental influences.
4. Every student possesses the capacity for a wide spectrum of possible behaviors. A given campus environment may facilitate or inhibit any one or more of these behaviors. The campus should be intentionally designed to offer opportunities, incentives, and reinforcements for growth and development.
5. Students will attempt to cope with any educational environment in which they are placed. If the environment is not compatible with the students, the students may react negatively or fail to develop desirable qualities.
6. Because of the wide range of individual differences among students, fitting the campus environment to the students requires the creation of a variety of campus subenvironments. There must be an attempt to design for the wide range of individual characteristics found among students.
7. Every campus has a design, even if the administration, faculty, and students have not planned it or are not consciously aware of it. A design technology for campus environments, therefore, is useful both for the analysis of existing campus environments and the design of new ones.
8. Successful campus design is dependent upon participation of all campus members including students, faculty, staff, administration, and trustees or regents.
The ecosystem model's design process is utilized to identify environmental-shaping properties in order to eliminate dysfunctional features and to incorporate features that facilitate student academic and personal growth. For example, a physical space might be altered, a policy changed, or a new program or service initiated. It can be applied at a macro-level to design environments for the entire campus community; it can be applied at a micro-level to design subenvironments for groups within the campus community; and it can be applied to route students to an environment, service, or program demonstrated to be meeting student needs. This would be considered an individual design project.
The design process itself encompasses seven steps that should be viewed as interacting components (see Figure 1). Design work may begin with any of the steps but unless an institution is just being set up or wants to initiate an entirely new environment, it will find entry into the model is most natural at step five. The seven interdependent steps are:
Figure I
The processes given in this training manual are for a micro-level project, as this type of undertaking provides the greatest benefit without overextending the ecosystem model's technological capabilities at this stage of its development. The point of entry into the model is at step five--measuring student perceptions--because most campus environments are already established with implicit and explicit values and goals. It makes sense to check how students view the translation of these values and goals, that is, how they perceive what is happening to them in the environment, and equally important, why they have these perceptions. It is the ecosystem model's emphasis on why students have certain perceptions about an environment that imparts its design capabilities.
For years researchers have developed instruments that measure people's perceptions, but the resultant data do not reveal why; consequently, there is not sufficient information and design can be blind. Without obtaining environmental referents--the specific causes and/or conditions in the environment that produce student perceptions-designers can eliminate good features with the bad ones, and thus redesign an environment that still fails its intended purpose.
The most common way to get an environmental referent is to interview individuals. This is time consuming and for a large undertaking such as the assessment of most campus environments it is impractical as well, at least when utilized as the only data-gathering method. Therefore, the model uses and advocates an Environmental Referent (ER) questionnaire in conjunction with the more common instrument approaches for assessing perceptions. This questionnaire uses a format that asks students to review their responses on the perceptual instrument and comment as to why they have their good and bad perceptions and what should be retained or changed in the environment as they perceive it. It is this information that subsequently makes it possible to redesign environments that will better fit the people for whom they are intended.
This training manual is for micro-level ecosystem projects. The manual illustrates how work on such a project can be divided into five major stages. Each stage begins with an overview of the tasks to be covered in it. Then, a two-part format--Discussion and Process--is used to further describe each task and present the processes that have been found useful in carrying it out. The manual's lefthand margins contain a continuing outline of each stage, which is designated by the name of each task to be completed and its accompanying discussion and process procedures.
Because one of the basic philosophic assumptions of the ecosystem model is that successful campus design is dependent upon the participation of all campus members including students, faculty, student services, administration, and trustees or regents, Stage I involves the establishment of an ecosystem planning team that translates his concept into a practical form. Using the ecosystem model's step five as the point of entry, Stage II concentrates on determining which aspects of the environment the planning team wants measured by student perceptions. This lays the foundation for Stage III in which the assessment technique is developed. Stage IV involves administering the assessment technique and conducting an initial analysis on its data. Processes for the subsequent redesign of the environment based on the data analysis are given in Stage V, as are suggested procedures for evaluating the effects of the redesign.
Model Applications
In order to develop this training manual, the ecosystem model was applied on three campuses to test, evaluate, and refine the processes used for its implementation. The time involved for each on-campus application was approximately a year. The model and its goals are best served when the environment's population remains relatively the same from the period of environmental assessment through the period of evaluation on the subsequent environmental designs. To accomplish this, however, adequate lead time is needed for the completion of planning in Stages I, II, and III, so that the environmental assessment can be conducted with sufficient time remaining in the academic year to complete design implementation and design evaluation.
Each host campus was requested to complete Stage I, the establishment of a planning team, before the WICHE program initiated on-campus application of the model. Then, continual consultation with the host campus was maintained through Stage V processes for redesign. Subsequent implementation and evaluation of redesigns were left to the discretion of each individual campus and its planning team. In this manner, each campus owned its own model application.
The experience was rewarding for the WICHE program. With patience and creativity, each planning team provided valuable assistance and information for the preparation of this training manual. It is with deep appreciation that we thank members of the planning teams who applied the ecosystem model at:
University of Arizona, Tucson
Community College of Denver, Red Rocks Campus, Golden
Eastern Oregon State College, LaGrande