Learning Communities

What Are Learning Communities?

In higher education, curricular learning communities are classes that are linked or clustered during an academic term, often around an interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common cohort of students.

Why Use Learning Communities?

• Restructures students’ time, credit, and learning experiences;
• Build community among students, between students and their teachers, and among faculty members and disciplines.

Three General Types of Learning Communities:

• Linked Courses/Course Clusters - Two or more classes are linked thematically or by content which a cohort of students takes together.
• Coordinated Study - Faculty members team-teach a course that is embedded in an integrated program of study.
• Student Cohorts/Integrative Seminar - Small cohort of students enrolled in a larger class that faculty do not coordinate.

 

Effective Learning Communities:

• Are usually smaller than most other programs/organizations on campus.
• Have a sense of purpose.
• Help overcome the isolation of faculty members from one another and from their students.
• Help build a sense of group identity and cohesion.

Where Learning Communities Are Found:

• Developmental studies
• Freshmen/First Year initiatives
• Strategies for coherence in general education
• Writing programs: teaching writing in the context of a subject or an interdisciplinary theme
• Study in a minor (Women’s Studies, Environmental Studies)
• Study in the major
• Graduate school programs