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 in order to 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 linked thematically or by content in which a cohort of students takes together.
- Coordinated Study - Faculty members’ who 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. In this instance, intellectual connections and community-building often take place in an additional integrative seminar.
These are broad categorizations along a spectrum of learning community activities. Dozens of adaptations of these types exist to fit the needs of specific colleges and universities.
Effective Learning Communities:
- 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.
- Encourage faculty members to relate to one another both as specialists and as educators. (In effect this encourages the development of new faculty roles.)
- Encourage continuity and integration in the curriculum.
- Help build a sense of group identity and cohesion.
Learning Communities Are Found In:
- 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
Fall 2008 Learning Communities
Spring 2008 Learning Communities
Frequently Asked Questions about Learning Communities
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