Learning Communities: LaGuardia Instructional Staff Meeting May 3, 2006

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Learning CommunitiesLaGuardia Instructional
Staff MeetingMay 3, 2006

• A Brief History Rationale
• Will Koolsbergen
• and Phyllis van Slyck

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Basic Definition

• A variety of approaches that link or cluster
  classes during a given term, often around an
  interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common
  cohort of students.
• This represents an intentional restructuring of
  students time, credit, and learning experiences
  to build community and to foster more explicit
  connections among students and their teachers and
  among disciplines. Gabelnick, MacGregor,
  Matthews, Smith

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Learning Communities respond to key academic
issues

• Mismatched expectationsstudents/faculty
• Inadequate interactionstudents/faculty
• Lack of coherence among courses
• Lack of resources for faculty development
• Student non-completion rate
• Growing complexity and interdependence of
  problems we face

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What we Know about Learning Community Students
(AAHE 2000)

• Complete courses and persist at higher rates
• Succeed academically at higher rates
• Report higher degree of personal growth
• Report high to significant gains in
• Learning skills
• Content
• Ability to see other points of view
• Analytical skills
• Bond to collegiate institutions
• Develop into
• Active, responsible learners
• Community minded individuals

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The Experimental College, University of
Wisconsin Alexander Meiklejohn (1927)

• Predicted that narrow departments would make it
  difficult to raise important interdisciplinary
  issues
• Fragmented nature of the curriculum would
  frustrate committed teachers trying to create a
  sense of deep engagement and community
• Developed two-year interdisciplinary, team
  taught, coordinated studies program
• Theme democracyfifth century Athens to 20th
  century America
• Active learning, problem-based seminars living
  learning environment for faculty and students

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The Experimental College, continued

• Course of study shall not be a series of
  disconnected readings or separate topics whose
  relations are left undetermined
• To become intelligent is to use your mind in
  such a way that connections are established
• The mind must be given active work to do to
  understand to deduce, to infer, to connect, to
  understand a field in relation to a larger whole
• Phrase communities of learners introduced
• Meiklejohn, Alexander. The Experimental College,
  Chapter 5

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Educational Change in the 1960s

• Higher education doubles in size
• Community college system is born
• Cluster colleges are established at traditional
  institutions
• Non-traditional institutions are created
  Hampshire, Marlborough, Reed, Antioch

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The Evergreen State College, 1969

• Licensed to create a whole new kind of
  institution
• Team taught integrated programs 12-16 credits
• No majors no faculty rank, no departments
  instead evolving areas of study
• Culture, Text and Language,Environmental
  Studies,Expressive Arts,Native American and World
  Indigenous Peoples' StudiesScientific
  InquirySociety, Politics, Behavior and Change
• Emphasis on interdisciplinary education, active
  learning, connecting theory to practice

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Stonybrook, 1970 (Patrick HillPhilosophy
professor)

• Concerned about fragmentation of curriculum and
  isolation of students
• Promotes concept and term learning communities
• Developed federated learning communities
• Definition a group of students travel together
  and study togethersometimes with faculty or
  graduate mentor--like a small federationin
  larger classes.

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LaGuardia Community College, 1971

• Innovative faculty wanted to work across
  disciplines
• mid 1970s Freedom Clusters were designed
  freedom and seeing, freedom and listening,
  freedom and speech
• All liberal arts students took (and still take)
  an introductory cluster of 12 credits expanded
  to include l.a. science students
• English Comp, Research Paper, two other liberal
  arts /sciences courses
• In the 1990s an integrated, team taught seminar
  hour was added

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Vincent Tinto, Syracuse University,1990

• First large scale assessment of why students
  leave college
• Studied LaGuardia, Seattle Central CC and Univ of
  Washington
• Conclusion was that learning communities
  addressed retention and success issues,
  especially for first year and developmental
  students
• LaGuardias New Student House, for example,
  demonstrated a 95 retention rate at end of first
  and second years as contrasted to 20 retention
  for basic skills students studying outside House

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Liberal Arts Clusters at LaGuardia--Example

• ENG 101 Composition
• ENG 103 The Research Paper
• HUP 101 Introduction to Philosophy
• HUC 170 Art of Theatre
• LIB 110 Integrated Hour

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Sample schedule for liberal arts cluster gods
and monsters Eng 101 m, th 100 315 Eng
103 t 100 315 Hup 101 M, t, th 1030
1130 Huc 170 w 915 1245 Lib 110 w 100
200
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Learning Community Pedagogy

• Derives from
• Deweys ideas about experience and reflection,
  democracy and community (1890s-1930s), Piaget
  assimilation-accomodation theory of learning
  (1920s-1970s), Bruners constructivist learning
  theory (1920s-1980s), and Vygotsky s situated
  learning theory (1920s-1930s)
• Constructivism, discovery learning--education
  based on cognitive theory we construct ideas
  based on current and past knowledge. 
• Knowledge is physically, symbolically and
  socially constructeed constructed by learners who
  are involved in active learning.
• Also influenced by
• Donald Schon, 1973What are the characteristics
  of effective learning? What demands are made on a
  person who engages in this kind of learning?
  Reflection in action
• David A Kolb, 1975experiential learning
  concrete experience observation and reflection,
  conceptualization, testing in new situations

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Active Learning Strategies in Learning Communities

• Student-led seminars, debates, improvisations
• Problem-based learning (case studies)
• Critical thinking approaches (multiple
  perspectives)
• Collaborative projects and responses
• Service learning and field study
• Reflection and assessment occasions
• Faculty repositioning
• From the sage on the stage to the guide on the
  side

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Core Practices in Learning Communities

• Communityfaculty student collaboration
  academic social connections shared purpose
  satisfaction
• Active Learninglearning in social context
  problem based learning students take
  responsibility for learning team projects
• Integrationcurricular coherence across
  disciplines students construct meaning
• Diversitylooking at issues from multiple
  perspectives acknowledging and attending to
  diverse learning styles
• Reflection and Assessmentexamining prior
  knowledge and assumptions identifying learning
  outcomes how have you changed?

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Resources

• More than 600 institutions nationwide numerous
  regional and national conferences
• LaGuardia continues to be a national leader
• Washington Center lists more than 300 learning
  communities http//learningcommons.evergreen.edu
• LaGuardias learning community website
  www.lagcc.cuny.edu/lc

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Resources

• Alexander Astin, What Matters in College Four
  Critical Years Revisited, 1993
• Stephen J. Brookfield, Becoming a Critically
  Reflective Teacher, 1996.
• Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 1998.
• Smith, Barbara Leigh et al. Learning Communities
  Reforming Undergraduate Education, 2004
• John Tagg, The Learning Paradigm College, 2003