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Building Communities of Active Learners
Southwest Regional Learning Communities Conference
February
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COMBINED SESSION:
FACILITATOR: Maria Hesse, Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Maricopa Community Colleges
Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Vanessa F. Sandoval, Rulon Parker, Marcy Perzanowski
The facilitators will show how cooperative learning, technology, and teaching/learning styles are incorporated with required curriculum in seamless courses known as COMPASS. This interactive presentation will give conference participants the "student experience" in a learning community atmosphere, by taking part in classroom activities, hearing a former student's perspective, and witnessing how a learning community classroom functions. Activities may involve the following teaching techniques: interactive lecture, reflective writing, blackboard discussion board, and/or response writing. The facilitators have been a COMPASS teaching team since the fall of 1999. The Community Participation for Student Success (COMPASS) Learning Community has more than a five-year history of assisting students to acclimate to Chandler-Gilbert Community College. The fall semester combines English (ENG061 Basics of Writing and ENG071 Fundamentals of Writing) with Counseling and Personal Development (CPD150 Strategies for Student Success) to integrate writing with study skills, college orientation, and career development. The spring semester expands the integration of writing with interpersonal skills, small group dynamics, and public speaking, by combining English (ENG071 Fundamentals of Writing and ENG101 first-year Composition) and Communication (COM100 Introduction to Communication.)
contact information:vanessa.sandoval@cgcmail.maricopa.edu NOTE: this session is combined with the following session
Central Arizona College
Flint Anderson, Shay Cardell, Maren Wilson
We designed the learning environment around at-risk and developmental students, wanting to offer the best possible learning experience for new students. More specifically, we sought to deconstruct traditional approaches, including academic assessment testing prior to enrollment. We attempted to apply what we believed were the best of learning models and make such available to students as their first college experience. We have also brought student services into the classroom as an integral part of the instructional team. The majority of entering students are first-generation from a rural copper mining region of about 50% spanish-speaking population. Our model is a nine credit block, which meets Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:00 a.m. to noon and 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. We have integrated math, social science, and success skills.
contact information:flint_anderson@python.cac.cc.az.us COMBINED SESSION:
FACILITATOR: Duane Roen, Arizona State University
Penn State College, Schuylkill
Marianne Goodfellow, Tom Eberlein, Susan Barrows
The Penn State Capital College, Schuylkill Campus, had in place all components needed for first-year student success- advising staff for first-year testing and advising (FTCAP), a first-year seminar (FYS) supplemented with a Peer Mentor program, a Center for Academic Achievement (CAA) for student tutoring, as well as a core of faculty committed to first-year students. Although the campus is small enough to create a sense of community without linkages, pedagogy suggested that integration of components would be beneficial in terms of positive student outcomes. For Fall 2001, two learning communities were piloted that linked sections of the FYS with an academic course: a) a first-year seminar for students interested in science, engineering, and technology majors was linked to General Chemistry, and b) a first-year seminar for students interested in behavioral science majors was linked to Introduction to Sociology. All first-year seminar students were embedded in larger sections of either General Chemistry or Introduction to Sociology. Advisors promoted the linked sections during FTCAP. Peer Mentors who were also tutors for the subject areas were assigned to the linked sections. Due to the pilot nature of these linkages, a "nonequivalent control group design" was used to assess outcomes. In this presentation, we will discuss the steps taken to integrate the components of this learning community effort as well as the assessment strategy and results.
contact information:mxg10@psu.edu NOTE: this session is combined with the following session
University of Arizona
Chris Johnson, Barbara Hoffman, Sylvia Mioduski
Have you ever had a situation where a brother or sister brought the whole family to live with your family for an extended period of time? Were there tensions and difficulties mixed with joyous times? The University of Arizona has created such a house with nine highly different families under one roof. Our recently dedicated Integrated Learning Center (ILC) brings together the communities of students, faculty, advisors, tutors, library staff, professional development staff, student preceptors, assessment experts, and information technology staff to create an integrated learning environment. The ILC was designed as a space to help us form a freshman learning community within the large context of the ILC and to help us facilitate the formation of smaller, fluid learning communities consisting of students, teaching team members, and staff. However, a physical space is static and dead without the people who inhabit it. Therefore, what allows us to create a fluid community to support our new scholars are the members of the teaching and support teams that we have developed. This presentation will detail the path we have taken and the campus communities that have been involved in creating our new learning environment. We will discuss the things that worked and those that didn't from the perspective of each new community's members. We will also discuss how the current budget problems have impacted the process. We will then detail our plans for creating an ever-changing learning community to support our new students as they begin their scholarly path.
contact information:cgj@u.arizona.edu 
University of Prince Edward Island
Shannon Murray, Stefanie Richard
In this session, we will discuss the First-Year Advantage (FYA) program at UPEI, a learning community of twenty five students and five professors who connect with each other both in the classroom and electronically. The twenty five students take four single-semester coursesÑAcademic Writing, Practical Logic, Introduction to Psychology, and Introduction to LiteratureÑand one two-semester First-Year Experience course (University 100). Instructors coordinate their schedules, but conduct their classes independently. Some assignments are connectedÑthe presentation component of University 100, for example, is based on research for the Academic Writing courseÑand there are social events for professors and students, but what connects us between classes and across semesters is a common Web Course Tools (WebCT) page. All five professors use that page for quizzes, supplementary material, and a coordinated "readings and assignments" calendar. The most revealing, helpful, yet also problematic feature of the WebCT page, though, is the electronic bulletin board. That bulletin board takes the place of a weekly journal in the Academic Writing class. Students post a minimum of 100 words a week on any aspect of the FYA program, so that they practice their writing, reflect on their courses, and help each other through difficulties in their first, and most challenging, year. Although this bulletin board is one of the most constant and satisfying community-builders in the program, our experience this year shows that students can either support each other or lead each other astray. The key to the success of the bulletin board, therefore, is vigilant yet tactful monitoring by the five instructors.
contact information:smurray@upei.ca
Arizona State University
Sally Ramage, Carol Williams, Osaro Ighodaro, Linda Sullivan
"This presentation will focus on the challenges of and alternatives to implementing ""traditional"" learning communities on a large, urban campus. A team of administrators and staff, representing both student affairs and academic affairs, will discuss their various roles in implementing and supporting learning communities. Participants will learn about several different types of programs and how collaboration between academic and student affairs has led to their success."
contact information:linda.sullivan@asu.edu COMBINED SESSION:
FACILITATOR: Maria Harper-Marinick, Maricopa Community Colleges
Glendale Community College
Amanda Dunnagan, Nancy Siefer, Charlotte Cohen, Johnnie Clemens May, Niall McCarthy, Kim Keck, Charles F. Jeffery, Molly McCloy, James Buhanan
This will be an interactive, collaborative session led by a campus-wide Glendale Community College panel consisting of an advisor, a librarian, a student, several English faculty, a Business and Technology faculty, a Learning Communities Coordinator, and an Administrator. This panel will facilitate a discussion about what works and what needs improvement in a comprehensive learning communities model like the one offered at Glendale Community College. Throughout the session, participants will have a chance to look at Glendale Community College's framework to discover and assess their own hot, weak, and missing links.
contact information:amanda.dunnagan@gcmail.maricopa.edu NOTE: this session is combined with the following session
GateWay Community College
Dean Stover, Martha Bergin, Elizabeh Skinner, Geri Rasmussen
The presenters were part of a team that received a Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) federal grant to integrate general education courses into a vocational program using an occupational problem-based learning model developed at Southern Illinois University Medical School. Based on that experience, and their seven years experience with learning communities using the academic Evergreen model, the presenters will discuss the benefits and challenges of these two very different models and perspectives for integrating curriculum. Participants will be asked to brainstorm possible problem-based scenarios for academic learning communities.
contact information:dean.stover@gwmail.maricopa.edu
Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi
Glenn Blalock, Pamela Meyer, Anthony Quiroz
Since 1994, when we first began admitting lower division students, all first-year students at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi have been enrolled in a unique First-year Interdisciplinary Learning Communities Program. In that first-year, all of the nearly 400 first-year students were enrolled in one of three interdisciplinary learning communities, comprising FY Seminars, English composition courses, and two large lecture courses. This year, 2001, nearly all of our 1200+ FY students are enrolled in eight different learning communities, which have evolved from linking only 4 courses to linking 3, 4, or 5 courses (and associated labs). The FY Seminar and the FY Writing Course are at the center of the LCs, providing the intellectual space and support for students to engage individually and cooperatively in critical thinking and writing-to-learn activities to enrich their understandings of the lecture courses. The writing courses are taught in computer classrooms, and they emphasize ongoing inquiry and research in both semesters. They share with the FY Seminar the explicit goal of developing information literacy. All faculty in the Learning Communities collaborate on assignments and activities meant to integrate writing in all courses, emphasizing both the value of writing to learn and of learning to write in different academic and social settings. And faculty in all the courses integrate technology and continue to explore ways to use newer technological tools to enhance the LCs. In other words, our program represents a complex integration of various goals, objectives, and tools. This complexity is both a strength and a challenge. In this presentation, we will address the following questions: 1) How have we maintained (and how will we maintain) the central principles of the program during substantial growth (from 400 FY students in 1994 to as many as 2000 by 2010)? 2) How have we promoted and enabled integration/connections within LCs, and how can we do this more effectively? 3) What assessment have we done, what continued/further assessments can we do, and how can we use these data? 4) As our first-year students bring more diverse academic backgrounds, what other ways can we implement the LC principles, and what will be the role of technology?
contact information:glenn.blalock@mail.tamucc.edu |
