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Building Communities of Active Learners
Southwest Regional Learning Communities Conference
February
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COMBINED SESSION:
FACILITATOR: Duane Roen, Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Mary Anderson-Rowland, Joseph Urban, Osaro Ighodaro , Andrea Muchinsky
This presentation will address the process of establishing a learning community for first-year engineering students. In 1997 the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS), in partnership with the Division of Student Affairs, established a residential learning community for first-year engineering students at Arizona State University. This living and learning community was designed for first-year students in any of the sub-disciplines in the CEAS. Although the program has undergone some changes since its inception, the students that have participated indicate that living in the community enhanced their overall first-year experience at ASU. The students are challenged and supported as they engage like-minded peers, residence hall staff, and faculty from the CEAS. The meaningful contact with faculty, advisers, and their peers helps to familiarize the students with the relevant engineering career paths. Participating students experience computers in an environment conducive to learning. Close proximity to those around them allows the students to become more connected as a community, affording the students an opportunity to set up study groups, utilize tutoring and participate in review sessions. The students who live in our communities are better informed about the requirements of their major as well as various events (both academic and non-academic) sponsored by their college as well as the university as a whole. Students who participate in this community and similar communities at ASU persist at a higher rate than those who do not. During this session, a team of faculty and staff speak to the original purpose of the community, the challenges faced thus far, the varying opportunities for enhancing the community, and the results of three years of surveys in which students have answered questions about their experience in this community. Participants will be able to glean insight about collaboration amongst university departments that foster the curricular and co-curricular development of first-year students.
contact information:osaro@asu.edu NOTE: this session is combined with the following session
University of Houston
William H. Kellar
This presentation will explore the development and evolution of the Scholars' Community program at the University of Houston. The Scholars' Community provides a case study of how to establish a learning community program on the campus of an urban university with a large commuter population. The Scholars' Community is, first and foremost, a retention program. Because of this, the program is expected to achieve certain goals and is subject to certain outside pressures that have an impact on the types of class linkage and block scheduling that can be offered. But this also provides opportunities for the program to create innovative models to deal effectively with large numbers of contemporary urban students. The Scholars' Community has developed a model that includes optional "satellite" learning communities (QuickStart, Drop-in) and a required Freshman Success course. During its seven-year history, the program has expanded from an initial cohort of 324 freshman students to three cohorts for a total of nearly 1,000 freshman students in 2001. This overview of the Scholars' Community's development provides a useful look at the challenges of building and maintaining a learning community program while expanding its capabilities to serve a broad base of students.
contact information:wkellar@uh.edu
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