Posts Tagged ‘Learning Communities’
June 22 - Learning Communities: Benefits Across the Board?
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Learning Communities
There is no question that higher education tends to get caught up in “fashionable” program innovations, and learning communities could certainly be considered an example. A great deal of research has established that, in terms of retention and persistence, first experiences in college are tremendously important.
November 5 - Learning Communities: Key Elements for Sustainability
By: Barbara Leigh Smith in Learning Communities
Tuesday’s post discussed the goals and core practices of effective learning communities. Today we outline elements of sustainable learning communities as well as some of the challenges of learning community development.
November 3 - Helping Your Learning Community Reach Its Goals
By: Barbara Leigh Smith in Learning Communities
Learning communities come in all shapes and sizes. Some simply link courses and put students in a cohort; many go considerably beyond that to build a learning environment around core practices known to promote student learning. Some are new, while others have been in place for nearly 20 years. If you would like to take
June 30 - Millennial Faculty Are Coming. Are You Ready?
By: Rob Kelly in Academic Leadership
Don’t look now but it won’t be long before Millennial faculty arrive on your campus as well. For four-year institutions, the first wave of Millennial faculty should arrive by 2013. For community colleges, where many faculty often are not required to have doctorates, the wave will arrive even sooner.
June 4 - General Education Programs Incorporate More Engaged, Integrative Learning Practices
By: Mary Bart in Curriculum Development
A survey released last month suggests that many colleges and universities are reforming their general education programs and developing new curricular approaches and educational assessment strategies for measuring key learning outcomes. As institutions review their general education programs, many are choosing to incorporate more engaged and integrative curricular practices.
May 19 - Faculty Learning Communities: Benefiting from Collective Wisdom
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Faculty Development, Teaching and Learning, Teaching Professor Blog
An article in the January-February issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching reports on the experiences of a group of life sciences faculty who participated in a faculty learning community. “We wanted to bring together life sciences faculty members who would discuss and support each others’ teaching and learning goals, breaking down the communication barrier that characterizes most teaching activities in the sciences.” (p. 39)
April 3 - Tips for Improving Online Retention
By: Christopher Hill in Distance Learning Administration, Online Education
Retention remains a knotty problem for distance education. Bob Nash manages instructional design for Coast Learning Systems, a division of Coastline Community College in Fountain Valley, California. He proposes that online retention is a difficult problem because it is “multi-variant” – there is no single cause that can be addressed by a single solution. So
September 23 - Learning Communities Link Courses, Bring Academic and Student Affairs Together
By: Rob Kelly in Articles, Learning Communities
Faculty need to be very careful about how they commit their time and energy, so any potential partnership with student affairs need to be compelling and clearly articulated. “We in student affairs, specifically in housing and residence life, always want to get faculty involved, but I think it’s really important for us to consider how
September 22 - Encouraging, Supporting Learning Communities
By: Rob Kelly in Articles, Learning Communities
Learning communities, an approach to curriculum design that links two or more courses, can improve student success and retention and help students develop effective learning habits. Learning communities also can improve the instructors’ teaching by exposing them to new teaching techniques and exploring connections between disciplines they might not have considered. However, to be successful,
September 21 - Build Learning Communities Throughout an Online Program
By: Rob Kelly in Articles, Learning Communities
Nova Southeastern University’s Master’s in Health Law program is designed to encourage the creation of learning communities in which students view each other as partners rather than isolated individuals who happened to be working toward similar goals. The two-year program, which is housed in NSU’s Shepard Broad Law Center, uses a cohort model that features
