Academy for Teaching and Learning Excellence (ATLE)

• Why is there so much interest in learning communities? I think the reasons can be divided into three broad categories: philo­sophical(because learning communities fit into a changing philosophy of knowledge), research based (because learning communities fit with what research tells us about learning), and pragmatic (because learning communities work).  K. Patricia Cross, “Why Learning Communities? Why Now?” About Campus, July-August, 1998, p. 4.

• Higher education has been very slow to embrace the fact that knowing, teaching, and learning are communal enterprises, and to reflect that reality in the way it pursues its mission. But the pace of change has been picking up over the past two decades, and the learning communities movement has been at the forefront of that quickening.Parker J. Palmer (author of The Heart of Higher Education, The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, and A Hidden Wholeness) http://celt.muohio.edu/lcj/

• Extensive documentary evidence suggests that effective learning communities have important benefits for students and faculty. . . .  Faculty benefits include diminished isolation, a shared purpose and cooperation among faculty colleagues, increased curricular integration, a fresh approach to one’s discipline, and increased satisfaction with their students’ learning.Lenning, O. T., & Ebbers, L. H. (1999). The powerful potential of learning communities: Improving education for the future(ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report Vol. 26, No. 6, p.iv). Washington, DC: The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

• There is a deep hunger among faculty members for more meaningful collegial relationships and more ‘conversational structures’ in our institutions.Gabelnick, F., et al. (1990) New Directions for Teaching and Learning: Learning Communities- Creating Connections among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines. Vol. 41, p. 86.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• The growth of any craft depends on shared practice and honest dialogue among the people who do it. We grow by private trial and error, to be sure — but our willingness to try, and fail, as individuals is severely limited when we are not supported by a community that encourages such risks.  Palmer, P. (1998).  The Courage to Teach.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.  (p. 144)

Quotations from USF Faculty Focus Groups Student Success Task Force, December 2009

•     The thing I find most helpful is other faculty who exchange ideas . . . .  There’s nothing better than to ask a colleague.

•     We mentor other faculty and we become a community . . . .  We share – how did you do that?  I think that is really helpful for faculty.

The Academy for Teaching and Learning (ATLE) is establishing a new program of Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs), defined in the literature as cross-disciplinary groups of faculty “who engage in an active, collaborative, yearlong program with a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning with frequent seminars and activities that provide learning, development, the scholarship of teaching, and community building.”    Cox, M. & Richlin, L.  (2004). New Directions for Teaching and Learning:  Building Faculty Learning Communities.  Vol. 97.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.