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When
campuses begin to implement
learning communities, whether
they know it or not they are
embarking on a road that leads
to a profound change in
culture."
Shapiro & Levine |
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A Faculty Learning Community (FLC) is
composed of 6 - 12 faculty and requires
a commitment to meet, work, collaborate
with colleagues on the FLC and
disseminate the outcomes of the FLC’s
work to other NCSC faculty. FLC's can be
either topic (ex. blackboard, NCLIVE,
writing across the curriculum, teaching
& technology, assessing student work,
etc.) or cohort (ex. department heads,
new faculty, First Year Experience
faculty, etc) based. Each FLC determines
its own goals and objectives and how it
will disseminate the results of its
research and work to campus colleagues.
Membership in a FLC is for the entire
academic year.
Definition of a
faculty learning community
“The work
of Alexander Meiklejohn (1932) and John
Dewey (1933) in the 1920s and ‘30s gave
rise to the concept of a student
learning community. Increasing
specialization and fragmentation in
higher education caused Meiklejohn to
call for a community of study and a
unity and coherence of curriculum across
disciplines. Dewey advocated learning
that was active, student centered, and
involved shared inquiry. The term
learning communities traditionally has
been applied to programs that involve
first- and second-year undergraduates,
along with faculty who design the
curriculum and teach the courses.
“A faculty learning community (FLC) is a
cross-disciplinary faculty group…
engaging in an active, collaborative,
yearlong program.. about enhancing
teaching and learning and… activities
that provide learning, development,
interdisciplinary, the scholarship of
teaching and learning, and community
building. A faculty participant in a
faculty learning community selects a
focus course to try out innovations,
assess resulting student learning…(etc)
and presents project results to the
campus... Evidence shows that FLCs
increase faculty interest in teaching
and learning and provide safety and
support for faculty to investigate,
attempt, assess, and adopt new (to them)
methods.”
Why Learning Communities? Why
Now?... 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)." |
Goals of faculty
learning communities at NCSC
A faculty
learning community is a special kind of
"community of practice" (Wenger, 2002).
The goals of faculty learning
communities at NCSC are as follows:
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build college-wide community through
teaching and learning, thus creating
a culture of engaged teaching &
learning
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improve effectiveness and enjoyment
of teaching and learning
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research teaching and learning based
upon theory, evidence, practice and
outcomes
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encourage scholarly teaching and the
scholarship of teaching and its
application to student learning
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rethink the evaluation of teaching
and the assessment of learning
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increase faculty collaboration
across disciplines
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increase the rewards for and
prestige of teaching that leads to
excellence in student learning and
in the scholarship of teaching &
learning
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create an awareness of the
complexity of teaching and learning
and that good teaching requires
sustained effort, experimentation,
application, good means of
assessment, and career-long
professional development in both the
content of one’s discipline and in
teaching that discipline.
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