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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 WCU faculty. FLCs can be either topic (ex. writing across
the curriculum, teaching & technology, assessing student
work, etc.) or cohort (ex. department heads, junior faculty,
First Year Seminar faculty, Liberal Studies faculty, etc) based.
Each FCL 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.
For some years there have been Faculty Teams or Project Teams
that formed each August on topics that interested faculty. However,
those loosely organized Faculty Teams, with some exceptions,
tended to fade during the academic year. No real commitment
was required and no outcome was needed, nor was there a responsibility
to disseminate the results of the teams’ work. Thus, this
year the concept of the Faculty Team is ending and being replaced
by that of FLCs. FLCs are formed this August / September as
components of the new initiative, Scholarship of Teaching &
Learning at WCU (SoTL at WCU) that has the full support of the
Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.
Definition of a FLC
Miami University of Ohio was the recipient this year of a
Hesburgh Award Certificate for faculty development based upon
its work with FLCs. As it says on its FLC web site (http://www.units.muohio.edu/celt/flcs/index.php):
“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, interdisciplinarity,
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.”
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"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 communitieswork)."
- Patricia Cross
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Goals of FLCs at WCU
A faculty learning community is a special kind of "community
of practice" (Wenger, 2002). The goals of FLCs at WCU
are as follows:
- build University-wide community through teaching and
learning, thus creating a culture of engaged teaching &
learning
- improve effectiveness and enjoyment of teaching and learning
- research teaching and learning based upon theory, evidence,
practice and outcomes
- encourage scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching
and its application to student learning
- reconceive the evaluation of teaching and the assessment
of learning
- increase faculty collaboration across disciplines
- support and promote the value of liberal studies for all
students
- increase the rewards for and prestige of teaching that
leads to excellence in student learning and in the scholarship
of teaching & learning
- 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
Joining a FLC
In order to join a FLC, a faculty member registers to be
a member of a specific FLC for the academic year by submitting
a registration form to the Faculty Center (request a form
by phoning 7196, emailing Alan Altany, or stopping by HL 166).
The registration form requests the following:
- Explanation of why one wants to be a member of the particular
FLC
- Selection of a focus course to revise, or to teach for
the first time, based upon one’s work with the FLC
(the focus course is one that will be taught during the
2004-2005 academic year)
- Description of one’s most significant concerns about
teaching and learning
FLC Individual Guidelines
Each member of a FLC agrees to the following:
- Participation in a FLC is voluntary, formative and all
FLC discussions are confidential
- Participate in FLC meetings and events and share one’s
focus course syllabus with FLC members
- Design a teaching & learning project, strategy, or
goal that will be applied to one’s focus course
- Prepare a one-page final report on one’s membership
in the FLC (due to FLC Coordinator by May 15, 2005
Operation and Outcomes
The Faculty Center will coordinate the formation and the
logistics for the FLCs. Each FLC has the following responsibilities:
- actual operation of the FLC, its schedule of meetings,
leadership, content, goals, outcomes and dissemination
- give a presentation of its work at the campus-wide, 1st
annual Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Faire in 2005
- the leader of the FLC is to submit to the FLC Coordinator
a one-page mid-year report (December) and a one-page final
report (May) that summarizes and analyzes the work and outcomes
of the FLC
The FLC as a whole, or individuals members, are also encouraged
to consider disseminating their work in additional ways such
as, but not limited to, the following:
- Publication of an FLC article in WCU’s ejournal
on SoTL, MountainRise
- FLC presentation in the Faculty Series held each semester
- Writing a booklet for the Renaissance of Teaching
& Learning Booklet Series
- Creating a FLC web site for its work that is shared with
the campus
- Publishing in a SoTL journal
- Conducting presentations or workshops for departments
- Giving a presentation at a regional or national conference
- Publishing an essay in the Faculty Forum
FLC Topics
The topics for FLCs for 2005-2006 include:
- Assessing Student Learning
- Scholarship of Teaching & Learning
- Student Learning Through Writing
- Teaching, Learning & Technology
- Teaching Critical & Creative Thinking
- Online Teaching & Learning
- Service Learning
- Department Heads
- Graduate Faculty
- Civic Engagement
- Lecturing for Learning
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