An Oral History of the California Learning Communities Consortium Workshop 2009

What follows is (more or less) an oral history of the California Learning Communities Consortium (CLCC) Workshop 2009. The conference, hosted by Solano Community College, was an inspiring event, and I'm endeavouring to represent the more salient ideas floating around the workshop. Enjoy!

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At this workshop, we discussed what learning communities are, how they work, and how they can succeed. Briefly, before I begin, I want to outline three understandings of what a learning community is:

1) A hard link: A cadre of students are enrolled in two (or more classes) that are linked together. If a student drops one course in the community, that student must drop both courses. Instructors appear in each others' courses, but might not remain for their colleague's entire class.

2) A cohort: Students in one linked course join another linked course that might have other students. Example: ESL 102 students link with ENG 100 in a learning community, but their might be other students in the ENG 100 course that are not enrolled in the ESL 102 course. Instructors appear in each others courses, but might not remain for their colleague's entire class.

3) Team-taught: Both instructors are in both classes at all times.

For anyone who attending the Learning Communities Workshops here at Palomar College, you might notice that the definitions expand on the "hard link" definition we were presented with by Marco Cicerone, formerly of De Anza.

Now, onto the CLCC Workshop:

[Here's a link to the CLCC program that I'll be referencing.]


Dr. Karen McCord & Dr. Ella Tolliver [working within Umoja Program]:

We can get students to college, but how do we keep them there? We've united counseling skills with an academic skills focus; this linking helped prepare students to stay in college. It's easier to say, "I need you to see the counselor if the counselor is a teacher in the learning community with you."

In the beginning of a learning community, me must expose students to support and accountability. The benefits of the learning community are: a nurturing environment, interactive learning, enhanced college prep, increased student enrollment, and improved student persistence.

Students are interested (in succeeding in college), but they don't know how to pull it all together. LCs help them pull it together, but we must allow students to become participants.

Administrators have to commit time for teachers for planning. Solano CC has three hours of release time per week for teachers to plan classes (together). Without that release time, we wouldn't be able to do or plan all of the things that we do and plan for our linked courses.

Student Testimonials:

Roosevelt, "I feel like a father, an uncle, and a friend (to my peers in my LC). As an older man, I thought young students would reject me. They have embraced me. I wish (the LC) was a lifetime. One year isn't enough."

Danielle, "You're not sitting in a class listening to (a teacher) go on and on about their expertise. There is an array of experiences to share (in an LC)."

Ruth Fuller and Michael Wyly:

We had a very hard time convincing students to take a library research course, yet teachers consistently recognized that students needed those skills. In response, we built a learning community (LR 10 and English 1) to address those needs.

LCs might give instructors the time and space they need to hit on all of the objectives that instructors need to hit on and that students need for success.

Our future students need to know more than our current students know. Changing technologies necessitate an appraisal of new needs for new generations of students. The challenges are growing, but the semester reamins the same length. LCs help instructors, administrators, and institutions address this gap.

In LCs, assignments must be fully integrated between instructors. One assignment is turned in and two grades are awarded according the two rubrics/assessment focii keyed to the two courses.

I can give a final exam in this LC that I cannot give in English 1. Their skills are higher.

Counselors are absolutely essential to getting students to enroll in LCs.

Your campus community has to be behind you 120%. Instructors have to be supported from student and faculty support all the way up to administrator support.

There is a fair amount of management between and among instructors. Such collaboration works best (read: only works) when instructors want to be part of the learning community.

Diane White and Dr. Emily Blair:

An LC, because it is made up of two (or more courses) can fulfill two or more requirements. Such a "twofer" attracts a lot of students to LCs.

A challenge in an LC is selecting appropriate textbooks (i.e. slecting one textbook that addresses the stated goals of both courses.

An LC is always a work in progress. In an LC, students work and grow together but so do faculty members.

LCs are the cheapest professional development tool around.

In an LC, you have to let go of your old models and come up with new ways of doing things. Two CORs need to become one. You can't be rigid. Both instructors must give. Instructors must be creative. When the two (or more) courses are linked, the result is not the same as either of the two courses that make up the LC. The LC is, by nature, a new course.

SLOs are a fluid document. There has to be give and take. LCs allow that sort of flexibility with SLOs.

Brad Pascal:

Fifty-five percent, K-12 students are awake and outside of class. Thirty percent of the time, K-12 students are sleeping. The remaining 15% of the time, students are in school. During both blocks of awake time, 55% and 15%, students are learning. During that 55% of the time, students are learning in a contextualized, integrated environment. Why do schools, with their 15%, teach students in a decontextualized, abstract environment? This disparity mush be changed.

Gillies Malnarich, Co-Director, Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education. Evergreen State College:

If you're doing the "same-ol' same-ol', and students are crashing and burning: stop doing it!

Research on learning has shown that we must: (1) engage prior understandings, (2) consider the essential role of factual knowledge and conceptual frameworks in understanding, and (3) recognize and tap into the importance of self-monitoring.

We should not be teaching the 'details.' We should be going for 'deep learning.' 'Coverage' is not working; LCs demand that we step out of the sequence of one, static COR and create a new entity that would have been impossible without interdisciplinary integration.

We didn't learn to ride a bike by first mastering the amount of pressure that should be applied to the handlebars to turn, then mastering how much pressure to pally to the brakes to stop at varying speeds, and then mastering how fast to pedal over varying inclines. We learned this all at once as we went. This is learning. We have to teach the big picture, not just the abstract details. We must teach in a context.

We need to shift from a focus of 'possessing knowledge' to a focus on 'using knowledge.' In our teaching, we need to start focusing on problems in the real world's of the students and use the skills gained in the LC to begin to address those problems.

Curriculum on our campuses put our students at risk. The design does not ensure student success. We need to develop strategies to help those students who are good with their heads, good with their hands, and good with their hearts.

[Please access this website (and scroll down) for a series of paper presented by Evergreen College, the institution on the forefront of LCs.]

Molly Emmons:

Linked courses follow established CORs, but we must also develop SLOS for the LC.

There must be enough unlinked (non-LC) courses of a particular type (e.g. ESL 10, HIST 101)
so that students who do not want to enroll in LCs are not disenfranchised. A good rule of thumb is four unlinked courses for every one linked course. [Thus, if in one semester, we offer only one section of ESL 101, we cannot link that course to another in an LC.] LCs will be very unpopular if they take away sections of a course for students who don't want to be part of a learning community.

Benefits to the college of LCs: Great marketing, a collaborative campus, commuter college becomes a connected college, and faculty become students again and grow professionally.

Set high expectations in an LCs. Students will rise to meet them--or lower themselves to meet low expectations.

To build an LC: Advance orientation for instructors is a must; Instructors must be interested [don't let admin be in charge; it must be a faculty led initiative]; years of experience of instructors should not be the major criteria for selcting instructors for the LC; have mid-term meetings and discuss what is going on; don't run a link that is too small; don't schedule off-times for LCs (they won't fill up); don't start out your first semester with a ton of LCs (start with only a handful); don't make exceptions for dual-enrollment; counselors have to sell the LC.

Some documents from the conference (some documents came without references):

Designing integrative assignments: Designing integrative assignments handout, our integrative assignment, and collaborative assessment protocol for student work.

'To Do' list for LC instructors.

LC Faculty Contract Example.

LC Instructor Compatibility Survey Example.

Self-Assessment: What are my goals for working in an LC?