Best Practices - 1
Running Head: BEST PRACTICES
Best Practices for Learning Communities:
The Faculty
Daniel W. Murphy
JamesMadisonUniversity
Best Practices in Learning Communities: The Faculty
JamesMadisonUniversity
James Madison University (JMU) is a public, 4-year, institution located in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Founded in 1908, JMU is nearing the Centennial with around 16,000 students and an annual freshmen class around 3,700 students. Popular academic programs include Psychology, Business, Education, Music and Biology. Harrisonburg, Virginia is located in the Shenandoah Valley. The community is largely agricultural and has a population of just over 40,000 people. The campus of JMU is surrounded by the developing community. 70% of the student body comes from Virginia and 30% of the student body comes from out of state (primarily Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and the Northeast).
Learning Communities at JamesMadisonUniversity
The Learning Communities at JamesMadisonUniversity have continued to grow over the past few years. There are currently five Learning Communities on campus. Three of these communities maintain a focus within certain majors (e.g. biology, education and psychology). One community is dedicated to the Honors Program and another community has been provided for students committed to service-learning. Students in learning communities are enrolled in classes together. They take anywhere between one and three classes each semester within their respective communities. Students also live in Gifford Hall, the designated Living-Learning Community Hall. Learning communities are a collaborative effort between the Office of Orientation and First Year Experience, the Office of Residence Life, and the academic departments.
The Psychology Learning Community is home to first-year students interested in pursuing a major in psychology. The PLC provides students with a place to explore topics within the psychology curriculum. Students take twoclasses together in the fall semester and one class together in the spring. The learning goals for the community are adapted from the best practices outlined by the American Psychological Association.
The Roop Learning Community serves students interested in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade education. Roop provides academic opportunities to the students that expand beyond the two semesters that students live in the residence hall. They take two classes together each semester for three semesters. The courses completed in this learning community satisfy one of the General Education areas. Students that participate in the Roop community have the chance to do service-learning in area schools. In addition to being a learning community, Roop is also a registered student organization which allows for continued involvement and support through the Education program.
The Trelawny Learning Community is the last of the community dedicated to an area of study within the university. Students that participate in the Trelawny community are declared biology majors. This learning community has a one-credit seminar experience that allows participants to explore special topics in biology. There is also a mentor aspect of the program which provides first-year students with upper class students in the major.
The Honors Learning Community is available for students that are enrolled in the JMU Honors Program. This is the largest learning community at JMU with just under 40 students. The students that participate take one three-credit life skills course designed to “allow students to examine their own worldview, to discover dimensions of their own personal wellness, and to define wellness in local, national, and global context.” (JMU Learning Communities, Retrieved on December 15, 2005)
Finaly, the Teer Learning Community is open to students of any major. This community is for students who share an interest in service-learning. Participants are actively involved in the community for 20 hours as a part of their commitment. These students also take three courses together that fulfill General Education requirements. (JMU Learning Communities, Retrieved on December 15, 2005)
Faculty Involvement
The JMU Learning Communities currently utilize nine faculty members to operate the five different communities. These faculty members all volunteer their time to instruct the learning communities. There are no forms of faculty compensation currently in use. In an attempt to attract more faculty members and increase retention rates, a benchmark of Learning Communities around the country was performed. The focus of this research was faculty involvement, recruitment, retention, and compensation.
Information Gathering
The most recent version of Americas Best Colleges published by U.S. News and World Report listed the schools with the strongest learning communities in the country. On this list were 25 schools that included more than two linked courses of study that students participated in together and had the opportunity to work closely with faculty in their program. In addition to U.S. News and World Report, the National Learning Communities Directory sponsored by the WashingtonCenter provides an online database with access to hundreds of learning community programs. This directory includes a search feature that allows users to request specific criteria when looking for learning communities.
The online database allows users to select institutions based on institutional enrollment, the size of the institution, whether the institution is public or private, two-year or four-year, the region the institution is located in, or even help search for a specific institution. In the search that was run for this study, the selection criteria included institutional enrollment (over 10,000 students) and institutional type (public). The search returned over 100 potential institutions to contact.
An e-mail was drafted asking for information that involved faculty involvement and compensation. This letter was sent to 32 different institutions with recognized learning communities. A complete list is included with the original email in Appendix A. Seven schools responded enthusiastically to the request for information. Thos institutions are listed below:
Appalachian StateUniversity
IowaStateUniversity
SyracuseUniversity
TempleUniversity
University of Maryland-College Park
University of Texas-Austin
University of Wisconsin-Madison
All seven of the institutions were taken from the U.S. News and World Report list of 25 best learning communities in the country. Faculty involvement and compensation will be discussed for each institution.
Appalachian StateUniversity
Appalachian StateUniversity offers two different opportunities for learning communities. The first option is the Freshmen Learning Communities in General Studies that brings together first-year students in linked courses instructed by faculty. They offer anchor courses which consist of a Freshmen Seminar. In addition to the anchor course, they also take linked courses which are either courses in the Core Curriculum or major specific. Faculty are compensated $200 to instruct a Freshmen Seminar or anchor course and $150 to instruct a linked course.
Freshmen Seminar Instructors that work with this program go through a one week training program at the beginning of each academic year. Instructors are paid between $875 and $1500 for the week long training. The difference in pay depends on rank within the university structure. Faculty members that participate in the program count the hours of instruction as a part of their semester class load. The only time when the program compensates the academic department for loss of instruction is when a tenure track faculty member is involved. In these instances the department receives a payback. (Petchauer, October 17, 2005)
The second learning community is called the WataugaCollege. Watauga is a residential college housed in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. Watauga was created as an academic program first that was later retrofitted with a residential program. Because of the unique structure, faculty is hired to teach in Watauga. Most instructors teach both in the learning community and in the major department. Compensation for these faculty members includes the average compensation for the university.
Faculty are drawn to Watauga because of the opportunity to instruct in his or her research area. “Teaching in Watauga is one form of professional development and also fun – an experiment in both topic and method that can, and frequently does, influence one’s teaching in the home department.” (Huntley, October 14, 2005) The faculty that do work in other departments are relieved of a course in their home department.
IowaStateUniversity
IowaStateUniversity offers learning community options in all of the different colleges within the University (i.e. Agriculture, Business, Design, Engineering, Human Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences and more.) Most of the faculty that engage in these communities are motivated on their own accord. In most instances, the learning community is embedded into a larger classroom section with smaller focus groups. Admittedly, recruiting faculty is difficult.
Faculty members that are responsible for providing the English lectures are compensated $500 as a part of the linked English and Orientation class. For other faculty members, the courses that they teach count towards his or her class load. However, they are given compensation for planning time spent during the summer. Some of the communities are given funds based on the assessment projects that they complete. The greater the efforts in assessment, the more funding learning communities receive.
There are two interesting aspects of the learning communities at IowaStateUniversity. The Biology department is attempting to have all of the Introduction to Biology students to be members of the Biology learning Community. This will allow students to have greater interaction with other students and faculty inside the program. Some of the learning communities also utilize Peer Mentors as facilitators of the study groups. These mentors also co-teach classes with faculty and are compensated with central university funds. (Gruenewald, October 20, 2005)
SyracuseUniversity
In the SyracuseUniversity learning communities, faculty members teach their courses as a part of their class load. There is no monetary compensation. If faculty members go over their class load for the semester, they have occasionally paid overload, but this is not a budgeted item. An alternative currency that they provide the faculty is to turn each credit hour into $200 of professional development funds. They admit that “with over 200 faculty and staff involved, this would be prohibitive if everyone actually took advantage of the offer; fortunately, many do not.” (Hurd, October 14, 2005)
TempleUniversity
Members of the faculty at TempleUniversity try to provide their learning community students with the most meaningful classroom experience by merging curriculums to supplement each other. For their planning efforts, they can earn up to $500 if they complete all of the appropriate phases of the planning process. This includes $100 for the Learning Communities Summer Meeting where instructors establish grading standards and have the opportunity to develop the expectations for student work. They also receive $150 for attending one of the summer planning sessions. This is a chance to meet as a teaching team and coordinate the team plan. After completing the plan, the instructors receive $150 for submitting it to the program. Finally, they receive $100 after they successful complete the mid-semester community report. Full-time administrative staff members that work with a learning community and also instruct course are not eligible for any stipends. (Levine, October 14, 2005) Copies of the Community Plan Worksheet (B) and the Mid-Semester Report (C) are attached in the Appendices.
University of Maryland-College Park
Learning communities at the University of Maryland-College Park were an attempt by the administration to give UMD a smaller, more intimate, feel. They have received generous funding from discretionary monies. The challenges of finding residential space and having a large commuter campus have led to a shift towards non-residential communities with a choice in either semester or year-long commitments.
Each community is responsible for their fiscal management responsibilities. “For example, University Honors has a budget provided by Academic Affairs for a central staff and for the funding of some seminars, but many of the seminars are provided by the departments and colleges. The Director of University Honors is a tenured faculty member, on leave from her department, usually on a five-year rotation.” (Stewart, October 14, 2005)
The College Park Scholars is another program offered by University of Maryland-College Park. This is a conglomeration of 12 themed programs that house 150 first-year and upper-class students each. Academic Affairs again provides the budget for the central staff but each home department is responsible for approximately one fifth of the financial obligation for each community. Faculty are usually shared with their department and receive release time from their regular class loads to instruct these courses. (Stewart, October 14, 2005)
University of Texas-Austin
The University of Texas-Austin refers to their learning community as a First-year Interest Group (FIG). Due to the large size of University of Texas-Austin, the contact between faculty members and students is minimal. The FIGs professional staff consults with faculty in regards to which courses should be included in the different clusters that are available. Within the First-year Interest Group, the majority of contact is made between professional staff members at the university or with peer mentors. The peer mentor and professional staff member act as the link between first-year students and the campus community. New mentors are paid $300 and returning mentors receive a $500 stipend. Co-facilitators also receive $100 for their involvement in the program. (Rehal, October 19, 2005)
University of Wisconsin-Madison
The University of Wisconsin-Madison also uses First-year Interest Groups on their campus. These small groups of 15-20 students enroll in three classes together in a linked theme. The core classes within each FIG are taught by faculty members at the university. In order to instruct, they must submit a proposal to the FIGs Planning Committee. The other two courses linked together usually involve a lecture style classroom with the FIG together in a small discussion group. Faculty members usually teach these courses as a part of their teaching load for the semester. In this case, each faculty member is given a $1500 supplies-and-expense allowance to spend as they will. This allows them to provide for books, equipment, guest speakers, field trips or social events for the First-year Interest Group. (Smith, October 14, 2005)
Best Practices
Each participating school in the study was listed by U.S. News and World Report as the best learning communities in the country. Even through the differences of each program, all of the programs have remained successful in providing students with an education/living experience unlike any other at the university. Due to the unique nature of learning communities, it is difficult to list a defined set of best practices for learning communities as far as faculty involvement and compensation are concerned. That being said, there were many common themes that evolved from the study.
The most common theme through all of the learning community in regards to faculty compensation was the ability for the instructor’s classes to count towards their credit load for that semester. Faculty members are required to fulfill a determined amount of credit hours each semester. The courses that are a part of the learning community curriculum should go towards fulfilling this obligation. This is time shared between the learning communities and the home department.
In terms of course selection, some programs require faculty to submit proposals for the subjects they wish to teach. The majority of schools in the program utilize the learning communities to offer General Education curriculum to their students in smaller, more intimate, settings. These usually range between 15-30 students. Another curriculum theme that emerged was the idea of an anchor course. There is one foundational course in the learning community that is usually then linked with another class or two that focus on core curriculum or major courses. The anchor course in many instances is a freshmen seminar course.
David Huntley from Appalachian State University suggests that learning communities “offer faculty the chance to teach courses that emerge from their academic interests and in some way let these courses replace a course in their home departments.” (October 14, 2005) In that conversation, he also talked about one of the draws to the Watauga Learning Community was the ability of faculty members to provide students courses that could not be found in any curriculum. This allowed the learning community experience to be truly unique. In many instances, an instructor’s research will lead to the formation of a new class or curriculum topic. The problem is that these courses do not always fit into the design of the home department. The learning community should be an opportunity for the faculty to share their expertise and research with students while exposing the students to new forms of learning.