Traverse City Learning Community Workshop—NEIU

In November 2002, Northeastern Illinois University conducted a workshop on “Speedbumps and Roadblocks on the Learning Community Highway” at a Learning Communities Conference in Traverse City, Michigan. Below is a brief summary of that workshop, and the follow-up materials sent to participants two months later.

The session will gather the experiences and expectations of attendees about the obstacles – both real and imagined – that individual faculty or campus communities contend either impede or prevent learning communities initiatives. The NEIU team will then lead a discussion of how it negotiated, reduced, or overcame those obstacles in its learning communities initiative for the ’01-’02 Academic Year. Attendees will be involved in a construction of “best practices” for successful learning communities initiatives – whether by individual faculty or by broader college or campus-wide efforts.

For the past several years, a few individual faculty at NEIU have initiated individual learning communities. You might find one or two learning communities tried each year. Also, for the past two years, as part of a large grant, the Illinois Professional Learning Partnership (IPLP) at NEIU has turned to learning communities as a core vehicle for attracting, training, and retaining K-12 teachers. Entering freshman at NEIU, who indicate an intention to become teachers, are placed in a learning communities cohort for two to three courses in each term through their sophomore year. On entering the College of Education, these students will join another cohort for their remaining undergraduate experience. Beginning with one cohort in the Fall of 2000, the pilot has expanded each year.

Nothing much was happening, however, regarding learning communities at NEIU outside of this IPLP project. Nothing, that is, until the university administration succeeded in getting a budgetary allocation of $100,000 for the College of Arts & Sciences for the fiscal year – money specifically directed toward a learning communities initiative in the College.

It is the story of that initiative that this presentation will tell. It will be told in the context of what attendees at the session see as the challenging contexts for learning communities initiatives on their own campuses. At the start of the session, small groups of participants will develop a list of the barriers, burdens, and boundaries that they see as impeding the growth and development of learning communities at their instititutions. Next, while a brief overview of the NEIU context is presented, the lists will be compiled and will provide the structure for the presentation of Northeastern’s experience with its ’01-02 learning communities initiative. Problems identified generally by the session participants will be covered in the Northeastern story. Attendees will be asked to add their experiences on these points in an attempt to generate a listing of “best practices” for getting over, under, around, or through major barriers to learning communities in departments and colleges or on campuses.

The major goals of the session will be two-fold. First participants should be reassured that obstacles to the growth of learning communities on their campuses are not strange or particular to their environment. Second, they should leave with a renewed sense of encouragement that is fueled by the knowledge that others have addressed, resolved, or learned to deal with similar difficulties. It can be done. Others have done it. They can do it, too.

Traverse City Learning Community Workshop—NEIU—Nov. 2002

UPDATE AND WORKSHOP SUMMARY—January 20, 2003

New information now available—

Ø A “Student Exit Survey” was administered in the LC sections offered at Northeastern during the Fall 02 Term. A copy of that instrument is among the attachments to this e-mail. NOTE—That instrument contains items used solely for NEIU’s internal use. You may not copy any of the items for your use without express permission from me. Otherwise, our permission to use items from other national student surveys would be compromised.

What you should be doing in assessing your LCs is designing a set of pre/post items that enable you to make useful comparative analysis of short, and long-term impacts of LCs on your students who have experienced them against students who haven’t. Many items would be of interest to all assessment efforts, but those can, and should be designed to maximize the fit with data already collected on your overall student population. If your institution is using national student surveys, and you would be aided in using specific items or item sets from those instruments, you would need to get the owners of those instruments to sign off on your pulling them out for your own study.

We would be happy to share our findings with you, when they are available. Preliminary data analysis is scheduled by the end of the current term. I will be proposing a session to report our findings at next year’s conference.

I would be happy to be of any assistance to you in your efforts to set up a useful assessment protocol for your LCs.

Ø We distributed a “Participating Faculty ‘Hindsight’ Survey” in the final weeks of the Fall Term. That is also attached for your information.

We do have preliminary results that we can report from that survey.

· For 7 of the 10 respondents, this was their first LC experience. For those “old hands,” they listed fewer meetings, the workshops, more communication, and more organization as having made this experience “better” than their prior ones.

· Respondents wished they had gotten more help in work load issues for LC participation, more individually tailored workshop sessions on co-grading/joint assignment, coordination of teaching styles, using technology w/out content sacrifice.

· They found especially helpful—the workshops, esp re meeting other participants, intro to technology[Blackboard], and developing the general course frameworks; assistance in student recruitment and enrollment.

Several participants were especially glad they and their partners spent a lot of time discussing and exchanging ideas about their LCs.
They wished they had started sooner, spent more time planning and previewing proposed class activities, and gotten the syllabus together sooner; shared more in advance their teaching philosophies and styles, and just “getting to know” one another.
What went “especially well” was learning from one another about teaching, teamwork, and the transfer/transition of skills; also, the students’ sense of community, their comfort level, their feeling that other people cared, and commitment to helping others “get it.”
What “had NOT gone especially well was too little preparation time leading to rough connections among assignments; the “drop one, drop all” registration requirement for students; negotiating different teacher expectations re assignments.
To make their next LC experience better, they listed release time from other assigned duties; more coordination time and advance planning; help in coordinating joint assignments/grading.
Their advice to future LC faculty included that LCs take a lot of time, including a lot of planning time; picking a partner is very important; be ready to adapt as the term goes along; don’t expect to “cover” as much material; work out the interpersonal issues with your partner in advance and as they arise [it helps to get to know them professionally and personally].
Two of the ten were not likely to participate in another LC in the near future—one repeat and one first-time LC faculty[it takes too much time]; one was somewhat likely—a repeat LC faculty[depending on other responsibilities, release time, a compatible partner]; and seven were very likely to participate again soon [how well it worked this term—worked well with partner; class was fun; revitalized thinking about teaching; the involvement of more colleagues].
One of the two respondents not likely to do LCs again soon would not recommend participation to colleagues; one was somewhat likely to recommend them and seven were very likely to do so. [Of a long list of reasons given, no one reason was given twice, and they ditched much of what had been listed for prior questions.]
On the final question, a dozen items were mentioned, but none more than once.

Ø We were delighted that participants in our workshop rated their experience positively—of 17 returning evaluations, 14 said the session met their expectations, 1[each] rated it good or mostly/somewhat helpful. 2 wished there had been more time for breakout discussion than was available.

What participants found most useful fell into three general groupings—

1—audience comments/discussion/interchange among peers

2—others’ experiences and suggestions

3—how to get started/how others have overcome roadblocks/suggestions for solutions

Participants wanted to know more about a number of topics. [Italicized comments are my own, for whatever they might be worth. I’d be glad to try to elaborate, if anyone wants more.]:

Lasting impact on students. Short to intermediate impact—adjustment to college, retention, involvement in student life, etc. have been reported in several studies. “Lasting” impact has been harder to report, other than anecdotal. Let’s see what the LC conference in April in Phoenix can add to this. Anyone going? I’ll be there!
How to begin a LC. You may have found some useful material on this in our packet. Any 2 or 3 faculty can set one up, but it may be a lot of work. You may have to “sell” it to dept. chairs/deans, arrange scheduling, get students in the course, etc. NEIU found the “initiative” approach had some “economies of scale” on this, especially in having someone assigned to [and compensated for] a lot of the admin/overhead/planning/scheduling tasks. Also see next item. NEIU’s scheduling cycle mandated a Nov. 01 startup of planning and scheduling of events to get specific courses listed for the Fall 02 class schedule. That was enough time, but not too much. For the Fall 03 term, that time line wasn’t enough, as a new Provost moved up the course scheduling deadline for Fall 03 to late fall 02. Any LCs for 03-04 will have to be in Spring 04. To get back to the loading of LCs for entering students in the Fall Term again in ’04, those initiatives and activities will have to be included in the preparations for Spr. 03. One pluss might be the extra term for planning by participating faculty. [We all know how good we all are in taking full advantage of such additional preparation time!]
Money sources. NEIU had about $85,000 from the State of Illinois to put behind its initiative. Not everyone will be that fortunate. A provost, some deans, a director of a teaching and learning center, should be able to pool some bucks, if they are behind you—a course release might require hiring an adjunct faculty to teach a section in your department. There will be some costs for publicity, light refreshments for workshop sessions, publicity [see below]. A part of a secretary or admin asst clearly assigned to the effort helps a great deal. Something like $30,000 in real money or like kind services could get a good effort off the ground.
What the students think. As in the opening item, above, there are reports on this, and NEIU’s assessment protocol will add to what is available. Let’s look to Phoenix [or Seattle] for more on this, too.
Burnout issue. It’s bound to happen. “The choir” always has to be in the business of recruiting new singers. If a group/activity looks like its fun/worth while, there will be those wanting to get in on it. Still, this isn’t easy!
Marketing--LINC [Learning In Northeastern Communities] and tote bag was a good tool. I think every school in the universe hands out “stuff”—pens, notepads, caps, backpacks, etc. to someone sometimes. Your folks should have the latest catalogue of idea “goodies.”
Student interest and recruitment. See several entries, above. IUPUI is addressing this by making it mandatory. Not likely to work in “start-up” contexts, however. At NEIU, all first year students are placed through the counseling office—that helped! It is rougher for upper level classes. Some faculty recruit from their own current/prior students. In some LC combinations, both participating departments could give credit to their majors for all credits earned in the LC—in an Econ/Earth Sci LC with six credit-- majors in both programs could get all six toward their major program. The philosophy behind the LC concept certainly justifies such an approach.

Ø Finally, some of you may be interested in the listings you generated during the workshop session. Following [in no particular order, other than the order that I read them] are the items reported out from the small groups—both “Road Blocks” and “Green Lights.” The second listings are those items listed by individual participants on the worksheets left with us. Here, items listed more than once are indicated by the number of mentions provided in brackets following the item.

Group Reports—Road Blocks—