Faculty Learning Communities

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1. Goals for the Institution

The FLC Program Director, in consultation with administrators, a faculty advisory committee, and/or other appropriate groups, should determine what institutional goals might be addressed by a faculty learning community. For special, strategic initiatives, an FLC may provide a valuable approach. For example, technology or diversity initiatives have been successfully addressed by FLCs, providing well-informed and civic-minded faculty who are qualified to get involved outside the FLC. As another example, the AAHE “Heeding New Voices” study (Rice, Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000) provides 3 serious concerns that early-career faculty have expressed nationwide: lack of a comprehensible tenure system, lack of community, and lack of an integration between one’s academic life and one’s personal life. An early-career FLC provides an excellent way to address all three of these concerns. An example follows. Also, see Cox (1995).

EXAMPLE OF GOALS

This example illustrates how certain university-wide challenges can determine the goals of a faculty learning communities program.

THE FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITIES PROGRAM

A Faculty Learning Communities Program could be conceived to address the challenges of

reconnecting fragmented learning caused by (1) a disconnected curriculum and isolated faculty;

raising the excitement of learning, made drab by (2) low interest in teaching undergraduates

raising from mediocre to high the quality of learning, made mediocre by (3) the lack of rewards for excellent teaching;

ending the missed learning opportunities for minorities caused by (4) faculty ignorance or misunderstanding about the roles of diversity in learning

increasing the intellectual level of learning lowered by (5) ignorance about the latest research on teaching and learning, the scholarship of teaching and learning;

removing constraints on learning caused by (6) concern about student evaluation of teaching;

broadening one dimensional learning (for example, just lecture) caused by the lack of faculty interest or time to (7) investigate and develop new teaching approaches such as problem-based learning, use of technology, etc.;

enriching simplistic approaches to learning caused by (8) faculty unawareness of the complexity of teaching and learning;

broadening learning stagnated by (9) lack of faculty communication about different learning approaches, successes, failures;

refocusing learning efforts wandering from neglect of direction and institutional perspective due to (10) lack of faculty civic responsibility at the institution-wide level

reconnecting learning frustrated by (11) the gap in the classroom between student and faculty perceptions of how well certain teaching approaches are “working.”

Strengthening liberal learning, frustrated by (12) turf commitments and loyalty to departments and disciplines

At Miami we conjectured that the learning outcomes of student learning communities, if similar for faculty, would address many of the above challenges, for example, increased interest in learning, civic responsibility, and collaboration and cooperation across disciplines. Hence we developed a faculty learning community approach to meet the challenges. The Faculty Learning Community Program has the following goals in response to the above challenges:

Build university-wide community through teaching and learning, creating a learning organization

Increase faculty interest in undergraduate teaching and learning

Increase the rewards for and prestige of excellent teaching

Investigate and incorporate ways that diversity can enhance teaching and learning

Nourish scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and its application to student learning

Broaden the evaluation of teaching

Encourage and motivate new approaches to teaching and learning

Create an awareness of the complexity of teaching and learning

Increase faculty collaboration across disciplines

Increase civic responsibility and interest in institution-wide perspectives

Broaden the assessment of student learning

Encourage reflection about liberal education and coherence of learning across disciplines

This project has been supported in part by a grants from the US Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) and the Ohio Board of Regents.