VOLUME 19
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ISSUE 3
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NOVEMBER 2020
THE TOOLBOX A Teaching and Learning Resource for Instructors
“WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER”: LEARNING COMMUNITY CASE STUDIES Editor’s Note This is the second article in a two-part series laying out the operating principles of learning communities as an alternative to standard practices in undergraduate education.This article offers case studies from institutions of various sizes, missions, and locations employing learning communities as a strategy for facilitating learning and building connections between and among students, faculty, and staff.
Jean M. Henscheid, Richie Gebauer, Jeff P. Godowski, Shannon B. Lundeen, Julia Metzker, Mimi Benjamin, Janine Graziano, Rita Sperry, and Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas
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ne critical lesson of the COVID-19 era is that high-quality connections are essential and profoundly missed when absent (University of California San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 2020). Developing and nurturing these kinds of connections has been the central work of learning communities for the past 120 years1 (Smith et al., 2004). Within learning communities, there is a sense that “we’re all in this together,” a notion that has become a mantra of the pandemic landscape.With so much practice building and maintaining connections, learning communities, as an alternative to traditional education, still have much to teach the rest of higher education. Following are case studies that illustrate how learning communities (virtual and face-to-face) are co-created by faculty, staff, and students as interdisciplinary, crossdivisional spaces for members to share responsibility for the learning, growth, and well-being of others. Contact information has been provided so readers can reach out to the learning community leaders at each institution.
What I try to tell young people is that if you come together with a mission, and its grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible.
— John Lewis (1940-2020), United States Congressman and Civil Rights Leader
1 Residential learning communities (i.e., living–learning communities) claim American Colonial-era residential colleges as their antecedents (Chaddock, 2008).
National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience® and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina
www.sc.edu/fye/toolbox
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