Building Faculty Learning Communities E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B TL Single Issue Teaching and Learning
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 272

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Changing our colleges and universities into learning institutionshas become increasingly important at the same time it has becomemore difficult. Faculty learning communities have proven tobe effective for addressing institutional challenges, frompreparing the faculty of the future and reinvigorating seniorfaculty, to implementing new courses, curricula, and campusinitiatives on diversity and technology. The results of facultylearning community programs parallel for faculty members theresults of student learning communities for students, such asretention, deeper learning, respect for other cultures, and greatercivic participation. The chapters in this issue of New Directions forTeaching and Learning describe from a practitioner'sperspective the history, development, implementation, and resultsof faculty learning communities across a wide range of institutionsand purposes. Institutions are invited to use this volume toinitiate faculty learning communities on their campuses. This is the 97th issue of the quarterly journal NewDirections for Teaching and Learning.

Leseprobe

Contents

Editors’ Notes

Chapter 1: Introduction to Faculty Learning Communities

Learning Communities

Student Learning Communities

Faculty Learning Communities

Conclusion

Chapter 2: Overview of Faculty Learning Communities

Method

Results

Staying Current

Chapter 3: Institutional Considerations in Developing a Faculty Learning Community Program

Implementing Institutional Change

Recommendations

Reasons to Choose an FLC Model: Becoming a Learning Organization

Forces, People, and Structures on Campus That Facilitate and Hinder the Creation of FLCs

Chapter 4: Developing Facilitators for Faculty Learning Communities

Facilitator Selection, Preparation, and Support

Purposeful FLC Facilitator Preparation Programs

Conclusion

Chapter 5: Facilitating Faculty Learning Communities: A Compact Guide to Creating Change and Inspiring Community

Chapter 6: Developing a Statewide Faculty Learning Community Program

The Ohio Learning Network

Developing Technology-Enhanced Programs

The Learning Communities and Institutes

What Are We Learning?

What’s Next?

Chapter 7: Managing Multiple Faculty Learning Communities

Duties and Tasks

Interpersonal Connections with FLC Facilitators and Participants

Chapter 8: Assessing Faculty Learning Communities

Evaluation and Assessment of FLCs: An Overview

Metacognition: A Defining Feature of Authentic Assessment Practices Within FLCs

Guiding Principles for Authentic Assessment of FLCs

A Framework for Assessing FLCs

Authentic Assessment and FLCs: The UBC Faculty Certificate Program on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Conclusion

Chapter 9: Technology in Support of Faculty Learning Communities

Blended Learning

Pilot Study Overview

Community of Inquiry Model

Pilot Study Results

Pilot Study Recommendations

Conclusion

Chapter 10: Supporting Diversity with Faculty Learning Communities: Teaching and Learning Across Boundaries

An Allegory: Rehgih Noitacude

The Reality

FLC Impact on Diversity

The Diversity FLC and the Cultures FLC at Miami University

The Top Ten Things We Have Learned About FLCs on Diversity (So Far)

The Allegory Revisited

Chapter 11: Developing Scholarly Teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Through Faculty Learning Communities

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Survey

How FLCs Encourage Teaching Scholarship

Aspects of FLCs That Develop the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Conclusion

Chapter 12: Midcareer and Senior Faculty Learning Communities: Learning Throughout Faculty Careers

Senior Faculty

Senior Faculty Learning

Senior Faculty Learning Community

Other Midcareer and Senior FLCs

Conclusion

Chapter 13: Faculty Learning Communities for Preparing Future Faculty

What Is Really Needed

The Faculty Learning Community Model for PFF

PFF Faculty Learning Communities

The Claremont Graduate University PFF FLC Adaptation

FLCs Open to Faculty Members and CGU Students

FLCs Open Only to CGU Students

Results of the CGU FLC PFF Program

Importance of Community

Index

Building Faculty Learning Communities

Milton D. Cox, Laurie Richlin (eds.)

New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 97

Marilla D. Svinicki, Editor-in-Chief

R. Eugene Rice, Consulting Editor

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From the Series Editor

About This Publication. Since 1980, New Directions for Teaching and Learning (NDTL) has brought a unique blend of theory, research, and practice to leaders in postsecondary education. NDTL sourcebooks strive not only for solid substance but also for timeliness, compactness, and accessibility.

The series has four goals: to inform readers about current and future directions in teaching and learning in postsecondary education, to illuminate the context that shapes these new directions, to illustrate these new directions through examples from real settings, and to propose ways in which these new directions can be incorporated into still other settings.

This publication reflects the view that teaching deserves respect as a high form of scholarship. We believe that significant scholarship is conducted not only by researchers who report results of empirical investigations but also by practitioners who share disciplined reflections about teaching. Contributors to NDTL approach questions of teaching and learning as seriously as they approach substantive questions in their own disciplines, and they deal not only with pedagogical issues but also with the intellectual and social context in which these issues arise. Authors deal on the one hand with theory and research and on the other with practice, and they translate from research and theory to practice and back again.

About This Volume. The rise of learning communities among faculty members at institutions of all sizes and types seems to harken back to the original purpose of a university as a place where great minds came together. These days new faculty often complain that this expected ideal is not the reality. Experienced faculty speak of being isolated in their classrooms and missing the give and take of graduate life. The faculty learning communities movement can be a solution for these and many other problems of today’s diverse institutions. This issue provides both the theory and practice needed for bringing these communities to life on your campus.

Marilla D. Svinicki

Editor-in-Chief

Marilla D. Svinicki is director of the Center for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Texas at Austin.

Editors’ Notes

Since early in the last century, faculty members have lamented about the isolated nature of higher education and the effects of isolation on learning, classrooms, departments, curricula, and institutions (Waller, 1932; Dewey, 1933; Meiklejohn, 1932). In the last fifteen years, the search for community has intensified (Angelo, 2000; Boyer, 1990; Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews, and Smith, 1990; McDonald, 2002; Palmer, 2002; Shulman, 1993).

In 1974, the Lilly Endowment provided funding for a junior faculty teaching development structure, which was modified in 1979 by Miami University to emphasize community and the scholarship of teaching. The adapted model opened a way to establish meaningful community across disciplines, curricula, and institutions. Expanded and tested for twenty-four years at Miami University and directly adapted in the last four years by over sixty other institutions, the Miami University model for faculty learning communities (FLCs) is providing a broad perspective on the search for community and a promising solution to the problems caused by the isolation that still permeates academe.

At this point in FLC history, the focus is on the practitioners who have solved the issues of initiating, managing, and facilitating FLCs. The next focus will be on the outcomes from assessment of participants in these FLCs, which should be available in the next five years. The FLC approach offers great potential for addressing institutional interests by connecting colleagues across disciplines and departments, and the FLC movement is ready to expand from the colleges and universities of early practitioners to institutions that are willing to explore and initiate FLC programs. These early practitioners, the authors of the chapters in this book, explain how and why.

In Chapter One, Cox defines a faculty learning community, places the concept in the context of related efforts, and provides goals, outcomes, needs met, community-building requirements, and components of an FLC and an FLC program. Richlin and Essington report the results of a national survey of FLCs in Chapter Two, providing an overview of the many cohort-based and topic-based types of FLCs, their relationship to institutional classification and FLC budgets, kinds and frequency of meetings, and other FLC components. In Chapter Three, Shulman, Cox, and Richlin focus on the key institutional factors that enable or hinder the development of an FLC program. The degree to which an institution can become a learning organization—its capacity for making connections—can influence the chances of successful FLC program implementation and is later strengthened by the presence of an FLC program.

In the FLC dissemination project supported in part by the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), one of the most important lessons learned has been the importance of identifying and training those who will facilitate an FLC. Sandell, Wigley, and Kovalchick report in Chapter Four on the summer institute for new FLC developers and the innovative approaches that they developed at their own universities. In Chapter Five, Petrone and Ortquist-Ahrens address questions about effective facilitation processes and the pitfalls to avoid in this key role. The facilitator entrusted with the support of FLC colleagues often is assuming this task for the first time.

In Chapter Six, Hansen, Kalish, Hall, Gynn, Holly, and Madigan describe the keystone role that the FLC model has played in the successful efforts that a small state agency has made in establishing pedagogically robust and technologically enhanced programs, courses, modules, and learning objects across twenty-four institutions. This is a model that all state agencies should consider.

In a vibrant and successful FLC program, there may be more than ten FLCs running at the same time. Connecting these efforts to an institution’s teaching and learning center can provide a holistic, consistent, and exciting approach to faculty development. As Barton and Richlin describe in Chapter Seven, managing multiple FLCs requires a blend of technical savvy for tracking budgets, Web sites, schedules, and audiovisual equipment and an optimist’s cheerful and pampering spirit.

Assessment results provide the justification for investing time, effort, and funds in an FLC program. Faculty, administrators, facilitators, and students deserve to know the outcomes of FLC participation and its impact on growth, learning, and change. In Chapter Eight, Hubball, Clarke, and Beach bring Canadian and U.S. perspectives on the assessment of FLCs. In Chapter Nine, Vaughan looks at the role of technology in supporting inquiry cycles in an FLC and reports on a pilot test at his college using a community of inquiry model to facilitate reflection and critical discourse.

In Chapter Ten, Petrone draws on the reflective, double-loop nature of FLCs to show that they are an effective way to address institutional diversity issues and opportunities. She offers the lessons learned from facilitating a possibly risky and rewarding topic-based FLC over three years: the “dreaded diversity discussion” (Frederick, 1995) and explains ten factors that should be considered when including a diversity component in FLCs.

In order for the scholarship of teaching and learning to have a chance at acceptance, we knew that it had to approximate the rigors of disciplinary scholarship, including refereed presentations and publications (Richlin and Cox, 1991). We have carried that belief into the FLC approach. In Chapter Eleven, we describe how scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching can be developed in FLCs and are a key requirement for acceptance of FLCs in higher education.

In Chapter Twelve, Blaisdell and Cox discuss the yin and yang of working with midcareer and senior faculty in an FLC where teaching habits formed over years can be re-envisioned and the quest for learning taken up anew.

In Chapter Thirteen, Richlin and Essington report on adapting Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) programs to an FLC approach, and vice versa. Adding the community aspect to PFF programs provides a dimension that has been reported absent from graduate programs in recent studies. The authors also discuss the advantages of including graduate students in FLCs.

This volume brings a message of encouragement, wisdom, opportunity, and challenge to those contemplating, initiating, managing, or facilitating FLCs at their institution. Now we turn to the chapters written by our colleagues in celebration of faculty community. Read, reflect, and seek direction in your own communities. And if you do not have such communities in your college or university, then organize and build. We will assist you as you begin and as your FLCs evolve. Welcome to our community of those who build and lead faculty learning communities.

Milton D. Cox

Laurie Richlin

Editors

References

Angelo, T. A. “Transforming Departments into Productive Learning Communities.” In A. F. Lucas and others (eds.), Leading Academic Change: Essential Roles for Department Chairs. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.

Boyer, E. Campus Life: In Search of Community. San Francisco: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.

Dewey, J. How We Think. Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1933.

Frederick, P. “Walking on Eggs: Mastering the Dreaded Diversity Discussion.” College Teaching, 1995, 43(3), 83–92.

Gabelnick, F., MacGregor, J., Matthews, R. S., and Smith, B. L. Learning Communities: Creating Connections Among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 41. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.

McDonald, W. M., and others (eds.). Creating Campus Community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Meiklejohn, A. The Experimental College. New York: HarperCollins, 1932.

Palmer, P. J. “The Quest for Community in Higher Education.” In W. M. McDonald and Associates (eds.), Creating Campus Community. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Richlin, L., and Cox, M. D. “The Scholarship of Pedagogy: A Message from the Editors.” Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 1991, 2, 1–8.

Shulman, L. S. “Teaching as Community Property: Putting an End to Pedagogical Solitude.” Change, Nov.–Dec. 1993, pp. 6–7.

Waller, W. Sociology of Teaching. New York: Wiley, 1932.

Milton D. Cox is director of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching at Miami University, where he founded and directs the Lilly Conference on College Teaching, is editor-in-chief of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, and facilitates the Hesburgh Award–winning Teaching Scholars Faculty Learning Community.

Laurie Richlin, director of the Claremont Graduate University Preparing Future Faculty and faculty learning communities programs, also is director of the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching–West, executive editor of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, and president of the International Alliance of Teacher Scholars.

Chapter 1

Introduction to Faculty Learning Communities

Milton D. Coxa

Faculty learning communities create connections for isolated teachers, establish networks for those pursuing pedagogical issues, meet early-career faculty expectations for community, foster multidisciplinary curricula, and begin to bring community to higher education.

The growth of any craft depends on shared practice and honest dialogue among the people who do it. We grow by trial and error, to be sure—but our willingness to try, and fail, as individuals is severely limited when we are not supported by a community that encourages such risks.

—Palmer, 1998, p. 144

Community is playing an increasing and important role in our classrooms and institutions, connecting us with our students and colleagues (Cox, 2002). However, this growth has been slow, and there are many obstacles to implementation (Palmer, 2002). Creating a faculty learning community program is one approach that engages community in the cause of student and faculty learning and of transforming our institutions of higher education into learning organizations (Cox, 2001).

Community has played an important role in the development of the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the new country in the 1830s to determine the reasons for the success of democracy, concluded that it was a result of the social capital—“the ways our lives are made more productive by social ties” (Putnam, 2000, p. 19)—generated by Americans of all dispositions who were very active in forming and participating in local associations. However, community has faced barriers, as noted by Putnam (2000) in his findings and concerns about the collapse of small, traditional communities during the last third of the twentieth century. With this all-too-brief comment about community in U.S. culture, we turn to needs for community in higher education.

The isolation of college teachers in the 1920s was reported by Waller (1932). Even now, “The heart of the crisis in American education is the lonely work of teachers who often feel disconnected from administrators, colleagues, and many of their students” (Baker, 1999, p. 95). For example, in interviews with a random sample of 120 professors regarding their work as teachers and researchers, Baker and Zey-Ferrell (1984) noted distinct patterns: Research work involved elaborate and strong networks of support and collaboration, while teaching did not. There were two types of lonely teachers: the splendid isolationists—rugged individualists who were the best teachers in their department and expressed no need to consult about teaching—and demoralized loners, who consulted with no one because of bitter disappointments about students and colleagues.

Learning Communities

Boyer (1990) described colleges and universities as learning communities, which he characterized as purposeful, open, just, disciplined, caring, and celebrative. In higher education, the term learning community has many meanings. Baker (1999) uses the term to mean “a relatively small group that may include students, teachers, administrators, and others who have a clear sense of membership, common goals, and opportunity for extensive face-to-face interaction” (p. 99). He notes that classes, committees, advisory groups, interdisciplinary teaching teams, departments, and residential colleges have the potential to be—but may not be—learning communities. In some cases, the likelihood of having community is small. Duffy and Jones (1995) note that community in classrooms is a great opportunity that is often missed opportunity and that, if community is to be established, it needs to be done early in the term. Palmer (2002) comments: “Students are gathered in one place, called the classroom, not for the sake of community, but merely to make it unnecessary for the professor to deliver the information more than once” (p. 185). Palloff and Pratt (1999) describe requirements and methods for building virtual communities in cyberspace, noting that relationships established there can be stronger than those in face-to-face groups. A national study of departments found collegiality to be “hollowed” (Massy, Wilger, and Colbeck, 1994), with community usually absent from meetings, curricular planning, and pedagogical work. Angelo (2000) suggests ways to transform departments into learning communities, and Senge (2000) reports that department chairs, as local line leaders, must model the behavior necessary to build community. In learning communities, all members of the group are learners, and the group is organized to learn as a whole system (Baker, 1999).

Student Learning Communities

In order to understand faculty learning communities (FLCs), it is helpful to look at student learning communities (SLCs).

Background

The search for student community in higher education (Dewey, 1933; Meiklejohn, 1932) started long before Boyer’s search for community in campus life (Boyer, 1990). In the 1920s and 1930s, Dewey and Meiklejohn became concerned about the specialization and isolation of faculty and curriculum in departments and disciplines. To address the absence of active and student-centered learning (Dewey, 1933) and a coherent curriculum connecting disciplines (Meiklejohn, 1932), they independently proposed the concept of cohorts of students taking courses in common across disciplines. This approach sputtered for fifty years, with flashes of success at a few institutions (Tussman, 1969) quickly followed by dissolution of programs unable to surmount various obstacles in academe. The student learning community movement finally was solidly established at Evergreen State University (Jones, 1981), then at other institutions in the state of Washington and across the United States.

Institutions have incorporated variations of five SLC models that differ in complexity, faculty involvement, and residential components. Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews, and Smith (1990) provide an excellent explanation of the five models, including the roles, challenges, and successes of faculty and students. The community formed by a student cohort plays a key role in achieving better student learning outcomes for students in SLCs compared with those who are not in SLCs.

Student Learning Community Outcomes

Tinto (1995) and MacGregor, Tinto, and Linbald (2000) review a compilation of assessment studies of SLCs and report promising results:

1. The support of a community aids retention. Students in SLCs, especially those at risk, underrepresented, and making C’s and D’s, fare better academically, socially, and personally.

2. Students’ learning goes deeper, is more integrated, and is more complex. For example, student intellectual development (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986; Baxter Magolda, 1992; Perry, 1970) takes place at a faster rate, because students are exposed to ambiguity through opposite points of view in team-taught courses or a proseminar.

3. SLCs play an important role in faculty development. Faculty involved in SLCs achieve significant gains in personal, social, and professional development.

4. Sensitivity to and respect for other points of view, other cultures, and other people are enhanced for both students and faculty.

5. Civic contributions such as participation in student government and in service learning programs are higher.

In answer to the questions “Why learning communities? Why now?” Cross (1998) gives three reasons: “philosophical (because learning communities fit into a changing philosophy of knowledge), research based (because learning communities fit what research tells us about learning), and pragmatic (because learning communities work)” (p. 10).

But like general society (Putnam, 2000), higher education has barriers to community. As some faculty members attempt to move institutions from the instruction paradigm to the learning paradigm (Barr and Tagg, 1995), SLCs provide an example of just how difficult the learning paradigm is to implement (Barr, 1998). Registrars, department chairs, and faculty find it challenging to deal with tasks such as scheduling a cohort of students, rewarding team teaching, and teaching outside of one’s department. Shapiro and Levine (1999, jacket) note: “When campuses begin to implement learning communities, whether they know it or not, they are embarking on a road that leads to a profound change in culture.” Unfortunately, “learning communities always seem to push against an institutional glacier that grinds away at innovation, smoothing it out and trying to make it like everything else” (Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews, and Smith, 1990, p. 92).

Faculty Learning Communities

After the major research on learning outcomes in SLCs was published in the 1990s, we at Miami University noted similar outcomes in our faculty development program, in which groups of eight to twelve faculty members spent a year working on teaching and learning topics (Cox, 2000). As a result, we renamed these groups faculty learning communities. For a history of FLCs, see Cox (2002).

Definition of an FLC

At Miami University, we define an FLC as a cross-disciplinary faculty and staff group of six to fifteen members (eight to twelve members is the recommended size) who engage in an active, collaborative, yearlong program with a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning and with frequent seminars and activities that provide learning, development, the scholarship of teaching, and community building. A participant in a Miami University FLC may select a focus course or project in which to try out innovations, assess student learning, and prepare a course or project mini-portfolio; engage in biweekly seminars and some retreats; work with student associates; and present project results to the campus and at national conferences.

There are two categories of FLCs: cohort-based and topic-based. Cohort-based FLCs address the teaching, learning, and developmental needs of an important group of faculty or staff that has been particularly affected by the isolation, fragmentation, stress, neglect, or chilly climate in the academy. The curriculum of a cohort FLC is shaped by the participants to include a broad range of teaching and learning areas and topics of interest to them. Five examples of cohorts with FLCs are junior faculty, midcareer and senior faculty, department chairs, deans, and graduate students preparing to be future faculty. More details about cohort FLCs are given in Chapter Two of this volume.

Each topic-based FLC has a curriculum designed to address a special campus teaching and learning need, issue, or opportunity. Faculty and professional staff members propose topics to the FLC program director, who then advertises a call for applications across the university. These FLCs offer membership and provide opportunities for learning across all faculty ranks and cohorts and make appropriate professional staff members available to focus on a specific theme. A particular topic may be new and involve an FLC for one or many years, ending when the teaching opportunity, interest, or issue of concern has been satisfactorily addressed. Topics addressed by these FLCs are listed in Chapter Two.

Our FLCs offer a more structured and intensive program than most groups of faculty that meet and work on teaching and learning issues, such as teaching circles (Quinlan, 1996), book clubs, seminars, or brown-bag luncheon discussion groups. Of course, if certain components, such as projects and community, are present, those types of groups may also be FLCs. Research teams long have been disciplinary groups that work to-gether on discovery scholarship, but they may proceed without an emphasis on community. Multidisciplinarity and community are the elements that allow FLCs to excel in teaching and learning pursuits. An FLC is a particular kind of community of practice (Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder, 2002).

FLCs are different from, but in many ways like, most action learning sets (ALSs) in that they are “a continuous process of learning and reflection, supported by colleagues, with an intention of getting things done” (McGill and Beaty, 2001, p. 11). Both FLCs and ALSs are more than just a seminar series, committee, project team, or support, self-development, or counseling group. FLCs and ALSs have several aspects in common. Both meet for a period of at least six months; have voluntary membership; meet at a designated time and in an environment conducive to learning; treat individual projects in the same way with the group contributing suggestions and a timely schedule to completion; employ the Kolb (1984) experiential learning cycle; develop empathy among members; operate by consensus, not majority; develop their own culture, openness, and trust; engage complex problems; energize and empower participants; have the potential of transforming institutions into learning organizations; and are holistic in approach. FLCs differ from ALSs in that FLCs are less formal; for example, they do not focus extensively on negotiated timing of discussions or other formal structures at meetings. FLCs concentrate less on efficiency and more on the social aspects of building community; off-campus retreats and conferences include times for fun, and some gatherings during the year include family and guests. FLCs place more emphasis on the team aspect of support (while still consulting on each individual’s project) and on the ultimate beneficiaries of the program: the students in the participants’ courses and students participating as FLC associates (Cox and Sorenson, 1999).

Goals of FLCs

The long-term goals of an FLC program at most institutions are similar to those at Miami University:

Build universitywide community through teaching and learningIncrease faculty interest in undergraduate teaching and learningInvestigate and incorporate ways that diversity can enhance teaching and learningNourish the scholarship of teaching and its application to student learningBroaden the evaluation of teaching and the assessment of learningIncrease faculty collaboration across disciplinesEncourage reflection about general education and the coherence of learning across disciplinesIncrease the rewards for and prestige of excellent teachingIncrease financial support for teaching and learning initiativesCreate an awareness of the complexity of teaching and learning

FLC Outcomes

Paralleling the student learning community outcomes listed earlier in this chapter are the following results for Miami University (MU) faculty in FLCs:

1. Pretenure faculty are at risk for stress-related health problems and not acquiring tenure (Sorcinelli, 1992). As reasons, they cite a lack of community, the disconnect between their personal and academic lives, and incomprehensible tenure systems (Rice, Sorcinelli, and Austin, 2000). However, the pretenure faculty in MU’s Teaching Scholars Faculty Learning Commmunity shared talk and advice about how to achieve tenure, reduce stress, and integrate family and academic worlds. Members of this FLC were tenured at a significantly higher rate than MU faculty who were not members (Cox, 1995). While one cannot claim that FLC participation was the reason for obtaining tenure, it is easy to see that a yearlong, intensive program on teaching, learning, and community did not harm their chances, a view that has been expressed by some department chairs in this research-intensive institution.

2. Faculty in MU’s FLCs move quickly through stages of intellectual development in the area of teaching and learning (Cox, forthcoming). For example, many faculty members begin their academic careers as dualists (Perry, 1970) or in silence (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986), unaware of the scholarship of teaching and knowing only one way to teach. They see the authorities as experts who make the teaching evaluation instruments used in their department or division. FLC participants encounter and learn to embrace ambiguity through multidisciplinary perspectives and an increasing awareness of differing teaching and learning styles.

3. FLCs play an important role in faculty and student development. MU’s FLC Program has twice (in 1994 and 2003) received Hesburgh Award recognition as an excellent faculty development program that increases undergraduate learning. MU’s FLC model has also been adapted by other institutions (see Chapters Two and Six).

4. In FLCs, sensitivity to and respect for other points of view, other cultures, and other people are enhanced for both faculty and students. In assessment of the impact of FLCs on the participants’ faculty development outcomes, the reported rating across all FLCs with respect to “your awareness and understanding of how difference may influence and enhance teaching and learning” was 7.6 on a scale from 1 (very weak impact) to 10 (very strong impact) (Cox, 2002). The Faculty Learning Community on U.S. Cultures Course Development, involving ten participants designing seven courses, completed the task in 1.5 years, resulting in six courses approved for scheduling. The group collaborated on strategies for working with chairs and curriculum committees to get courses approved and offered (Heuberger and others, 2003).

5. FLC graduates make more civic contributions than those who have not been in FLCs. For example, a greater percentage serve as members of the University Senate, department chairs, and mentors for pretenure faculty (Cox, 2001).

Evidence That FLCs Work

At MU, evidence that student and faculty learning is improved through FLCs is found in the analysis of student learning that appears in the participants’ course miniportfolios, in the results of teaching projects, and in final reports. Evidence documenting improvement in undergraduate learning outcomes is given in the results of surveys of fifty past FLC participants who reported (1) how and the degree to which student learning in their courses changed as a result of faculty learning community participation, (2) how they knew that it changed, (3) what processes or approaches resulted in increased learning, (4) the categories of their FLC teaching projects and the degree to which learning changed as a result of those projects, and (5) the degree of change in student learning due to a change in faculty attitude as a result of FLC participation. The learning objectives were categorized using the Angelo and Cross (1993) Teaching Goals Inventory. The degree to which student learning changed was rated as 0 (students learned less), 1 (no change), 2 (learned more to a small degree), 3 (learned more to a medium degree), or 4 (learned more to a great degree). Some highlights of the results follow, and more details are in Cox (2004):

1. An increase in students’ “ability to apply principles and generalizations already learned to new problems and solutions” was reported by 94 percent of the respondents (average of the reported degrees of change is 3.0 on the 4-point Likert scale). The same results were reported for students’ “ability to ask good questions” and their “ability to develop an openness to new ideas”; 96 percent reported an increase in students’ ability “to work productively with others” (3.2); 92 percent reported an increase in students’ capacity to think for themselves (3.0); and 98 percent reported an increase in students’ “ability to synthesize and integrate information and ideas” (3.1).

2. Respondents reported that they were aware that student learning had increased because of the successful achievement of existing (62 percent) or new or more (58 percent) learning objectives; better class discussion or engagement (84 percent); greater student interest (64 percent); better classroom atmosphere or engagement (68 percent); more positive student evaluation comments (54 percent); and better papers or other writing assignments (52 percent).

3. Reported approaches that resulted in increased learning (and their average degree of change) included cooperative or collaborative learning (92 percent; 3.0), active learning (92 percent; 3.1), discussion (88 percent; 3.1), student-centered learning (84 percent; 3.0), writing (82 percent; 2.7), and technology (74 percent; 2.6).

4. The average rating for the degree to which student learning increased as a result of participants’ FLC teaching projects was 2.9 out of 4.