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The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education at the Evergreen State University hosts a Learning Communities National Resource Center which provides online materials on LC implementation and assessment as well as other resources.
Selected resources from the Washington Center and the LC National Resource Center include:
"Frequently Asked Questions About Learning Communities"
"Planning Questions for Developing Learning Community Initiatives" by Jean MacGregor, Co-Director, National Learning Communities Project and Roberta Matthews, Academic Vice President, Brooklyn College-CUNY
Implementation and Assessment resources
The Washington Center publishes occasional papers; for Winter 2003, Number 1, the topic was "Designing Integrated Learning for Students: A Heuristic for Teaching, Assessment and Curriculum Design" by Gilies Malnarich and Emily Decker Lardner.
Selected Publications:
Nancy S. Shapiro and Jodi H. Levine have put together two volumes that colleagues recommend:
Creating Learning Communities: A Practical Guide to Winning Support, Organizing for Change, and Implementing Programs (Nancy S. Shapiro and Jodi H. Levine), Jossey-Bass, 1999. At Alexander Library, call number
LB2331.S473
Sustaining and Improving Learning Communities (ed. Jodi Levine Laufgraben and Nancy S. Shapiro), Jossey-Bass, 2004. At Alexander Library, call number LB2341.L245
Shapiro and Levine adapted the chapter "Creating a Campus Culture for Learning Communities" in their first volume for publication in the Nov-Dec 1999 issue of About Campus as "Introducing Learning Communities to Your Campus"
Additional Online Resources:
"Designing, Implementing, and Leading Faculty Learning Communities" by Milton D. Cox, Director of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teachings at Miami University (Ohio). Although his main concern, as the title indicates, is faculty learning communities, Dr. Cox's discussion on page 3 provides a quick overview of the rationale, history and varied structures of student learning communities.
The National Study of Living-Learning Programs assesses programs at more than 34 universities.
Writing in the Nov-Dec. 2002 issue of Change, David Schoem provides a faculty perspective on "Transforming Undergraduate Education: Moving Beyond Distinct Undergraduate Initiatives."
The Fall 2001 issue of AACU publication Peer Review included the article "Approaching Diversity: Some Classroom Strategies for Learning Communities" by William Koolsbergen.
Peer Institutions:
A number of large universities have instituted learning communities and provide information about them via the web, including Syracuse University, the University of Michigan, and Purdue University.
The University of Michigan has many learning community opportunities, most of which include a residential (living-learning) component.
First-year students at Purdue University take two to three classes together with 20 to 50 other students in their learning community. LCs include a residential option and are organized by college enrollment. Instructors organize co-curricular and off-campus activities.
Learning Communities at Syracuse University are both residential and non-residential; non-residential learning communities are made up of students taking two or more courses in common, along with additional programming. Sandra N. Hurd and Ruth Federman Stein have published a volume, Building and Sustaining Learning Communities: The Syracuse University Experience, which summarizes both theory and the experience of planning and implementating learning communities on that campus.
The University of Maryland offers 11 differently themed course clusters for first-year students in areas such as the life sciences, architecture, pre-med, media literacy and elementary and secondary education.
Bibliographies:
Temple University also defines learning communities as being formed by students taking at least two courses together. Their website includes a PDF version of a joint project of the Washington Center for Undergraduate Education and participants in the National Learning Communities Project: a 20-page bibliography on learning communities, including historical influences, teaching practices appropriate to learning communities, partnerships with student affairs, and evaluation and assessment.
C. Ryan Akers and Merrily S. Dunn from the University of Georgia developed an annotated bibliography on living-learning communities.
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