NLCC 2021 Concurrent Sessions F
2:00 PM - 2:45 PM (All times ET)
Day Two: Friday, October 22, 2021
Room 1 - Informative/Panel Presentation
Dr. Tracey D. Tedder & Dr. Susan Freeman (Florida Southern College)
First-year Learning Community Expansion Initiative: A Unique and Transformational Collaboration between the Offices of Academic Affairs and Student Life at a Small Liberal Arts College that Inspired Innovative Approaches to Learning
Florida Southern College launched the first-year learning communities as a pilot program in fall 2012.
This strategic initiative designed to positively impact student retention and enhance learning experiences.
Through a unique collaboration between the Offices of Academic Affairs and Student Life, the initiative successfully expanded over the next nine years to include additional students and faculty.
Strategically, the initiative has supported the goal of improving retention and persistence rates through a unique and collaborative partnership between the Offices of Academic Affairs and Student Life supporting pedagogy, co-curricular elements, and faculty development.
As a result of this unique collaboration, learning communities have positively impacted student satisfaction resulting in successful retention and persistence for first-year students.
Room 2 - Informative/Panel Presentation
James Allen, Kayla Bandy, and Sarah Butler (College of DuPage)
The Devil’s in the Details: Assessing Challenges to Assessing Learning Communities
In a recent LCA-sponsored webinar, “A Framework to Evaluate Learning Communities,” Senior Data Scientist Rajeeb L. Das challenged us to develop assessment practices of high-impact practices, such as learning communities, that include more rigorous experimental design. In our presentation, we will discuss the complexities of meeting that challenge by discussing both previous research we have done on our LCs, which will highlight the various complicating variables in our research, along with our current efforts to do quantitative assessment of specific elements of our LC program.
Room 3 - Informative/Panel Presentation
Julia Metzker, Director & Rachel Homchick, Assistant Director (Washington Center)
Washington Center’s National Summer Institute for Improving Undergraduate Education
After a two-year pandemic-induced hiatus, the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education’s popular summer institute is returning in 2022. This 4-day residential institute offers campus teams the time and support needed to develop strategic action plans. Join this session explore if our model for realizing organizational change in support of equitable student outcomes can support your campus initiative.
Room 4 - Informative/Panel Presentation
Lynita Taylor, Ed.D.(c) (Wayne State University)
Impacting Students of Color Through Multicultural-Focused Learning Communities
In higher education, initiatives focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion have continued to increase across the nation (Patton, Sanchez, Mac, & Stewart, 2019). As programs face limited support or protection from institutional administration, restrictive bans through state legislations, and other institutionalized forms of exclusion, it is crucial for colleges/universities to use learning communities in different ways to combat these discrepancies. Join us for an informative presentation discussing the importance of multicultural-focused learning communities at predominantly White institutions and how they impact underrepresented minority students. By focusing on four pillars of support- community, mentorship, academic accountability, and industry exposure- and partnering with socially responsible companies/organizations, we are helping to change the collegiate experience for these students.
Room 5 - Interactive Session
Brett Holden & Coty Behanna (Bowling Green State University)
Empowering Faculty Directors to Actively Strengthen Learning Community Success
Twenty-four years after the founding of the Chapman Learning Community, Bowling Green State University offers eighteen faculty-and-staff-directed communities to 1,000+ students annually. Those students who enroll persistent and retain at higher levels in comparison to those not in learning communities, and their grade point averages are higher. This success could not be achieved without the collaborative efforts of key stakeholders across campus, as well as director-development opportunities. This presentation will involve attendees in exploring how their institutions are supporting their learning community directors in order to help ensure student success.
Room 6 - Informative/Panel Presentation
Laura Mongiovi & Jeanette Vigliotti (Flagler College)
In Conversation with Local Heritage
Flagler College is located in St. Augustine, a city founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers. Students explored how local history is represented through the written word and visual images. Visits to historical sites documented with a digital archive and research at the historical library culminated in a public exhibition showcasing nuanced histories. Students selected artifacts, responded to their chosen artifact with a personal creative response and wrote signage for the objects. To extend the conversation about local history, a panel of local community leaders engaged an audience in a discussion about Black heritage in St. Augustine.
Room 7 - Informative/Panel Presentation
Christina Romero-Ivanova (Indiana University Kokomo)
Using Flipgrid and Google Docs for teaching and learning during the Covid
This presentation will provide an overview of a Spring 2020 Using Computers in Education Freshman Learning Community (FLC) course that began as a face-to-face class and then transitioned to zoom teaching and learning because of the pandemic. Participation in FLC classes allows students to meet new people, to belong to a community of learners and instructors and to pursue a topic of mutual interest. The presentation will focus on digital practices that were used for teaching and learning that engaged students with the content and created community.
Room 8 - Informative/Panel Presentation
Wendy L. Walker & Sean Britt (TAMU-CC)
Representation Matters: Building Community Through Antiracist Pedagogical Practices
Drawing on Asao B. Inoue’s approach in “Designing Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies,” from Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future (2015), we have begun to implement strategies to develop community by increasing our understanding of student purposes, using student reflection in practice, and involving students in the formation of the general expectations for the course, as well as the creation and assessment of student-generated texts through discourse. The open discourse that occurred in our classrooms about the course itself also allowed us to address additional concerns about the lack of representation outside of the classroom, and we began to explore, through reflection, the white habitus of the university. Ultimately, we hope that we can provide students the tools they need to voice their concerns about not only their continued educational endeavors, but also to create change at the institutional level.