THE THEME OF THIS LEARNING COMMUNITY:

Shared Reading–one reading that each class reads for different purposes

Shared Experience–investigate the Brooklyn waterfront from three perspectives

Shared Lunch–we share a three-course meal in the Janet Lefler Dining Room

OUR MISSION:

To create a shared first-year experience employing several high-impact educational practices that include place-based learning and the use of digital technology.

OPENLAB:

Is a new, open source digital platform that helps our Learning Community share information, work, calenders, and resources. Each course has one website, but they are all interconnected. Not only can students see what is happening in other classes, perspective students can see what courses look like. Each website has course-specific information and also a semi-public blog so that students can share with the world.

ARTICLE ON LEARNING COMMUNITIES:

One article that helped me to understand what Learning Communities are, and how they can help students is “Learning Better Together: The Impact of Learning Communities on Student Success,” by Vincent Tinto (Higher Education Monograph Series 2003). In this brief article, Tinto describes changes to the ways in which students are collaborating in the classroom. Instead of a “spectator sport,” classroom learning is becoming an interlinked experience marked by shared knowledge, shared knowing, and shared responsibility. And one way to encourage this is to link courses in which students and teachers discuss what goes on in other classrooms, breaking down the artificial departmental dividers.