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[ms_collegiality]

I've been put in charge of a pilot project where basic skills courses (writing, reading, math) are linked with content courses (history, psychology, chemistry, etc.).  Each instructor has her own course, and the two courses are scheduled back-to-back and can share some material.  The instructors work together on class planning but still adhere to the individual course outlines.  Some assignments might be graded twice, once for each course, that sort of thing.

If you have been involved with learning communities and have experienced pitfalls and obstacles, would you please share them with me?  I've heard about cliquishness, unexpected peaks and valleys of student energy over the length of the semester, and students struggling with conflicting messages from the teachers.  Is that true? What can you share?  Do the strengths outweigh the pitfalls?

[prytania3]

I have no tips for you right now, but we did start that program at my CC last year while I was on mental health break. There is a chance I will be teaching a basic comp course linked with a business course in the spring.

Let's just keep each other in mind. If I come up with info, I'll be happy to share, and I'm sure vice versa.

The reviews from colleagues have been mixed, but my understanding is that it is a lot of work. We get release time if we do it, though.

[zharkov]

Evergreen hosts The National Resource Center for LC's, which includes a listserv that you might want to subscribe to. 

See this url:

http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/project.asp?pid=73

[trabb]

I have one semester's worth of experience with them.  A couple of thoughts:

• Make sure that the power balance between the instructors is equal.  In my case, I was a grad student teaching the basic skills class.  My students were enrolled in a lecture course taught by Big Name Prof, and I co-ordinated with the TA who led their particular discussion section.  Since the TA had Big Name Prof to back him up on everything, I didn't have much say on a lot of things.
• Related to the point above: real conflicts can and will arise if the content professors see their material as being more important than what the skills professors teach.  It's sad and only sometimes unstated, but at least in the English departments where I've worked, teaching composition is viewed as somehow of less value than teaching lit.
• If the same work is to be graded twice, students must be prepared for the fact that two different grades may be assigned.  I had to explain over and over again that as a writing teacher, I placed a much greater emphasis on structure, organization, and mechanics than did their TA who looked primarily at content.  It can also be a valuable lesson for them to learn that different readers will respond differently to their work.  I actually showed them two very different reviews of an article I was working on, letting them see that this happens in "real" writing situations too.

• SKills professors cannot be content professors.  My students got frustrated when I didn't have all the answers to the questions they should have been asking the TA from the content course.  I probably could have handled this better by approaching it as an opportunity to learn together, but as a fairly new teacher I completely flubbed this part of the course.

[seniorscholar]

We started them about 10 years ago, usually a freshpeep comp course linked to an intro course in something else or sometimes a math course linked to an intro science or economics course. My graduate students (who often teach one of the linked comp sections) complain that one goal (to enable students who are about 50% campus residents and 50% commuters) to form friendships and feel less disconnected from others in a very large university works TOO well -- before long they're acting like they're back in high school: forming cliques (as the OP mentioned), acting up in class, more disrespectful than the non-learning-community comp students.

[prytania3]

We started them about 10 years ago, usually a freshpeep comp course linked to an intro course in something else or sometimes a math course linked to an intro science or economics course. My graduate students (who often teach one of the linked comp sections) complain that one goal (to enable students who are about 50% campus residents and 50% commuters) to form friendships and feel less disconnected from others in a very large university works TOO well -- before long they're acting like they're back in high school: forming cliques (as the OP mentioned), acting up in class, more disrespectful than the non-learning-community comp students.

Our program is new, but this is one of the complaints/problems/situations I've heard about already.

[larryc]

We had exactly the program SeniorScholar describes for about 5 years at my campus, we called it the "block program." And we had exactly the same problems--it isolated freshman, and took them away from the upper-classmen who should be showing the freshman how to be college students.  What killed the program was when the data showed that far from promoting retention, the block program freshman were less likely to return to campus.

But before all the data was in, the administrator in charge of the program presented papers at several national conferences crowing about what a success the program was and how everyone should adopt it!  I sometimes wonder how much harm this might have done on other campuses.

[prytania3]

Larryc said:

But before all the data was in, the administrator in charge of the program presented papers at several national conferences crowing about what a success the program was and how everyone should adopt it!  I sometimes wonder how much harm this might have done on other campuses.

HA! I think that's exactly what's going on at my college. Our long-time president died and we just got a new guy last year. The basic consensus is that he is just with us long enough to pad his resume. We have a few things going on which I am sure will end up as conference papers or a book or something.

[grumpy]

My tip: Avoid them like the plague

I think I've experienced every one of the problems listed here already - mob-mentality, no mentoring from more experienced students, difficulty in assigning different grades for a project that cuts across both classes...the lot.

I thought I'd escaped them when I finished my Ph.D, but the place I work now is introducting them.  Unfortunately, administrations commitment to the program is pretty laughable - we weren't even told who our 'teaching buddies' were until 3-4 weeks into the semester and got told 'if you can coordinate an assignment, that'd be great'. IMO learning communities are a fad - I think there are students they can help, but the problem is they're targeted too broadly.  Where I work, LCs seem to benefit at risk' students, but I don't think this effect holds for other groups!

I have two learning communities classes right now, and in fairness, one is a decent class, and one is among my favorite classes ever - but I get to hear about how much they loathe their other instructor, while no doubt she gets to hear how much they hate me!

I could rant so much more, but I'll be good.

[helpful]

Read Parker Palmer. He has lots to say about learning communities.

[johnwager]

'. . .
If you have been involved with learning communities and have experienced pitfalls and obstacles, would you please share them with me?

 
You can still do a bit of "team teaching" (if the teachers are brave enough) by doing several small things. Swap classes one day!  Serve as "guest speakers" in each others' class to show how knowledge in one can be applied to the other.  Or take both classes into a larger room for the whole two-hour period (if neither teacher has a conflicting class).  Or spend half a period alone, then come together for the middle of both classes, and then spend the last half of the second class alone.  (I've been in an interdisciplinary learning community at a large suburban community college for 31 years now.)

There's a term for students developing too much community; it's called "hyperbonding." One way to deal with it is to bond with the other faculty members. Often students start to feel their power as an oppositional power to teachers; sometimes it's necessary for all the teachers to present a unified front to counter this.  All the teachers supporting the teacher with the highest standards, at least in this particular term--things like that. This doesn't cure hyperbonding but it mitigates the harm.

In my experience, team teaching also helps a bit here. When students have no models for how one should interact with others, they fall back on pervious patterns. But if two teachers in a classroom show genuine respect for each other, but are willing to engage in a bit of friendly debate and challenge of each other, students can pick this up and raise the level of student to student interaction. (It's very intimidating for a freshman to challenge their one and only professor, but if there are TWO professors and they are actually DISAGREEING in a reasoned way, a student can start to find his or her own voice just by agreeing with one professor and disagreeing with the other.)

[threadkiller]

I did this for two years, but both were content courses.  It worked really well, but the other prof and I are good friends and see eye to eye on most issues.  Everyone is right, the one pitfall is that the students can get a little rambunctious.  But for me the best part was working with a more experienced professor.  I learned a lot about teaching from her.