AAC&U News | October 2004

Faculty Learning Communities Spur Innovation at Ohio University

Many colleges and universities use learning communities to deepen undergraduate learning, especially in the first year. Some institutions now are looking to this technique for faculty development as well. One such institution is Ohio University (OU) in Athens, Ohio, where a new faculty learning community (FLC) program is nurturing pedagogical innovation on campus. Launched in 2003 and now involving more than eighty individuals, the FLC program provides structured opportunities for faculty, graduate students, and administrators to meet across disciplines and discuss shared interests.

Unlike many faculty learning community programs, Ohio University's program is driven largely by faculty initiative, with individual faculty members choosing topics and shaping discussion. The program also is tied to distinctive institutional goals. The learning communities, says former provost Stephen Kopp, are "part of a larger, comprehensive initiative devoted to advancing Ohio University as a learning-centric institution." Seen as a way of "preparing faculty to help lead and support this transition," the FLCs are designed to develop partners for institutional change within the faculty.

Fostering Faculty Engagement

The faculty learning communities at Ohio University are the result of collaboration between three faculty development centers--the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Center for Writing Excellence, and the Center for Innovations in Technology for Learning. Karin Sandell, who serves as director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, says that the learning communities are meant to complement the workshops, seminars, and other forms of support that typically fall under the umbrella of faculty development. "We sought a model that would bring faculty together for more sustained periods of time," Sandell explains, "where they could develop a true sense of scholarly community and where they could collaborate on significant work."

In the fall of 2003, eight faculty members were selected, through a university-wide call for proposals, to lead the first FLCs. Since then, the growth of the program has been guided primarily by faculty participants, who have gone on to start and facilitate new communities.

Faculty development staff see clear advantages in allowing the communities to develop "organically" according to faculty interests. Aside from the obvious benefits of a voluntary development program in which faculty can collaboratively explore their own interests and pedagogical concerns, Karin Sandell points out that the capacity for institutional change is maximized when faculty develop and run the communities themselves. By having faculty members--rather than faculty development staff--facilitate the communities, the university encourages leadership within the faculty and develops possible partners for broader campus initiatives.

Such involvement is crucial if Ohio University's plan to become a "learning-centered" public research university is to succeed. "Change of this magnitude necessitates sustained involvement, support mechanisms, and opportunities to receive feedback as new ideas are tried out," says Sandell. The faculty learning communities at OU are designed specifically to address these institutional needs.

Networks for Change

Ohio University currently hosts ten faculty learning communities, each with eight to twelve members who typically represent a range of different disciplines. Community members meet on a regular basis for discussion and socializing, and occasionally attend conferences and other special events. The FLCs themselves fall into two broad categories: "cohort-based" communities, which focus on the shared pedagogical concerns faced by a specific faculty cohort, and "issues-based" communities, which focus on learning outcomes or other special topics.

One example of a community partly organized around a cohort is "Introductory Courses," which explores how student engagement can improve critical thinking in introductory courses. Taking learning as its starting point, this FLC has sought to develop new ways of addressing the problems that often arise in large, content-intensive lecture courses. Through their conversations, members of the group have developed specific strategies for increasing student engagement: from using peer editing to encourage students to think more critically about writing to using political cartoons to illuminate the connections between politics and the social sciences, these strategies suggest how teachers can overcome the lack of personalization and intimacy that often leads to student disengagement in large lecture courses.

Issues-based communities, by contrast, often begin with desired learning outcomes and work backward from there. For instance, the "Critical Thinking" FLC focuses on a key educational outcome, with members sharing strategies for improving its attainment. In their meetings, participants in this group use the literature surrounding critical thinking as a springboard for discussing curricular innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and other ways to foster critical thinking.

Another FLC, "Teaching and Learning in and about Appalachia," takes a different approach, dealing directly with the research and teaching interests of its members. This community, which serves as a network for exchanging ideas and information, seeks to improve the quality of education on Appalachia. The Appalachia FLC has been especially active in assessing teaching resources at OU, in the local community, and at other institutions. As part of this work, the FLC conducted a campus survey to gauge interest in topics related to Appalachia and hosted a retreat to bring together interested members of the academic and local communities.

Faculty development staff hope that these efforts will lead to larger changes in the campus culture at OU. Although such institutional change remains a long-term goal--Karin Sandell notes that the university has "frequently had to manage expectations for immediate results"--short-term benefits such as improved collegiality, increased cross-disciplinary collaboration, and greater faculty support also extend into the classroom. And anecdotal reports suggest that broader change is underway: "Individual faculty have described their FLC experience as transformative, with their teaching philosophy and practice completely changed, resulting in new syllabi, if not new courses," says Sandell. The program's success in coming years will likely depend on its ability to build upon such "transformative" experiences while continuing to adapt to faculty interests.

More information about Ohio University and about the faculty learning community program is available online. AAC&U maintains a faculty resources page which contains links to initiatives involving faculty issues and publications on faculty development.