Faculty Learning Communities

At the beginning of each academic year the Office of Civic Engagement initiates a “Faculty Learning Community,” a series of eight monthly workshop sessions for faculty who wish to incorporate a service/civic learning experience into a course they teach or plan to teach.  Many faculty participants, though not all, attend the Civic Learning Institute the preceding May.  Specifically, the Faculty Learning Community helps participants  

• Learn about connecting academic knowledge, attitudes, and skills with their civic counterparts.
• Develop student learning outcomes (SLOs), learning activities, and methods for assessing them.
• Plan, implement, and assess course modifications that advance the foregoing goals.
• Initiate and sustain productive conversations with colleagues about the concepts, principles, and methods of combining civic and academic learning in order to advance students’ intellectual and civic capacity.

Upon completing a Faculty Learning Community series, participants are able to:

1. Specify appropriate academic and civic SLOs.
2. Identify community-based experiential learning activities that promote both types of course SLOs and make clear connections between them.
3. Help students achieve course SLOs by facilitating reflection on their experience of participating in community-based service or civic activities.
4. Assess student progress toward achieving course SLOs.
5. Prepare a syllabus that describes, explains, and links course goals, SLOs, and learning activities. 
6. Implement and assess the innovations developed for your course.

Agendas

2011-2012 Faculty Learning Community (FLC) (docx)

Materials

• Course Design Workbook short version (pdf)
• Writing SLOs sv (pdf)