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Faculty Interest Groups

Learning Communities as a High-Impact Practice

Among a number of other educational practices, learning communities have been described as “high-impact,” due to the “unusually positive benefits that accrue to students” including “enhanced engagement in a variety of educationally purposeful tasks; gains in deep, integrative learning; salutary effects for students from historically underserved populations (that is, students get a boost in their performance); and higher persistence and graduation rates. (Kuh and Kinzie, 2018)

In this FIG, facilitated by Kieren Howard (Physical Sciences) and Janine Graziano (English), we will consider how our learning communities might be strengthened to better address equity gaps and foster integrative learning. We will also think about ways in which learning communities might serve as vehicles for other high-impact practices, as research shows that participation in multiple high-impact practices has an additive positive effect (Finely and McNair, 2013).

Photo of Kieren Howard
Kieren Howard

Photo of Janine Graziano
Janine Graziano

So whether you are wondering about learning communities, new to teaching in learning communities, or are an experienced learning community practitioner, please join us as we explore how to best leverage the opportunities that learning communities offer in order to best serve our students.

For more information, please contact Kieren at kieren.howard@kbcc.cuny.edu. And please see our work on our CUNY Academic Commons site.