FACILITATING LEARNING COMMUNITIES FOR SCIENCE FACULTY

Our institution was awarded an NSF-IUSE grant to implement a type of professional development for higher-education science faculty (instructors) known as a learning community (LC). A LC has a facilitator, resembles a focus group, and allows instructors to have conversations centered on instruction and student learning. Our LC conversations were centered on a problem that transcends all instructors at our institution: How to improve student learning of science at a minimally selective undergraduate institution.

Every instructor (n=20) at our institution has committed to participate over the three-year period, divided randomly into three annual cohorts. We recently completed the first of a three-year LC project. The LC met every three weeks, for one hour, over the course of 10 sessions for the academic year. The instructor participants in our first-year LC “bought in” to the endeavor, actively participated and drove conversation, made changes to their instruction, and have anecdotally claimed that student grades have improved.

Five LC sessions were held each of spring and fall semesters of 2023. The initial sessions started by asking instructors how we could improve student learning. This question elicited frustration and questions on how to do this. As the sessions progressed, the instructors took ownership of the LC and drove conversations with little interaction from the facilitators.

For the following sessions, facilitators elicited instructors’ teaching strategies. Four of the instructors agreed to have a facilitator video-record a segment of their classroom instruction. These segments were focused on student-centered problem-solving and group work. The instructors’ videos were presented at subsequent LC sessions to generate conversation. These strategies motivated others to try their own innovations in the classroom.

For the final sessions, instructors reported how the LC changed their beliefs and instruction, and impacted student learning. The endeavor appears to be sustainable with instructors planning to continue their LC into 2024 and have planned collaborations and potential publications.