Faculty Learning Communities Program, 2006 - 2007

"Extensive documentary evidence suggests that effective learning communities have important benefits for students and faculty Faculty benefits include diminished isolation, a shared purpose and cooperation among faculty colleagues, increased curricular integration, a fresh approach to one’s discipline, and increased satisfaction with their students’ learning." _Lenning & Ebbers

What Is A Faculty Learning Community (FLC)?

A Faculty Learning Community (FLC) is composed of approximately 6 - 12 faculty and requires a collegial commitment to meet, work, collaborate with colleagues on the FLC, and disseminate the outcomes of the FLC’s work to Georgia Southern faculty. Each FCL is lead by a facilitator selected by the FLC from among its own members, determines its own goals and objectives, and how it will disseminate the results of its research, application, and work to campus colleagues. Membership in a FLC is for the entire academic year.

"A faculty learning community (FLC) is a cross-disciplinary faculty group engaging in an active, collaborative, yearlong program about enhancing teaching and learning and activities that provide learning, development, interdisciplinarity, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and community building. A faculty participant in a faculty learning community selects a focus course to try out innovations, assess resulting student learning(etc) and presents project results to the campus... Evidence shows that FLCs increase faculty interest in teaching and learning and provide safety and support for faculty to investigate, attempt, assess, and adopt new (to them) methods."
     _ Miami University FLC web site        (http://www.units.muohio.edu/flc/what.shtml)

Goals of FLCs at Georgia Southern

A faculty learning community is a special kind of "community of practice" (Wenger). The goals of FLCs at Georgia Southern are as follows: build University-wide community through teaching and learning

  • emphasize that teaching is serious intellectual work
  • learn more about how, why, when and were students learn best
  • improve effectiveness and enjoyment of teaching and learning
  • research teaching and learning based upon theory, evidence, practice and assessment of outcomes
  • encourage scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and its application to student learning
  • re-conceive the assessment of learning
  • increase faculty collaboration across disciplines
  • increase the prestige of teaching that leads to excellence in student learning
  • create an awareness of the complexity of teaching and learning and that good teaching requires sustained effort, experimentation, application, good means of assessment, and career-long professional development in both the content of one’s discipline and in teaching that discipline

FLCs for 2006 - 2007

  • Scholarship of Teaching & Learning
  • Assessing Student Learning
  • Experiential Learning
  • Teaching First Year Students
  • Academic Integrity of Teaching & Learning
  • Teaching Critical & Creative Thinking
  • Service Learning & Civic Engagement
  • Department Chairs as Academic Leaders(cohort)
  • Information Literacy
  • Chemistry Teaching Innovations (cohort)
  • Mathematics Modeling (cohort)

Operation and Outcomes

The Center for Excellence in Teaching (CET) will facilitate and coordinate the formation and the logistics of the FLCs. Each FLC is responsible for its ongoing schedule, work, and for how it will disseminate the outcomes of that work to colleagues and the campus. The facilitator of the FLC is to submit to the FLC Coordinator a one-page mid-year report (December) and a one-page final report (May) that summarizes and analyzes the work and outcomes of the FLC.

The FLC as a whole, or individual members, are also encouraged to consider disseminating their work in additional ways as, but not limited to, the following:

  • Submitting an article to CET’s ejournal on SoTL, International Journal for SoTL
  • FLC presentation sponsored by CET
  • Writing a booklet published by CET
  • Creating a FLC web site for its work that is shared with the campus
  • Publishing an article or essay in a journal or magazine
  • Conducting a presentations or workshop for one or more departments
  • Giving a presentation at a conference
  • Other means of dissemination (determined by the FLC)

Guidelines for Individual FLC Members

Each member of an FLC agrees to the following:

  • Select at least one course (“focus course") in which to apply what one learns in the FLC (if the FLC topic or cohort is appropriate for course application)
  • Participate in FLC meetings, events, FLC dissemination, and share one’s focus course syllabus with the FLC’s members
  • Prepare a one-page final report about one’s membership in the FLC and the application and assessment of one’s FLC work in the focus course (due to FLC Coordinator by May 15, 2007)

Joining an FLC

In order to join a FLC, a faculty member registers to be a member of a specific FLC for the academic year by submitting a registration form to Alan Altany, Center for Excellence in Teaching.

Registration forms are available here in two forms:

Registration form as MS Word (Fill out, email to Alan Altany)

Registration form as PDF (Print, fill out, mail to CET Box 8143, or fax: 681-0099)

To request a paper registration form, phone 681-0049, email Alan Altany, or stop by CET, room 1313, in the College of Information Technology building. Completed forms can be returned to Alan Altany, P.O. Box 8143, or faxed to 681-0099.

Member's semester schedules will be requested so that the initial meeting of the FLC can be planned.