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Learning Communities:
An Overview |
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Learning Communities:
An Overview |
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© Copyright 2000 by Ashley Williams. The right to make additional exact copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require permission of the author. |
The Precursors Before describing specific George Mason learning community initiatives, it is important to acknowledge two developments in the late 1970s and early 80s, the creation of a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program and the Plan for Alternative General Education (PAGE), which set precedents for faculty development and curricular innovation and contributed to the later creation of learning communities. Both strengthened faculty commitment to teaching/learning and served as means of cross-departmental cooperation and collaboration. Significantly, both initiatives were funded by grants from the Funds for Excellence program of the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV).From 1978-80, one grant funded faculty workshops in Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), early in the national WAC movement. The success of the WAC grant led to the creation of the PAGE proposal. From 1980-82, a second grant funded the creation of a general education alternative with the goal of "true interdisciplinarity", according to Chris Thaiss (English), first director of the PAGE program (personal communication). One result of the WAC workshops was that the curriculum of PAGE was "aggressively writing-centered," says Thaiss. PAGE faculty, drawn from departments throughout the College of Arts and Sciences, supported significant writing in all courses (personal communication). Although the PAGE approach included elements common to learning communities, courses were not directly specifically linked to each other and students were not required to integrate ideas across the curriculum. Today, however, with evolving definitions of learning communities, the Honors Program in General Education, a successor to PAGE, may be categorized as an LC because it represents a deliberate restructuring of curriculum for a common cohort of students who sometimes meet as a whole; it creates a smaller community within the larger community of the institution; it incorporates a capstone experience and provides a setting for academic services (for example, Writing Center tutorials and academic advisement). WAC and PAGE are important to an understanding of the robust tradition of teaching and learning initiatives because they encouraged faculty to act as change agents, not merely for writing issues, but for pedagogical innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration. Not surprisingly, many of the same faculty have been involved in creating other interdisciplinary programs, ranging from subsequent LC programs to American Studies, Women's Studies, African American Studies, and Cultural Studies.
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