Guest Post: Slow and Steady Scales the Learning Community

Today’s post comes from Rachel Singer, Director of Academic Affairs at Kingsborough Community College in New York.

Learning Communities at Kingsborough Community College have evolved dramatically over the past 15 years. We have gone from serving approximately 120 students each semester to approximately 1,000. The majority of students served in our learning communities are first-time, fulltime freshman who are underprepared for college-level courses, 75% of who test into developmental English. We know the underprepared, late-tested student is most likely to drop out of college, so our incoming freshmen learning communities are a critical element in helping students achieve success. 

Learning communities began at Kingsborough with the institution of the Intensive ESL Program, which, each semester, serves incoming freshman who are not native speakers of English. The Opening Doors Learning Communities began in the fall of 2003 as part of a study conducted by MDRC, a social policy research group. Students in both of these learning community programs have consistently attained higher GPAs than those who do not participate in learning communities, have higher retention rates, and generally pass out of the developmental sequence at a higher rate. Such results prompted the 1998 decision to make the Intensive ESL Program a requirement for incoming, full-time day ESL students. We have expanded our Opening Doors Learning Communities offerings to 32 groups each semester. These results also were the driving force for the requirement that all first-time, incoming freshmen take English in their first semester.  The positive data that we see coming from our learning community cohorts has prompted us to build Advanced Learning Communities for students who are beyond their first-time freshmen status. 

Each learning community program assembles a rich constellation of team members, all of whom work together to provide students with a coherent interdisciplinary experience. Faculty teaching the linked courses collaborate to identify shared student learning outcomes as well as to choose course texts, themes, activities, and assignments. We strongly encourage faculty to work with other members of the learning community team in order to provide students with an integrated learning experience.

Student Development Case Managers serve as advisors, counselors, instructors, and student advocates. They do this by teaching skills for attaining academic success, providing academic support and advisement throughout the semester, and introducing students to college resources. They promote connections among the courses by integrating the theme of the linked courses into their college orientation course.

Our ability to scale up our learning communities at Kingsborough speaks to the dedication and support of these programs by faculty and administration from all areas of the college. The scale-up has evolved over 15 years with a slow and steady vision that brings student needs into consideration at every step.