Learning Circles

What is a Learning Circle?
A Learning Circle is a series of discussions, demonstrations, reports on readings and presentations through which the members of the Learning Circle share their knowledge and experience, learn new information and apply and test new skills. It is:

• A small informal group that meets to study a subject or body of knowledge of interest to its members

• A way of structuring a series of small group meetings to draw on the knowledge and experience of a group of people

Why use a Learning Circle?
• A Learning Circle makes learning more efficient, since reports, demonstrations and teaching experience are shared among the members of the circle.

• A Learning Circle provides an interactive learning situation. Teaching and training involve communication with people, and it is difficult to develop skills without a group of people to offer constructive criticism.

• A Learning Circle gives essential feedback to learners from colleagues who are working on the same body of skills and information, and whose suggestions on techniques and resources are hence particularly valuable.

• A Learning Circle offers the opportunity to organize demonstrations and workshops for which numbers of people are necessary.

How do Learning Circles work?
A group of people comes together to examine an issue or body of knowledge in which they are interested. After some initial planning, the group sets up a series of meetings (normally six to ten) with a specific (set of) goal(s) that the members of the group wish to accomplish through the meetings.

Century College Link to Teaching Circles: Includes some very good templates that may serve as a future reference.
http://ctlcentury.project.mnscu.edu/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={CEDD251E-D8F8-41F8-AC66-A2851ACCA647

Learning Communities and Service Learning

Below is just a few notes I made for a short 5 minute presentation I'm giving later this afternoon.

Learning is about so much more than classrooms and textbooks, and that's really the message that both Learning Communities and Service Learning send. Iowa State University has a pretty strong Learning Communities program, and a quite a few of its Learning Communities have a Service Learning component. I sure wish we could bring that model to RCTC!

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Community in and out of the Classroom

Learning Communities
What?
Learning Communities “link together … existing courses … so that students have opportunities for deeper understanding and integration of the material they are learning, and more interaction with one another and their teachers”

Why?
Wingspread Group (1993) – “What does our society need from higher education? It needs stronger, more vital forms of community.”

Major Benefit
“Students begin to recognize individual courses as part of an integrated learning experience rather than as separately taught requirements” (Shapiro & Levine, 1999).

Service Learning
Chief Academic Principles
Reflection – “Learning and development do not necessarily occur as a result of experience itself but as a result of a reflective component explicitly designed to foster learning and development” (Jacoby, 1996).

Reciprocity – “Service-Learning encourages students to do things with others rather than for them. Everyone should expect to change in the process.”

Major Faculty and Student Concern
Time: How to “add” a service learning component to an already “full” plate (class and life)

From Iowa State University (http://www.celt.iastate.edu/ServiceLearning/learningcommunities.html)

Learning communities and service-learning are a natural connection for several reasons:

1. Restructures teaching & learning
Both methods allow students to make connections in order to deepen their learning

2. Reconsiders who learns from whom
Both methods allow for multiple perspectives on the same topic by viewing through different lenses

3. Thinks about community intentionally
Both methods inspire collaboration between students and the larger community

4. Prepares students for a diverse democracy
Both methods help students extend their comfort zones and see their connection to the larger community

Fall 2008 Learning Communities
ENGL 1117 – Reading and Writing Critically – Virginia Wright-Peterson
Paired with
HORT 1315 – Plant Materials: Woody Plants – Robin Fruth-Dugstad

ENGL 0980 – Introduction to College Writing – Mike Mutschelknaus
Paired with
READ 0840 – Developmental Reading – Rae Gravenish