Learning Better Together: The Impact of Learning Communities on Student Success

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TINTO 1
Learning Better Together: The Impact of
Learning Communities on Student Success
∗
Vincent Tinto
Syracuse University
∗ Higher Education Monograph Serie s, 20 03-1, Higher Ed ucation Pro gram, Schoo l of Educatio n, Syracuse University.
Despite recent innovations, it remains the
case that most students experience
universities as isolated learners whose learning
is disconnected from that of others. They
continue to engage in solo performance and
demonstration in what remains a largely
show-and-tell learning environment. The
experience of learning in higher education is,
for most students, still very much a
"spectator sport" in which faculty talk
dominates and where there are few active
student participants. Just as importantly,
students typically take courses as detached,
individual units, one course separated from
another in both content and peer group, one
set of understandings unrelated in any
intentional fashion to what is learned in other
courses. Though there are majors, there is
little academic or social coherence to student
learning. It is little wonder then that students
seem so uninvolved in learning. Their learning
experiences are not very involving.
Fortunately, there is change. Partly in
response to a series of reports in the 1980's
by the National Institute of Education (1984),
the Association of American Colleges (1985),
and studies in the late 1980's and early 1990's
by scholars such as Astin (1987), Boyer
(1987), and Tinto (1987), a growing number
of institutions have begun to reform
educational practice and restructure
classrooms to more actively involve students
in learning. One such effort that is gaining
increased attention is that encompassed by
learning communities and the collaborative
pedagogy that underlies them. Unlike many
programs which exist at the periphery of the
academic experiences of students, learning
communities seek to restructure the very
classrooms in which students find themselves
and alter the way students experience both the
curriculum and learning within those
classrooms.i
Learning Communities in Higher
Education
Learning communities, in their most basic
form, begin with a kind of co-registration or
block scheduling that enables students to take
courses together, rather than apart. In some
cases, learning communities will link students
by tying two courses together, typically a
course in writing with a course in selected
literature or current social problems (Linked
Courses). In other cases, it may mean sharing
the entire first-semester curriculum so that

2 PROMOTING STUDENT SUCCESS IN COL LEGE
students in the learning community study the
same material throughout the semester. In
some large universities such as the University
of Oregon and the University of Washington,
the twenty-five to thirty students in a learning
community may attend lectures with 200-300
other students but stay together for a smaller
discussion section, often called the Freshman
Interest Group, led by a graduate student or
upperclassman. In still other cases, students
will take all their classes together either as
separate, but linked, classes (Cluster Learning
Communities) or as one large class that meets
four to six hours at a time several times a
week (Coordinated Studies) (See Figure I).
The courses in which students co-register
are not coincidental or random. They are
ty pically connected by an organizing theme
which gives meaning to their linkage. The
point of doing so is to engender a coherent
interdisciplinary or cross-subject learning that
is not easily attainable through enrollment in
unrelated, stand-alone courses. For example,
the Coordinated Studies Program at Seattle
Central Community College entitled “Body
and Mind” which links courses in human
biology, psychology, and sociology, asks
students to consider how the connected fields
of study pursue a singular piece of knowledge,
namely how and why humans behave as they
do.
As described by Gablenick and her
colleagues in their 1990 book Learning
Communities: Creating Connections among
Students, Faculty, and Disciplines, many
learning communities do more than co-register
students around a topic. They change the
manner in which students experience the
curriculum and the way they are taught.
Faculty have reorganized their syllabi and
their classrooms to promote shared,
collaborative learning experiences among
students across the linked classrooms. This
form of classroom organization requires
students to work together in some form of
collaborative groups and to become active,
indeed responsible, for the learning of both
group and classroom peers. In this way,
students are asked to share not only the
experience of the curriculum, but also of
learning within the curriculum.
Though the content may vary, nearly all the
learning communities have three things in
common. One is shared knowledge. By
requiring students to take courses together and
organizing those courses around a theme,
learning communities seek to construct a
shared, coherent curricular experience that is
not just an unconnected array of courses in,
say, composition, calculus, history, Spanish,
and geology. In doing so, they seek to
promote higher levels of cognitive complexity
that cannot easily be obtained through
participation in unrelated courses. The second
is shared knowing. Learning communities
enroll the same students in several classes so
they get to know each other quickly and fairly
intimately in a way that is part and parcel of
their academic experience. By asking students
to construct knowledge together, learning
communities seek to involve students both
socially and intellectually in ways that
promote cognitive development as well as an
appreciation for the many ways in which
one's own knowing is enhanced when other
voices are part of that learning experience. The
third is shared responsibility. Learning
communities ask students to become
responsible to each other in the process of
trying to know. They participate in
collaborative groups which require students to
be mutually dependent on one another so that
the learning of the group does not advance

TINTO 3
Figure I: Common Types of Learning Communities

4 PROMOTING STUDENT SUCCESS IN COL LEGE
without each member doing her or his part.
As a curricular structure, learning
communities can be applied to any content
and any group of students. Most often, they
are designed for the needs of beginning
students. In those instance, one of the linked
courses becomes a Freshman Seminar.
Increasingly, they are also being adapted to
the needs of undecided students and students
who require developmental academic
assistanceii. In these cases, one of the linked
courses may be a career exploration and/or
developmental advising course or, in the latter
case, a “learning to learn” or study skills
course. One or more courses may also be
developmental in character. In residential
campuses, some learning communities have
moved into the residence halls. These “living
learning communities” combine shared courses
with shared living. Students, typically those
beginning their first semester of college, enroll
in a number of linked courses and living
together in a reserved part of a residence hall.
More recently, a number of learning
communities have used community service as
a linking activity or theme for learning
communities. In some cases, at The Evergreen
State College, Portland State University, St.
Lawrence University, and in colleges in the
Maricopa Community College District they
have added service learning to one or more of
the linked courses. As an extension of
traditional models of community service and
experiential learning, service learning combines
intentional educational activities with service
experience to meet critical needs identified by
the communities being served. Unlike
voluntarism, service-learning is a pedagogical
strategy, an inductive approach to education,
grounded in the assumption that thoughtfully
organized experience is the foundation for
learning (Jacoby, 1996). When connected to
learning communities and the collaborative
pedagogy that underlies them, service learning
becomes a shared experience in which
students and faculty are able to engage in
time-intensive, interdisciplinary study of
complex social problems that may be used to
apply and test theory learned in the classroom
or to generate knowledge from experience. In
either case, service learning in a collaborative
setting seems to promote not only the
acquisition of course content, but also
enhanced intellectual development and a
shared sense of responsibility for the welfare
of others (Jacoby, 1994).
When applied to particular groups of
students, as described above, the “faculty” of
the learning community almost always
combine the work of both academic and
student affairs professionals. Indeed such
learning communities call for, indeed require,
the collaborative efforts of both parties. This
is the case because the staff of student affairs
are typically the only persons on campus
who possess the skills and knowledge needed
to teach some of the linked courses. Take the
case of learning communities for students
requiring developmental assistance. In Cluster
Learning Communities, for example, the
“faculty” of the learning community may
consist of a faculty person who teaches a
regular introductory course in Economics and
two members of a learning support center
who teach developmental writing and
mathematics.
To be effective, learning communities
require their “faculty”, that is the academic
and student affairs professionals who staff the
learning community, to collaborate on both

TINTO 5
the content and pedagogy of the linked
courses. They have to work together, as equal
partners, to ensure that the linked courses
provide a coherent shared learning experience.
One of the many benefits of such
collaboration, where all voices are heard, is
that the academic staff come to “discover” the
wealth of knowledge that student affairs
professionals bring to the discourse about
teaching and learning.iii Furthermore, in
leaving, at least momentarily, their respective
silos, both come to discover the many benefits
of looking at one’s work from fresh eyes.
Research on Learning Communities
Though there is growing interest in
learning communities, most programs are in
their infancy and evidence of their impact is
spott y at best. Our view of the efficacy of
learning communities is largely the result of
anecdotal evidence and periodic institutional
reports or assessments that are reported at
conferences and national meetings. That is
until recently. A recent study carried out by
this author under the auspices of the National
Center for Teaching, Learning, and
Assessment ( a research center funded by a
five year grant from the U.S. Office of
Education) explored the impact of learning
community programs upon the academic and
social behavior and persistence of new
students in three different institutional
settings, specifically the University of
Washington, LaGuardia Community College
in New York City, and Seattle Central
Community College.
Though intentionally limited in scope,
that research yielded a number of important
insights into the impacts of learning
communities on student learning and
persistence. First, students in learning
communities tended to form their own self-
supporting groups which extended beyond the
classroom. Learning community students
spent more time together out of class than did
students in traditional, unrelated stand-alone
classes and they did so in ways which
students saw as supportive. Indeed, some
students at the urban community colleges saw
those groups as critical to their ability to
continue in college. Second, learning
community students became more actively
involved in classroom learning, even after
class. They spent more time learning together
both inside and outside the class. In this way,
learning communities enabled students to
bridge the divide between academic classes
and student social conduct that frequently
characterizes student life. They tended to
learn and make friends at the same time. And
as students spent more time together learning,
they learned more. Third, participation in the
learning community seemed to enhance the
quality of student learning. By learning
together everyone’s understanding and
knowledge was, in the eyes of the
participants, enriched. As the same time,
students in the learning community programs
perceived themselves as having made
significantly greater intellectual gains over the
course of the semester than did similar
students in the comparison classes. Fourth, as
students learned more and saw themselves as
more engaged both academically and socially,
they persisted at a substantially higher rate
than did comparable students in the traditional
curriculum. At Seattle Central Community
College, for example, learning community
students continued at a rate approximately
twenty-five percentage points higher than did
students in the traditional curriculum.
Finally, student participants’ stories
highlighted powerful messages about the value

6 PROMOTING STUDENT SUCCESS IN COL LEGE
of collaborative learning settings in fostering
what could be called “the norms of
educational citizenship,” that is to say norms
which promote the notion that individual
educational welfare is tied inexorably to the
educational welfare and interests of other
members of the educational community.
Students in these programs reported an
increased sense of responsibility to
participate in the learning experience, and an
awareness of their responsibility for both
their learning and the learning of others.
Concluding Observation
Learning communities do not represent a
“magic bullet” to student learning. Like any
other pedagogy, there are limits to their
effectiveness. Some students do not like
learning with others and some faculty find
collaborating with other faculty and staff
difficult. Nevertheless, like other efforts to
enhance student involvement in learning such
as cooperative learning and classroom
assessment, there is ample evidence to
support the contention that their ap plication
enhances student learning and persistence and
enriches faculty professional lives (Cross,
1998). Little wonder then that so many
institutions have recently initiated learning
communities and a number of foundations
have established programs to support their
development.
_____________________________________
Vincent Tinto is chair of the Higher Education
Program at Syracuse University and
Distinguished University Professor. He can be
reached by phone at 315 443-4763 or by email
at vtinto@syr.edu

TINTO 7
Footnotes
1.Learning communities are not new. In
the United States, they date back to the early
work of the philosopher and educational
theorist Alexander Meiklejohn and to the
Experimental College at the University of
Wisconsin which he helped established in
1927 (Meiklejohn, 1932). However, like
Joseph Tussman's experiment at the
University of California at Berkeley (1969),
early learning communities were limited in
scope and in the students they served. The
current movement, led over the past twelve
years by the Washington Center at The
Evergreen State College, is different not only
because it involves a greater range of
institutions public and private, two and four-
year, but also because it is being adapted to
the learning needs of a broad range of
students.
2. A variant on this theme of providing
assistance through linked courses is
supplemental instruction (Blance, De Buhr &
Martin, 1983). In this model of academic
assistance, students participate in the regular
courses with the proviso that they also attend
supplemental instruction groups that meet,
with a peer tutor, outside of class for one or
more hours per week. Academic assistance is
provided in those groups, often in a
cooperative manner, and is timed to address
the changing demands of the course to which
the groups are attached. In this manner,
supplemental instruction represents a ty pe of
learning community which links a remedial
unit to a regular class. It is, to borrow the
language of those who work with learning
communities, a type of “linked course.”
3. One of the ironies of this situation is
that the ty pical student affairs professional
knows more about student learning than does
the typical faculty member. Least we forget,
the faculty are the only members of the
teaching profession, from kindergarten
through college, who are not trained to teach
their own students. Neither the students they
wish they had nor the students they do have.

8 PROMOTING STUDENT SUCCESS IN COL LEGE
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