ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a learning community project piloted within the College of Liberal Arts at a land-grant research university, Washington State University (WSU), during fall 2006. Supported by a Provost’s Teaching and Learning Grant, the project was designed as an alternative learning community model to the university-wide and top-down administered Freshman Focus experience. Enrolling students in a pair of classes that they share with a number of other students assigned to their same residence hall during their first year, Freshman Focus promises students a “living–learning” experience. One premise behind this program is that these socially-based learning communities grow to nurture students’ academic success organically. In this model, linked faculty are encouraged to collaborate, yet the university provided little apparatus to support this organic collaboration and, in most cases, faculty were not asked to substantially rethink how their own pedagogical approaches affect student learning experiences.
