ABSTRACT
At most institutions, faculty organized learning communities around topics and themes they found interesting. Their infectious enthusiasm, emphasis on collaboration, and active classroom learning strategies engaged students. Retention rates were impressive compared to those of stand-alone classes, leading some schools to bundle general education requirements into learning community options. On campuses across the country, multiple learning community designs are in play: first-year interest groups, paired or linked classes, coordinated studies, interdisciplinary studies, federated learning communities, and living-learning communities. Designs vary based on institutional constraints, degrees of curricular integration, and teaching teams’ composition. Some faculty may regard protocols as overcontrolling, but the purpose is to focus attention on the substantive and genuine differences present in any community. Inequities among students’ circumstances in BRC mirror those in most communities. Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension.
