ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 190 / C&RL New s ■ M arch 2002 LEARNING COMMUNITIES FOR EXCELLENCE Developing collaborative relationships Librarians, students, and faculty creating learning communities by Joan K. Lippincott B ecoming involved in learning commu­nities can provide librarians with a d eep er understanding o f the information needs o f students and faculty and establish librarians as partners in the learning enter­ prise in new and important ways. The term “learning community” is currently used in at least two contexts. The movement that began in the 1960s connotes a distinct program within a higher education institu­ tion that develops an interrelated common curriculum enabling students and faculty to build connections betw een disciplines and it enrolls a cohort o f students that go through the program together. The rationale of these programs is that stu­ dents will experience deeper learning when their courses are coordinated and linked in a coherent program, and learning with a com ­ mon group o f students with faculty devoted to the program will enhance the ability for a sense of community to develop. The learn­ ing community concept stresses both the aca­ demic and social contexts of learning.' In addition, a set o f ped agogical ap ­ proaches is often associated with learning communities, including “collaborative and co­ operative learning, peer teaching, discussion groups and seminars, experiential learning, labs and field trips, problem-based learning, lectures and dem onstrations, writing and speaking across the curriculum, and ongoing reflection, metacognitive activities, and self- evaluation.”2 This type o f learning commu­ nity may or may not involve technology-based teaching and learning. T e c h n o lo g y a n d le a r n in g c o m m u n it ie s More recently, educators have used the term “learning community” to describe the com ­ bined social and learning dimensions of some types of technology-based teaching and learn­ ing. In these courses and programs, a stated goal o f the use o f technology is to encourage an increased sense o f interconnection b e ­ tw ee n and am ong facu lty and students through a variety o f technology-based activi­ ties. Students participate in online bulletin boards and chats, they e-mail their profes­ sors, and they post drafts o f their papers or other class assignments on Web sites to en­ courage sharing o f ideas. While many faculty were initially concerned that use o f technol­ ogy would make education more impersonal, in fact many have discovered that online com­ ponents increase the amount and level of social interaction in classes. The goals of vir­ tual learning com m unities are to achieve V i s i t t h e P r e s id e n t ’s P a g e a t http:// w w w .a la .o r g / a c r l/ p r e s p a g e .h t m l A bout the author Jo a n K. Lippincott is associate executive director a t the Coalition for Netw orked Information, e-mail: joan@cni.org http://www.ala.org/acrl/prespage.html mailto:joan@cni.org C&RL News ■ March 2002 /191 deeper understanding of content, to exchange experience, to support a socialization process through community activities, to promote the development o f formal and informal learn­ ing, and to achieve higher student motiva­ tion.3 Most learning community environments emphasize an active learning, problem-based approach, which focuses on the need for stu­ dents to find information and make argu­ ments. Librarians can offer these groups ex­ pertise on locating, evaluating, and organiz­ ing information for their activities. CN I a n d le a r n in g c o m m u n it ie s The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) became involved in learning commu­ nities through the insight o f two Working Group leaders: Philip Tom pkins, then at Estrella Community College and later at Indi­ ana University-Purdue University of India­ napolis (IUPUI), and Susan Perry, then at Stanford and later at Mt. Holyoke College. We worked together to develop a program that Table 1. Library Instruction and Learning Com m unities Contrastedhighlighted innovative pro­ grams in higher education involving networking and Library Instruction Learning Communities Highly structured Opportunistic Limited duration Throughout course Librarian is guest lecturer Librarian is a faculty partner Librarian is expert Librarian learns and teaches Focus on the library Focus on information environment n etw o rk ed inform ation and collaborative teaching and learning. The program was called New Learning C o m m u n itie s. ACRL, Educom, and the American Association of Higher Edu­ cation (AAHE) became cosponsors with CNI of the first New Learning Communities work­ shop. An open call was posted on the Internet and ten pioneering institutional teams were selected to attend a workshop in Phoenix in the summer of 1994. One of the discoveries of the participating teams was that while their project consciously involved collaborative d e ­ velopm en t by a team comprised of faculty, librarians, information technologists, instruc­ tional technologists, and students, they had not anticipated the collaborative learn in g that emerged as the class was taught in a technol- ogy-enabled environment. By the time the second workshop was offered in 1995 in Indianapolis, a major sea change was evident, due to the widespread adoption of Web browsers and the Web it­ self. Use of the Web increased the flexibility of applications available on the Internet and prompted enthusiasm for incorporating tech­ nology into course offerings. CNI worked to disseminate the results of the workshop and to promote the models that these pioneering institutions had established through professional development workshops (some cosponsored by ACRL), a handbook for campuses, and publications.'1 L ib r a r ia n in v o lv e m e n t in le a r n in g c o m m u n it ie s Many of the lessons learned from the 20 in­ stitutions that participated in New Learning Communities in 1994 and 1995 are tru e to­ day. The librarians involved in the learning communities in the CNI project generally had a qualitatively and quantitatively different role than the typical librarian involved in infor­ mation literacy or library instruction initiatives. These differences can be characterized by time, depth, scope, and roles (see Table 1). In a typical course-related instruction ses­ sion, the librarian meets with a class in a one- hour session and may have some informal interaction with the students at the reference desk following the class. While librarians try to schedule the in-class instruction at an op­ portune time in the course, it may actually be timed at the point when most students will begin to search for information resources for the class assignment. This highly structured time constraint is in contrast with the learning community mode in which the librarian is a joint instructor for the duration of the course and can interject content and information to the class and to individual students as needed. In a learning community, the librarian has a role in the course from the initial planning of the curriculum and throughout the dura­ 192 / C&RL News ■ March 2002 tion o f the course. Typically, in course-re- lated library instruction, the librarian has no role or a limited role in the development of the course syllabus and assignments. Perhaps the most important difference is in the nature o f interaction with the faculty member and the students. The librarian is a part o f the community, not an adjunct expert or guest lecturer. He or she is part o f the give-and- take o f the class and becom es a learner as well as a teacher. The librarian can shift the focus from explaining library resources to meeting the ongoing information needs of the students in the broad information envi­ ronment. O p p o r t u n it ie s f o r a n e x p a n d e d t e a c h in g a n d le a r n in g ro le Involvem ent in learning com m unities can provide academ ic librarians with a window into the thinking o f students w ho have grown up with technolog y and w ho regu­ larly use the W eb to locate all kinds o f inform ation, from registration inform ation to airline schedu les to recently issued gov­ ernm ent reports. Many librarians are aware that this new generation o f students prefers using tech­ nology in a multitasking mode, listening to music via their computer while instant m es­ saging friends as they write a course paper, but those realizations have not had much impact on the way that academic libraries structure their information or services for stu­ dents. We need to learn from students as well as have them learn from us. The learning com ­ munity concept fosters collaborative teach­ ing and learning, where the faculty member can learn from the students as well as the students learning from faculty. We can also discover a whole range o f information needs in a course and opportunistically introduce students to new sources, new search tech­ niques, and critical ways to evaluate infor­ mation. While the time commitment that involve­ ment in a learning community requires limits the number o f such courses that librarians can participate in, librarians who have had the experience feel em pow ered and co n ­ nected to the educational process in new ways and discover new understandings about stu­ dents, faculty, and the use o f information. N o te s 1. Barbara Leigh Smith, “The Challenge of Learning Communities as a Growing National Movement,” P e e r R eview 3, no. 3, 4, no. 1 (Sum m er/Fall 2 0 0 1 ); http://w w w .aacu- edu. org/peerreview/pr-fa01feature 1. cfm. 2. L ea r n in g C om m u n ity C om m on s: Sus­ ta in in g L ea r n in g C om m u n ities Work. Online at http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/, and Kris Bosworth and Sharon J. Hamilton, C ollaborative L earn in g : Underlying P rocesses a nd E ffective T echniques. New Directions for Teaching and Learning No. 59. (San Fran­ cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994). 3. Sabine Seufert, “Virtual Communities,” EDUCAUSE NLII Annual Meeting, January 2 7 - 29, 2002. 4. For more information on CNI’s New Learning Communities project see http://www. cni.org/projects/nlc/ and Philip Tompkins, Susan Perry, and Jo an K. Lippincott, “New Learning Communities: Collaboration, Net­ working, and Information Literacy,” In fo r m a ­ tion Technology a n d L ibraries 17‚ no. 2 (1998): 100- 1 0 6 . ■ ( “ACRE p r o g r a m s . . . ” c o n tin u e d f r o m p a g e 18 9 ) Section and Community and Junior College Libraries Section are revising their standards, as well. Moreover, Nelson remarked that com­ m on standards for academ ic libraries are springing forth from this effort. These com ­ mon standards will provide a “flexible frame­ work for any academic library.” Mary Reichel summed up the program by touching on a few of the issues framing the conversation about the academic library. A theme that echoed around academic libraries last fall was the perception that libraries are devoid o f people. Many librarians disagree with this perception. ACRL and its programs can go a long way to refute the empty library scenario. Reichel also touched upon other issues raised during the program, such as burnout for teaching and reference librarians, the need for continued funding for travel to profes­ sional conferences for intellectual resuscita­ tion, and ACRL’s absolute dedication to work­ ing with academic libraries in all areas, from information literacy to common standards. ■ http://www.aacu- http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/ http://www C&RL News ■ March 2002 / 193