Linked Courses for General Education and Integrative Learning

“The subtitle of this book is ‘A Guide for Faculty and Administrators,’ and it more than lives up to the promise of guidance. The introduction gives the rationale for learning communities and discusses linked courses as the most popular model, while various essays focus on the pedagogies involved and on the design and implementation of specific linked courses."―Sarah McLeod, Research Professor of Wrioting, UC Santa Barbara Writing Program

"Linked Courses shows college administrators and teachers across disciplines a versatile, workable―and assessment-sensitive―model for making the most of college and presents a blend of new and time-tested strategies that together provide an inspiring response to the call for higher education reform."―Christopher Thaiss, Clark Keer Presidential Chair

Research indicates that of the pedagogies recognized as “high impact”, learning communities – one approach to which, the linked course, is the subject of this book – lead to an increased level of student engagement in the freshman year that persists through the senior year, and improve retention.

This book focuses on the learning community model that is the most flexible to implement in terms of scheduling, teacher collaboration, and design: the linked course. The faculty may teach independently or together, coordinating syllabi and assignments so that the classes complement each other, and often these courses are linked around a particular interdisciplinary theme. Creating a cohort that works together for two paired courses motivates students, while the course structure promotes integrative learning as students make connections between disciplines.

This volume covers both “linked courses” in which faculty may work to coordinate syllabi and assignments, but teach most of their courses separately, as well as well as “paired courses” in which two or more courses are team taught in an integrated program in which faculty participate as learners as well as

Margot Soven

Dolores Lehr

Siskanna Naynaha

Wendy Olson

Betsy O. Barefoot is Vice President & Senior Scholar at the Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education.