Powerful Learning Communities: A Guide to Developing Student, Faculty, and Professional Learning Communities to Improve Student Success and Organizational Effectiveness

This book constitutes a comprehensive guide for readers who want a broad strategic view of learning communities, enabling them to identify which type of LC best meets the learning needs of their students, and the context and mission of their institution. It also provides the tools for planning, designing and implementing what the authors define as “powerful” LCs, and for understanding the assessment implications of their decisions.

The potential power of LCs is realized through effective facilitation, appropriate team-building activities, linkages, planning, and active collaboration that promotes learning of the group and the individual group members – all of which topics are covered in this volume.

This book is organized around the three themes of setting the stage, designing an LC, and building or enhancing a powerful LC, and covers three types of learning communities – student, professional (faculty, staff), and institutional LCs concerned with student learning – providing a range of tools and forms to facilitate planning. The authors also address designing and maintaining hybrid and virtual LCs.

This is a radically revised new edition of The Powerful Potential of Learning Communities: Improving Education for the Future (1999).

Oscar T. Lenning is retired from academics and is now Director of Lenning Consulting Services. After 15 years of research, writing and consulting at ACT and NCHEMS―and 20 years as academic VP and dean at colleges in New York, Iowa and Oklahoma―he spent eight years leading development of innovative new programs at three different collegiate institutions. Author of 130+ professional publications, his chapter on “Assessment and Evaluation” in1981 and 1989 in Delworth and Hanson’s Student Services: A Handbook for the Profession became the standard for the student affairs profession in that area during the 1980s and much of the ‘90s.

Denise M. Hill is Assistant Professor at Des Moines University teaching health law and ethics. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Drake University Law School and an of counsel attorney at the Whitfield and Eddy law firm in Des Moines. She is active in promoting cross-curricular and institutional learning opportunities and founded the first MHA student chapter in the nation of the American Health Lawyers Association. A trained mediator and frequent public speaker, previously she practiced law at two large law firms, was Manager of Public & Regulatory Affairs for the Iowa Medical Society and served as a labor relations attorney for the Iowa Department of Personnel.

Kevin P. Saunders is Director of Academic Assessment at Drake University. Previously he served as the coordinator of continuous academic program improvement, chaired the learning communities assessment subcommittee, and taught research and evaluation courses at Iowa State University. He is a former resource faculty member for the Evergreen State College Learning Community Summer Institute and is a current Teagle Assessment Scholar.

Andria Stokes is the director of the Center for Transformational Learning and Assistant Professor of Education at Avila University in Kansas City, MO. Her specialty is cognitive education; her focus has been on inquiry and constructivist learning that involves facilitating deep understanding and conceptual thinking systems. Throughout her career Dr. Stokes has designed and implemented numerous student and professional learning communities. In recent years she published the cognitive education program, “Moving Toward Cognitive Excellence, Finding Out Real Knowledge” a high school literacy program, and has been a University of Kansas Cohort member on Creating Digital Portfolio Assessments for Students with Special Needs.

Alisha Solan is a Communications Instructor at Grossmont College in the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District and Miramar College in the San Diego Community College District. In the past she has taught at Gateway College in the Maricopa Community College District in Phoenix, at Austin Community College in Texas, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A & M University, Southwestern University and St. Edward’s University in Texas. In addition to a focus on learning, she is a communications expert with a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Solan also freelances as an editor and dissertation coach.