Balancing Act I

1
Balancing Act I

• Scholarship vs Community Building

2
The Scholarly Imperative

• Stakeholders
• Legislators
• Parents
• Faculty
• Administration
• Students

3
PLCs are not

• Committees
• Task Forces
• Ad Hoc Groups
• Advisory Boards
• or any other common university structural unit

4
How?

• How can the PLC accomplish its goals while
  building community having fun?
• How can the PLC meet the reporting and outcomes
  requirements (Boo, Hiss) while still having fun?

5
The Scholarly Imperative

• Scholarly Activities of PLCs
• Focus Books
• PLC Discussions across disciplines
• Reviews of the Literature
• Assessing
• Making Public
• Reporting

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Have a Theme
7
Enliven Meetings

• Encourage open discussion
• Meetings can be structured without being boring.
• Encourage sharing of ideas
• And most important,
• PROVIDE FOOD
• and balloons, and confetti, and streamers, and
  music

8
Play Games
9
Get to Know Each Other

• Learning Communities bring together people from
  diverse disciplines and backgrounds.

10
Achieving Balance

• Great Community

• Great Scholarship

CyberTrek Learning Community
11
Why?

• There is a deep hunger among faculty members for
  more meaningful collegial relationships and more
  conversational structures
• Learning Communities Creating Connections Among
  Students, Faculty, and Disciplines by Gabelnick
  et al., 1990

12
Achieving Balance

• Community Building Leads to
• Diminished isolation
• Shared purpose and communication
• Increased satisfaction
• with student learning
• Civic contributions to the common good

• Scholarly Work Leads to
• A more coherent curriculum
• More active learning
• More focus on teaching and learning
• Fresh approach to ones discipline
• Scholarly contribution to the academy